Absolutely. We also own a Real Estate company that specializes in Farm & Ranch...that's dead, residential barely has a heartbeat in rural areas, interest rates are up, mortgage rates are up and people are holding on to their cash/liquidity. Not to get in to politics but the same thing happened during Obama then the week after Trump was elected, not when he took office, I watched millions of dollars of oil & gas projects get released (I was doing that then) that companies had been sitting on....they knew they had a pro business admin about to take office....so some of this is confidence in a predictable economy, which we do NOT have right now so folks are sitting on cash. In our industry no one really needs bumpers or a winch, they need to eat and clothe their kids, pay rent...so that extra disposable income has been eaten up by inflation and increased taxes etc. along with...in some sectors... loss of business.
I've spent most of my life in the automotive world and every single year around late July to early September things always died off... last minute vacations, buying school clothes, etc took priority... over the last 3 previous years things were booming and there was residual covid/government money still floating around, people had cash/savings...this year was back to 'normal' in that it died off in July...even June. People just don't have the cash to spend like they did.
I told my wife last year, this next 12-24 months will be survival of the fittest...we've watched as droves of real estate agents have bailed and the same thing will go for lots of markets, including off road. Hunker down, don't spend on expansion and reserve all the cash you can as it's gonna get uglier before it's said and done.
