How will the US home center markets fair this summer?

Wood Industry General
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I arrived at the airport earlier than I needed to this morning to catch my flight to Portland Oregon for the International Mass Timber Conference.

Since I had about an hour and a half before my flight departed, I decided to check in with a half dozen or so of my friends in China who combined supply thousands of containers per year of products to the US DIY markets. With all the nervousness in the housing market that we are seeing here regarding rapidly rising interest rates, I wanted to see how they were doing and how they were seeing things in the US home center markets from their perspective.

They all unanimously said that it was eerily quiet on the US customer side. Now is the time for preparing for the 2023 season and putting together proposals for next years business. One of them stated, “it feels like winter is coming”.

For those of you who are supplying the US home center markets, how are you seeing things for the rest of 2022 and into 2023? Are you sensing the caution that the Chinese producers and suppliers are seeing? Or are you seeing that due to the sky high shipping container rates that a lot of the newer production for home center business has moved from China back to the US and also into Mexico?

Last summer, with the temporary lifting of mask mandates across the country, we saw people give up their home improvement projects for trips to the beach as soon as kids got out of school. Will we see the same thing happen this summer? Will home center business take a pause again this year? Or will people pick up where they left off in 2020 and finish projects that they didn’t complete in 2021?

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Do you believe there is a possibility that the events of last summer are reversed? Although mask mandates are now lifted, there seems to be talk of mandates returning within the upcoming summer months. Would this encourage people to resume their home improvement projects that were not finished in 2020 or 2021?

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I heard that Philadelphia imposed an inside mask mandate again. But most of my contacts there are telling me that everyone is completely ignoring it. So, there is no telling what will happen if cities and states try to impose mask mandates again. I feel like we are all really over it with masks and mandates in general. My family is going to California Disneyland in June instead of working on any new projects at our new home in Spokane. I personally will continue to do smaller hobby projects this summer but nothing major.

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Around here, in Wisconsin I would say many people are approaching the summer similarly to your family, my own included. Even if mask mandates do resume, I am not sure that people are ready to stop traveling and resume home-improvement projects considering the past two years.

Additionally, with such surging inflation, the DIY renovation market is low as well, further discouraging people to continue their former projects.

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@Josh_Rees Are you still predicting a DIY boom from all the would-be-homebuyers turning to renovations instead?

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@Craig_Parker are you still seeing customers coming in for DIY projects?

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@David_Hoglund what is your DIY/retail market outlook for the rest of the year and into next year?

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