I've been talking to suppliers a lot and they all say they are just getting creamed on raw material and labor costs. Every one of them - every one - is seriously concerned about raising prices (again)/ They don't know how long they can hold the current price structures. Container ships costs have gone through the roof. I was talking to Tony, the owner or Royal Pedic, and he had to pay $ 30,000 more than his purchase order for a container of latex from Holland because of shipping costs that have gone wild. He wasn't prepared for that.

Bradington Young was telling me they are on the verge of another price increase. They don't even print price books for the dealers any more, they email us pdf's because the numbers have changed so much in the past year. So dealers have to print out the 170 page price book!

Some manufactuers are even appling surcharges to orders submitted months earlier, their argument being by the time they get everything to build the pieces, their raw materials have gone up 15 to 20%. So far, that hasn't been an issue with the lines I carry - but they have discussed it and the bad P.R they would get is what has kept then from doing it. I would absolutely flip out if they did that and I had to call my customers and tell them so.

I know a lot of people are saying they will wait until prices come down. I don't think that's going to happen - ever. I would say don't wait if on the basis of expecting pricing to go down. I do see another round of price increases coming - probably pretty soon. The High Point Fall Market started today and this is when they have their sales meetings with the reps, and they will tell them what the future holds.

Delivery times continue to get worse. Customer Services are suffering too, lots of new hires in the trade that have no experience and leave after a few weeks after they find out how hard the job is. The most under-appreciated position at these manufactuers are the people in Customer Service. They get an earful from both end user consumers and dealers non-stop, 8 to 9 hours every day and virtually no one ever says "thank you" to them. That's why at Christmas time I like to send them some tokens of appreciation.

It's a terrible time. We can't get orders in a timely manner, we can't get many small favors accomplished, and prices keep climbing. Please realize that no one can give you accurate completion dates right now. When we dealers say 6 months on average, that's just speculation. Some are taking 9 months, some get done in 3 months. It's all over the board.

Be Patient
Be Kind
Be Understanding
We are all frustrated by current market conditions.