Demand for tradies up from ‘famine to feast’
Mechanic Shaun Bloemen has been so busy in the past couple of weeks that he is struggling to keep up with demand.
‘‘We’ve gone from famine to feast. It’s nuts. Cash-sales wise it’s been a record month.’’
After weeks of no income, builders and tradespeople are enjoying being back at work while also realising things may get harder down the track.
Bloemen, who owns Hymark Central in New Plymouth, said sales were down overall because there had been a month with no work.
However, the business’s dayto-day cash sales during alert level 2 had been huge.
‘‘At the moment we’re struggling to keep up, so definitely busy, busy, busy. I think most people in our game are,’’ he said.
‘‘We need it. I thought we might be slow for a while, but thank our lucky stars we’re not. It’s been really good.’’
He’s doing a lot of warrant of fitness checks, tyres and servicing, but also ‘‘non-essential stuff’’ such as people wanting a new exhaust system for their car or an upgrade in certain areas, he said.
Hofmans Builders owner Steve Hofmans said trade was busy. ‘‘I guess with builders and tradies there’s been a pause and then – get back into it,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t think there’s too many people around who aren’t busy.
‘‘But who knows what the true effect will be in six months, 12 months? It could be cranking still – who knows?’’
It was a wait-and-see situation, he said. ‘‘But at the moment things are pretty positive. I think people have made decisions over [the lockdown period] as well. [Loan] interest rates are low.’’
Hofmans works in the newhome market and his company has a year of work ahead of it, with some good-sized projects.
‘‘As far as I know all our tradies and subbies are all full noise. It’s good for the short term and that’s all we can look at, at the moment.’’
All’s Well Plumbing owner Eugene Maritz said he was really busy at the moment. ‘‘I’m on the run all the time.’’
He was mostly working on maintenance and services, he said. ‘‘There’s always something going wrong with a tap or a drain . . . It keeps me busy.’’