Pre-Corona Survey. Here are the highlights of the market survey released this week, answers coming between March 10th-11th. Respondents ranged from installers (35%), manufacturers (15%) and developers (25%). You covered every market in the Country with half of you doing business in California but MA (45%), NJ (38%), CT (31%), FL (27%) and AZ (27%) were also represented.
Q1 Improvement. While 25% of you saw no improvement in Q1 over last year, 55% of respondents were up in the first quarter over last year.
The Corona First Take. This is where timing of the survey is important. All of the responses came before March Madness, NBA, NHL, MLS and little league games were canceled due to the pandemic. 62% of the answers said that coronavirus had no impact on your Q1 sales and 48% said that you are not adjusting the Q2 forecast. My assumption is that a survey next week would have different numbers. 39% of you are adjusting the forecast by 0-20% downward.
What You’re Doing. Many of you shared with your actions in anticipation of which the most two most common were: no travel and work from home. Some also highlighted that society will now learn to wash hands once again. I’m interested to learn what companies are doing across the industry to manage their business through the crisis and if there are any changes to the economic business model of the sector. Please take your time to send your ideas and concerns to yann@solarwakeup.com, together we will manage through this.
Looking Ahead. There are going to be more questions than answers over the next week while the world settles into the reality that the virus is spreading everywhere. Without being hysteric, the way to solve the spread or flatten the curve is to isolate for as long as possible. Expect companies to have as many people as possible working from home while doing their best to keep moving business forward. I will circulate another survey next week and check the pulse of the industry. Typically I look to have podcast interviews that have some longevity to them but I will likely do a few interviews on this topic in the coming weeks to give you critical information for your business.
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Opinion
Best, Yann