To all our dealer partners,

As we have moved on from the many challenges we all collectively faced in 2020 due to the pandemic, we are hopeful that 2021 will bring us all some relief and some semblance of normalcy. We are projecting positively for 2021. The year has already started and we do see some hurdles that we will need to plan for as we head into our building season. We saw large increases in framing prices last year, that are evidently continuing, and we are now seeing regular price increases from most of our specialty building material vendors, due to raw material increases combined with labor shortages and labor cost increases. They are not increases as large as we are seeing in the framing side of the business, but increases nonetheless, that we all have to plan for. In addition, the increases are sometimes coming with little or no notice and may also include restrictions on what we can purchase at old prices.

Our most pressing concern is in regard to possible supply shortages and/or long lead times from our vendors. We had hoped that the winter season would have allowed many of our vendors to “catch up”; however, the current signs in the market have shown that this is not the case. We are working to build our inventories to appropriate levels to insure supply protection for our customers to stay in stock on A items, but as we all know, the B and C items that are often necessary, are the Achilles heel as it is difficult to forecast our collective needs. All of us should anticipate our needs, as best we can, on a regular basis and not count on “just in time shipment”. We hope that our vendors will maintain reasonable lead times, but special order items could possibly extend out longer than we would all like, so please be sure to confirm expected ship dates with our office so your customers are adequately informed.

All of us at Hansen want to be able to fulfill every order promptly and completely, but we must all understand that this tight supply situation is occurring throughout the value chain, in our industry and others, and we need to plan ahead as much as reasonably possible to be sure we can take care of our collective customers, the builder, contractor and remodeler.

Please work closely with our outside and inside sales representatives to regularly monitor your needs.

Thank you for the business! We look forward to a successful year for us all.