Faced with Material Delays, Contractors Trying New Brands

Pro­fes­sion­al con­trac­tors work­ing in the home improve­ment indus­try con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges due to sup­ply chain short­ages and high prices. These are not new road­blocks: Just look at the Home Improve­ment Research Institute’s (HIRI) pro­fes­sion­al ​“Month­ly Pro Track­er”, and you’ll see that price increas­es have been affect­ing pros in the indus­try for some time. 

This month, we are back with anoth­er update from the pro track­er. The ongo­ing sur­vey, con­duct­ed in part­ner­ship with The Farnsworth Group, is dis­trib­uted to respon­dents across var­i­ous con­struc­tion and remod­el­ing trades. Results pro­vide insight into how con­trac­tors deal with dis­rup­tions in the mar­ket. The lat­est iter­a­tion shows that mate­r­i­al avail­abil­i­ty con­tin­ues to be the biggest cause of delays, just as it has been since the fall. How­ev­er, June also marks the sixth straight month that respon­dents report­ed mate­r­i­al prices as the top lim­it­ing fac­tor in a major­i­ty of projects.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing take­away from the June report? After a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of pro­fes­sion­als who report­ed try­ing a new prod­uct for the first time (46% in May), the track­ing fell back clos­er to what we’ve been see­ing in pre­vi­ous months. The dif­fer­ence this time is we are see­ing an grow­ing num­ber of pros who have been try­ing a new brand or man­u­fac­tur­er for the first time. Between high pric­ing and wide­spread mate­r­i­al short­ages, this may be a solu­tion pros are turn­ing to as they find their long­time favorites unavail­able or out of budget.

Here are some additional key insights from the pro tracker:

• Only 24% say they have not had a mate­r­i­al short­ages in the last month, the low­est report­ed since HIRI began tracking.
• Among all tracked mate­ri­als, lum­ber and ply­wood con­tin­ue to be the most dif­fi­cult to obtain, but floor­ing sup­ply orders are get­ting tougher too.
• Only 11% are see­ing their mate­r­i­al delays at less than a week, while near­ly half are see­ing delays of more than two weeks.
• COVID-19 is becom­ing less of a cause for project delays.

On the bright side, changes in avail­abil­i­ty present oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­pa­nies in the home improve­ment cat­e­go­ry. Can your brand or prod­uct step up to help pro­fes­sion­al con­trac­tors solve the issues they’re fac­ing on the front lines? Now is the time to con­nect with your tar­get audi­ence and show them why a switch to Prod­uct XYZ will be a choice they’ll appre­ci­ate long after the econ­o­my turns upright.

Our pro track­er will con­tin­ue to relay con­trac­tor sen­ti­ment from the field every month. Join HIRI to get instant access to the full reports as they are released.