The average KBB tradesperson’s future order book has fallen to just 2 months, marking the third consecutive year with an average decrease.
This is according to new data from market research company Eureka!, which shared its latest findings from consultations with tradespeople this month. Eureka! found that this year’s order book reinforced the decreasing trend over the last few years.
In 2023, tradespeople reported that their average order book was 2.5 months. In 2022, this was 3.1 months, and in 2021, it was reported to be 4.5 months. This equates to an average drop of 2.5 months since the start of the “post-covid boom”.
Commenting on the data trend, Eureka! said: “It’s the direction of travel that is most concerning. Certainly, when we first started tracking this metric at the height of the ‘Post Covid’ boom, an average of 4.5 months always felt excessive and potentially problematic from an operational perspective.
“Installers tell us that an excessive order book means too many moving variables, too much headache and material costs can go up of course. Since 2021, however, our data clearly indicate a steadily declining picture – taking us down to the average of 2.0 months we see today. Let’s hope that this is the bottom of the curve.”
Looking more closely at the data, a third of tradespeople said they had either no work currently booked, or just one month booked in advance. 35% of tradespeople — the largest group — said they had one to two months booked, 14% said they had three to four months booked, and the remaining 12% reported having order books stretching beyond four months.
Eureka! also asked tradespeople which areas of the KBB sector they believed had seen a decline in enquiries over the last 12 months.
The most significant sector was boiler installation and heating work, with four in ten tradespeople saying that this kind of work had seen a decline. In addition, just over 30% said bathroom refurbishments, almost 20% said kitchen refurbishments and just over 15% said newbuild contract work.
More encouragingly, almost three in ten tradespeople reported that they had seen no noticeable decline in inquiries at all.
Explaining its data in more detail, Eureka! said: “Larger sorts of jobs (house extensions, or contracts through bigger builders) appear to be fairly resilient for now; as do smaller call-outs for repairs. Just 1 in 6 tradespeople reported a decline in those sorts of enquiries.
The market research company also pointed out that tradespeople in the commercial sector appeared to be in a more resilient market than independent fitters, observing: “Work via the commercial sector was only selected by 11%. This suggests that those who have secured on-going maintenance work or contracts with clients have got themselves a relatively steady pipeline of work.”
In related news, Eureka! recently partnered with kbbreview to analyse the data from our retailer survey 2024, which found that half of KBB retailers reported a noticeable drop in their own enquiries.
As part of the research, Eureka! Also helped kbbreview analyse data about retailers’ business health, what retailers believed the biggest challenges in the sector to be, and what KBB suppliers thought of their retailers. Following the landmark research, Eureka! director Dave Ruston also used the data to paint a picture of what today’s “average” KBB retailer looked like.