October Blues

Amidst all the talk of green shoots and coming out of recession, my worst fears might be coming to bear. Our figures have an unnerving habit of being a very good indicator of things to come. Last October we saw a sudden drop in what, for two years up the then, had been a pretty steady growth rate. Since then things have been growing again, slowly but pretty steadily. Last month (Sept) would have taken a mini dive had it not been for one large export order and now Oct is starting very sluggishly indeed. In fact I'm currently predicting to sell less this Oct than last by about 40%! That's never happened to us and the old 'double dip' is starting to make a lot more sense to me now.