Although in some cases the invoice has increased up to 45%, the rise in the price of light is not the only problem faced by many small entrepreneurs.
According to self-employed, associations and customers, the high price of materials has also fired by the reforms at a time when demand continues to increase, which makes budgets obsolete in a matter of weeks.
The few available materials are added to the high price of fuels, which increase the transport of containers from their country of origin up to 1,000%;
of 1,800 euros to 18,000.
The situation is, in a way, a perfect storm that has been revived by the winds of the pandemic.
And not only for having traversed all international markets, but also because it has made people consider the need to make reforms.
Many have not endured spending a year locked at home watching the Gotelé.
He has also influenced the impulse -Olligate-of Teleworking, according to Pedro Parra, coordinator of the National Association of Rehabilitation and Reform Companies (Anerr): “They want to close the terrace or isolate a room or the house.”
And that if you have not purchased a home outside the city.
“All those people need a reform,” explains Parra.
“This began around April,” recalls Alejandro, who has a metallic door company in Malaga.
He received an invoice from one of him so elevated he thought was a mistake, so he called him to correct him.
“It tells me no, that the prices are like that and that from one month for another it has risen almost double and that until then they had been assuming that rise, but that they can not because then they would be selling at loss,” he says.
“From that moment, jobs that I already had budgeted, I have to assume them, because although they have uploaded the materials you already have a commitment to your client,” regrets the worker.
“From then on you have to review all budgets and you have to go to the penny,” he explains.
“And above all, you have to give it a very small budget validity: If you give you more than two weeks, you can find that you lose money again because I raise the iron again.”
“The materials have uploaded 30%,” Calculates Parra, with special incidence in the metal derivatives, although without forgetting others such as wood, which has caused exactly the same furniture has gone from cost 400 euros two years ago.
1,000 at present.
“From a month for another I have to give a difference in the price of the 100% square iron meter, directly,” contextualizes Alejandro.
Since the sector they see the situation with “great concern”, especially at a time when there is “a lot of competition and, above all, unfair.”
“We are talking to manufacturers and reaching agreements to maintain prices for a while and be able to give a budget that lasts more than 15 days,” says the Anerr manager.
The rise affects both reforms and rehabilitation, although this second activity is somewhat more stopped, precisely because the sanitary crisis has paralyzed neighborhood meetings.
Parra also points out two other problems that already affect the sector and are expected to continue impacting in this crisis: the lack of labor – “Fundamentally aicaters and masons” – and, of course, the rise in the price of light, which ”
It is expected to “also impact on the price of raw material, as well as that it is already in the bill of companies.
“For now the climb I am not applying to the budgets; I am assuming it,” Alejandro recognizes.
“In the end, small businesses are taking costs until it is already irremediable,” he admits.
“We work with the final client, it’s a very close treatment and you try to have empathy and adjust the price as much because you know how the situation is in general.”
The problem is that the rise is of a difficult magnitude to transmit to customers, because they are tens or hundred euros of difference.
“In general, people are not understanding it,” the Malaga businessman hurts “because as a general rule they think that you are trying to cheat.”
In your case, remember, one of the ways to increase the client portfolio is something as old as your mouth.
But of what he paid a mouth in February to what is budgeted on the other in August, six months have passed and a crisis: “I know it sounds like science fiction, but that price I can not give it anymore; the materials have
Uploaded more than 100%, so the price I gave to your neighbor I can not give it anymore. ”
A lost customer.
In the case of Alejandro, the solution is precisely that: lose them now to recover them later.
“What I say to many customers is that if you do not hurry you wait, because if you go down the prices we evidently not keep this upload,” he says.
A client is a client, even six months later.
