November and December were great, but after reviewing the books for January, I'm about ready to slit my wrists.

November was soft; December was ok (not becasue of Xmas though), and January things are heating up - especially the 2nd half of the month. I think February and March look to be decent!!!

i'm with FP. things pickedup, unlike last year... last year i was with AHEM

November was my worst month since starting my company... 30 grand below budget. OUCH!!!!

December rocked enough to make up for some of it and January was about a 10% shortfall... won't be slitting my wrists but definitely hoping Feb and March make it up. Keep your head up... custom building cranks up soon. THis was quite a retail season... my friends at GG and Magnolia Hi-Fi made some serious money in November and December. Now that the gift giving season is over we should begin to notice an upswing.

Good luck... and put those razors away.

yeah... horrible year so far, made worse by my getting stuck with jury duty. This trial will last 2 months. I might as well kiss my whole year goodbye.

ridiculusly poor October and early november, about a week before thanksgiving picked up to the point of going nuts till about a week and a half ago.. now it's down to reasonablely ok!!

Same as Brent here... October was a mess, but I've been going crazy since Thanksgiving and January has been a real rush as we picked up a couple of jobs that were aimed at SuperBowl parties. I'm hopeful that it will slow down a bit, but worried as always.

By the way, my favorite thing to remember is that you can be very busy in this business and still find ways to lose money, so I don't view the last 2 months as automatic positives - until I really audit them.

We havent slowed down since I cant remeber..... 5 Crews+ Booked through January... Booked Through Feb... Into the 2nd week of March right now....

We haven't slowed down either. We were busy during november and december of 03 and it has not let up. We already have jobs on the books and are killing our numbers for last January. We alos need to hiring a service technician, cause our service work is really backed up. May an installer too.

Mike

Business often comes in spurts. All lousy deals for three weeks in a row, then all of a sudden several great deals in a row. It's just the nature of the beast.

When I used to work on the retail floor, we might go for several hours without a single person comming into the store, then all of a sudden, ten groups of people walk in at almost the same time. I used to hate it when some bone-head sales manager used to call every four hours to check on our production, then chew us out if we went four hours without good production. As the old expression goes, when it rains, it pours. If someone could figure these crazy patterns out, they would probably become very rich.

The bottom line is, don't sweat it, look at more of a long term average. A bad January might mean a great February, or maybe even March. The only problem is, what do you do with your installers during the slow times? Use the time to your advantage-- clean up the warehouse, organize the trucks, train, or have them do one of the projects at your own house that your wife was about to hire another installer to do becuase you never seemed to get to it. Keep the installers busy or they will leave you. Then you won't be able to handle the rush when it finally comes.

Good advice.

I've put away the sharp objects as February has been much better!

Great here, bussiness is always good in Red Sox & Patriot Nation. As long as they keep winning our numbers continue to grow. Sometimes I do think what bussiness would we be like if we were loosing...