Glenn Shenk
Master Halco Vice President of Sales & Operations
I have been in the fencing industry for 15 years now, and every time I think of spring, I think of the start of the fencing season. Down in Texas, I can even smell the cedar in the air.
The last 12 months have been a roller coaster, starting with COVID-19 and the economic plunge in April a year ago. Some fencing manufacturers were closing their doors, uncertain over the status of “essential,” and fear of COVID spreading. Small businesses and service industries such as restaurants closed their doors and unemployment skyrocketed to 15.0% almost overnight.
Fencing was determined to be essential, and contractors and fencing manufacturers went back to work.
Meanwhile, the world began learning how to work from home, children were taught online instead of in school, and we started to adapt. Being confined to quarantine within our own homes, vacations became staycations, and homeowners filled their time with renovations and HGTV. This change in the way we work/live, coupled with low interest rates, people moved or re-invested in their homes, creating the great residential fencing boom of 2020.
We worked with our largest suppliers to maximize their output. With the over 70 Master Halco sales branches, we have been able to share inventory across all our facilities and transfer materials at our own expense to meet our customers’ needs. While some businesses and suppliers were forced to shut their doors, we were able to remain open and protect our customers by securing additional inventory.
For chain link manufacturing, we narrowed our focus for production to maximize the throughput of the most common items. We expanded our supplier base to find new sources of materials that met our specifications. For import items, the strength of our parent company helped secure containers wherever possible. We also worked to increase the efficiency of our delivery fleet to meet the high demand. All of these efforts have not been without challenges along the way and the Master Halco team has worked diligently to overcome these challenges and service our customers to the best of our ability during a very difficult time.
The residential fencing boom has rolled into 2021 and continues to grow. Shortages of raw materials due to supply constraints and unprecedented demand have caused prices to increase drastically. It’s no secret that supply in our industry is extremely tight and prices have risen to record heights. This has been a huge challenge that has required Master Halco and our customers to change many business practices. We hope these issues will stabilize but the demand does not appear to be slowing down anytime soon and continues to outpace supply across the industry.
We anticipate that, in the second half of this year, the federal government will fuel new projects, in addition to the postponed projects from last year.
It’s going to be another wild and crazy fencing season in 2021. Let’s make the most of it by working together.
- Glenn