Please help. Problem with large, long-time customer over prices - Page 2

It's a good point .... if he can delay the customer for a month or two it will get them past this little crisis. It may settle back down into business as usual.

Just some things to consider:

1: If you are trying to "cling" to your customers you're not working from a position of strength. If one of my customers are dissatisfied for some reason I'll assist them in changing over to one of my competitors and encourage them to go try it out for awhile to see if it works better for them. If they come back they're mine .... If not then they never were.

2: There are two kinds of customers. Some will stay the course with you no matter what. Others are promiscuous and will go with any Tom,D*ck, or Harry. My best customers automatically get labor rate discounts of up to 25% without even asking for them. The run around kind pay top dollar. I would almost prefer that they do find someone else because they tend to be difficult (and unprofitable) to deal with.

3: There's an assumption that the yearly pattern will hold true and steel prices will go back up in the spring. That may be incorrect !

The global geo-political landscape is shifting into a different paradigm. The biggest change has to do with oil. Most of the OPEC member nations are not friendly to American interests. When they get pissed off at us they strike at us in the only way they can. They hike the price of oil and wreck our economy. ( It's not like they can engage us militarily.)

Now that the disputes are settling down it's time to drop prices and recapture the market share they lost to the Canadians and our domestic oil producers. They can sell oil much cheaper and still do well because their production costs are so much lower.

Lower energy costs translate lower steel and common metals prices because these things are so energy intensive to produce.

It seems more likely that steel prices will move with oil.

If oil stays where it is we probably won't see that price "bump" next spring.

JMHO .... could be wrong. It's hard to accurately predict the future because a black swan event could change everything. You just never know for sure.