Industry News

Art Materials Outlook: the Second Half of 2009

frank stapletonIt does wonders for the self-esteem when you’re asked for your sage wisdom, good or bad. Below is a quote from the Creative Leisure news newsletter/blog. The question was; what’s the outlook for the rest of 2009? Here’s our view. What do you think?

“We have been seeing a shift to distributors vs. the retailers buying direct. It just seems that replenishing in small quantities, just in time, is allowing the retailers of all sizes to keep customers happy while continuing to reduce inventories. This has been a happening all year, but we have only recently seen the effect in our sales due to the overall impact of the retailer inventory reduction efforts.

Retailers seem recently upbeat. Perhaps they are just tired of being down in dumps. At any rate my sense is that back-to-school and Holiday will be okay, but because of all the retailer caution out there, we will see a lot of late and therefore rush orders.

Consumers seem equally cautious. Everyone is squeezing the last drop of paint out of their existing tubes. Are the consumers doing as much art? My guess is yes. In the scheme of things, it is very cheap and very satisfying to create things. One thing that consumers are responding to right now are significant promotions on regular items and categories. We’ve seen annual sales events at specific stores exceed last year by 20% when advertised properly.” – Frank Stapleton, MacPherson’s

Give us your opinion below.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *