It really is a great time to be a shopper. With the economy recovering, jobs being created and inflation falling every month, price of every day items are falling. Add to that a price war between all the major supermarkets, you really do get value for money when it comes to doing the weekly shop. One of the main reasons for this drop is the cost in petrol and diesel prices. Oversupply in the oil market and decreasing demand has seen a sustained drop in prices since the summer, and is now filtering through at the pumps. It’s one of the main reasons why inflation is so low too.

Over the weekend the Mirror newspaper reported that petrol prices could soon reach £1 a litre. Now to any driver those sorts of headlines would make for good reading, but don’t get excited too much, it’s not that straightforward. Click there to read the report. At first glance of the report, it looks like you’ll need to participate in supermarket schemes in order to achieve the £1 fuel price. Still, savvy shoppers will be able to exploit this for their benefit. But it’s not just weekly shopper that might benefit from cheaper fuel prices.

Cost of our good should come down

I’d like to think there is a shred of honesty in the manufacturing side of our industry. I’d like to think that as fuel prices come down, manufacturers will look at what it costs them to get their raw materials and adjust them accordingly. After all, think about all those price increases we’ve endured over the last few years blamed on the increasing cost in transport. Well now that transport costs are coming back down, why not help out the installer end of the chain and reverse some of those charges?

Think about how easy it will be for installers to approach their client base to say that due to lower fuel costs, their suppliers have been able to reduce prices previously raised and that they can then pass that decrease on to the homeowner. Hardly a difficult phone call to make and may persuade a few fence sitters to make a decision to get new windows and doors.

Not only that, I believe that given how significant the drop of price in oil has been, suppliers could still maintain a good margin, whilst passing on some level of saving further down the chain.

Making hay

As the economy continues to outperform most of the world, I believe that we should be doing all we can to squeeze every little bit out of this recovery. If that means passing on savings to our customers to make their home improvements a little cheaper then so be it. If it means that it helps sway a few customers to make a decision on new windows and doors a bit quicker, then that can only be a good thing.

There will be some out there who believe that the price of our good shouldn’t be coming down. But for me, all prices can go up and down, no product or service is immune to that, neither should ours be. It’s quite feasible for a supplier to reduce it’s prices if there is slack to do so, and maintain a profit margin. Their customers can then use that as a way in to help their undecided clients take the plunge and go for it. So right there and then you could have a new order, quicker, thanks to a genuine reduction in price, whilst maintaining profitability.

I seriously do hope that the major suppliers look at these reducing costs and look to pass on some savings as and where they can. If not, I can see parts of the industry which might get a bit vocal and question why if most raw material costs are reducing, why isn’t the price they pay reducing too.