The goal of the study is to provide custom woodworkers with a set of benchmarks they can use to compare and manage their businesses. The 40-question survey is gauged to elicit information on woodworking operations such as employee wage-ranges for various functions, facility size, presence of CNC equipment, business development and marketing practices and other factors, which will enable the CMA to cross-tabulate responses and provide the industry with a report that can be used to compare averages to individual situations. The goal is to provide a tool to help guide how and where woodworkers should focus their efforts and resources to make their businesses more profitable and competitive.

 

“While it’s fairly easy to get bits and pieces of the kind of information we are gathering in this survey, to have it in a useable form where a shop owner can actually compare his/her data to others in similar markets means more than just the numbers,” CMA Executive Director Dave Grulke said.“That means a shop owner can not only learn where they stack up, but where they can better invest their time, money and effort to significantly strengthen their business’ profitability. I’d urge every woodworking shop owner to take the few minutes needed to complete this survey. Adding your data in confidence will only strengthen the survey results.”

 

The study is still in the field, but already some interesting data is emerging. For example, those with relatively large facilities (5,000 to 10,000 sq. ft.) are more likely to report higher sales volume in 2011 than those with smaller shops (85.7 percent vs. 61.5 percent). In addition, while only slightly more than one-third (38 percent) of respondents are CNC shops, those shops are getting a higher shop rate compared to their non-CNC counterparts. Seventy percent of CNC shops are charging shop rates ranging from $50 to $75 per hour, compared to 50 percent charging in that range among non-CNC shops; while 23 percent of CNC shops are charging $75 to $100 per hour compared to 17.9 percent among non-CNC shops. Interestingly, a similar percentage of non-CNC shops (18 percent) is charging shop rates less than $50 per hour. No CNC shops are charging less than $50 per hour.

 

The survey is available online and the CMA encourages all professional woodworkers to participate in order to make the findings as accurate and useful as possible. To take the survey,  go to this link. While we will ask each participant for their contact information as a quality control check, all responses are confidential and no individual information will be shared.