How the Tough Get Going
And, while some in the industry fear the larger consolidators are creating pricing pressures that will ultimately commoditize products and services, Keith Walters, president and CEO, stated Ennis feels quite the opposite. “The downward pressure of the last three to five years has been driven by manufacturers and distributors struggling to compete and stay in business. A large number of manufacturers and distributors in our industry do not know their real costs of doing business. Failure to know your real costs in a shrinking market most often cause returns to not be as good as expected,” he explained. “When the returns have not been acceptable, it limits manufacturers’ abilities to move out of commodity products, which in turn causes further downward pressures.