Robert Clague

Northern Suburbs Timber Flooring

I would like to congratulate TimberTrader News on their 20th anniversary, and thank Greg and the team for allowing me to be a part of this celebration by offering the opportunity to express my opinion on the future of the industry.

If we can only predict the next few years with the luxury of hindsight we would be able to secure a steady future for us all.

Who honestly could have predicted how far we have advanced in recent years?

We now are a timber flooring industry in our own right, a specialist trade offering part and complete packages supplying, installing sanding and finishing of timber flooring.

So where to from here?

Our growth as an industry must be controlled to ensure good supply of labour and product, while being careful not to create a false economy that can lead to an over supply and that can not be any advantage to any of us.

Training must have priority to secure our success. We all have a responsibility to put back to the industry for the good we have taken from it.

We must not allow short term vision of some that come into the industry to take advantage of the popularity we have all created, to compromise our obligation to build a solid road ahead.

The future is very exciting, we as an industry are young enough to take full advantage of the technology that is going into the development of products that will advance installation and finishing techniques.

Look at those advancements, network with our peers, listen to opinion, acknowledge and accept responsibility for our mistakes, but more importantly learn from that and create our own individual opinions that we can advance with.

Help each other, share ideas, you can have too much opposition, but you can’t have enough good competitors that will advance you, as much as it will assist them by offering that support.

It is with that sharing of that information through publications like TimberTrader News magazine, and that of strong industry associations that will assist significantly in securing a future in this wonderful industry we all are a small part off.