With three negative quarters of growth for the UK economy, the latest from April to June seeing a further shrinkage of 0.7 percent, it seems all those ‘green shoots’ the coalition optimistically nurtured have withered and died.

This follows a 0.3 percent drop at the start of the year, and has shocked many economists who did not predict such a fall.

The culprit for these results can be attributed partly to a blighted building sector that is seeing  tough times, with output falling by 5.2 percent. Overall production output, which includes manufacturing sectors such as the sign trade, also fell by 1.3 percent. This latter statistic is of most worry to our industry, as manufacturing output has tended to be more resilient to the UK’s poor economic performance since 2008. This is largely because The City and financial services make up a much large proportion of the UK economy than some of its European contemporaries. The result is poor economic results have not automatically meant poor production output, as would be the case in countries like Germany that have bigger industrial manufacturing sectors.
In light of these developments, I made a point this month of speaking to sign-makers and trade suppliers that weathered the last recession.

The common message from companies that survived and came out fighting is they used spare capacity and quieter business conditions to concentrate on how to trim fat from their businesses and remain sustainable. This included implementing production efficiencies across the board, from retraining staff to integrating new software. It also included making capital investments into modern sign-making equipment. This last point is perhaps the most important, as setting up and perfecting production systems in leaner times has a relatively lower impact on daily output and prepares your business for when demand does picks up.