If you trust economists, which I don’t, they say that since 1930, North American recessions have occurred every 58 months, almost every 5 years.  If you believe our latest recession ended in September 2009, which I don’t, we are overdue for the next one.  I don’t believe we have fully recovered from the last one.
 
Is our closet industry experiencing the beginning of another recession right now? You don’t know and neither do I, but we are about to find out.
 
Please spend the next 21 seconds taking the 7 question closet industry survey at the link below. No company names are required, just your input. We will publish the results.
 
Estimates show that our closet industry suffered a 60% casualty rate between 2007-2011.  As we prepared our mailing list to organize the Closet Summit, we found that there were many closet companies no longer on Google, phones were disconnected, and mail returned-to-sender notices. Closets Magazine confirms that the number of dropouts is staggering. If you are reading this, chances are you survived the purge or got into this industry during the housing depression.
 
In 2006, the National Closet Group had a network of 65 members thru out North America. By late 2006, northeast and upper mid-west NCG members were feeling the squeeze but in the south and west we were still steaming along. The early warning from others helped us weather the economic tsunami.

At the last Closet Summit, we conducted round tables to discuss what, and how, surviving closet owners and vendors did to weather the last recession. They openly shared strategies and trial and error procedures. The summary, found at
http://www.closetsummit.com/events-~-sessions.html, is extremely helpful in planning your next rough ride. As an old hardware store sign in Savannah once read, “Together we can do it yourself”.

Take the industry survey now. It should take you 21 seconds https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LQDM93Q