The Gardner Business Index (GBI): Finishing activity that has been contracting for one year has been slowing for several months, lending some encouragement that things are picking up.
Though five of the six GBI Finishing components are contracting, four of them have slowed contraction and one has stayed steady. These include new orders, production, backlog and exports followed by employment, respectively.
Supplier deliveries continue to lengthen at a faster rate, getting more distant from 50.
Expectations of future business (not part of the GBI calculation) are still in expansion territory but taming just a bit relative to last month.
The Gardner Business Index: Finishing
Finishing activity contracts more slowly, remaining on a trajectory to flat.
Key Component Activity (3-MMA)
New orders, production and backlog all slowed contraction to drive the overall index in March with new orders leading the way.
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Why am I seeing this?
Dear Products Finishing Audience Member:
Starting on Thursday August 8, 2024, PF will begin “gating” its premium content, asking all new website users to provide some information about themselves — name, title, employer, email address — before they are provided free access to the content.
We are doing this because the ways PF’s audience finds and accesses our content is changing. Google’s search algorithms, increasingly, make it difficult to connect PF’s content with the people who might make use of it. On top of that, generative AI like ChatGPT is serving up PF content to internet users without attributing that content to PF.
As a result, it has become increasingly important for PF evolve its audience development strategy and learn as much as possible about who is accessing our content, what content they are accessing and how they are accessing it.
With this audience development strategy, we hope to do two things:
First, we will be better able to deliver directly to our audience the editorial content that aligns with the surface finishing materials, processes and technologies that interest them.
Second, we will be better able to connect the materials, equipment and services our advertisers supply with the audience that is most interested in them.
PF plays a distinctive role and has earned a place of esteem within the focused and specialized industry it serves. Large developments in the media landscape are forcing us to change the way we communicate with our audience. We are confident that our audience values the role PF plays in their professional lives and will join us in this effort to stay connected to them.
We thank you for your continued interest in and support of PF and welcome any questions you might have about the brand’s new content gating strategy.
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