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The buzz around the industry for the past number of years has centered on the installation sector and how the shortage of qualified installers can be dealt with. The Installation Summit in Dallas in early August brought to light a number of ideas and opinions from a host of players from all sectors of the industry each anxious to help come up with an answer to help bring this situation to a close and find a way to produce a sufficient number of installers with the knowledge and the hand skills to successfully install the products manufactured by this industry.
The input was varied and brought to light a number of starting points and a number of takes as to the nature of the problem. Several suggestions impressed this observer. One was that retailers and everyone else should really first consider controlling their own destiny, and secondly, that perhaps the system itself culprit. The problem first appeared with the advent of the independent contractor installer in the 1960s replacing installers that were primarily employees of the retailers they did work for. Under this pre-60s model, retailers were more inclined to foot the bill for installer training and installers were better equipped to correctly train apprentices to ultimately develop into skilled master installers.
As the move to independent contractors, away employee installers continued to develop, it was suggested that with each successive generation a diminished level of skill was passed down to newcomers in the trade. That's not to say that many installers did indeed decide to control their own destiny and took advantage of the training and certification that was available, developing themselves into master craftsman and first class businesspeople. But that was not the case for the majority. And that leads us today 50 years of so from the proposed onset of this cycle where we find an environment that finds several well-developed training and certification options that go underused because most retailers don't see a future in footing the bill for training independents who will perhaps end up doing work for a competitor. This observer would not be surprised to see the majority of installers in 10-12 years working as employees, employed by retailers or byworkrooms in metro areas around the country.
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