Each year, the winter issue of The MHEDA Journal spends the bulk of its space wading through data to layout the economic outlook for the year ahead. In addition to the predictions from many of our partner associations based on booked orders and economic indicators they have seen, we also spoke to dozens of MHEDA members from all segments of the material handling industry across North America to get a sense of what they expect to see in 2015. Though many members are still leery about issues like healthcare and EPA regulations, the consensus across all industry segments is that 2015 will be a year of robust growth across the industry. Because our industry has seen a growing trend toward consolidation in recent years, leading to a diversification of product offerings for many members, we decided to change the layout of the distributor forecast this year. Rather than grouping member responses by industry segment, we opted instead to group responses by region of the country. Because more than 97% of respondents expected to see some form of growth this year, while not one member we spoke to expected a decrease in sales in 2015 and just one member expected level growth, we wanted to test to see what region of the country would see the most robust growth. The answer, resoundingly, was the Midwest, with an average growth expectation of 10.4%. When broken up by category, the numbers support the trend toward diversification as those members with a diverse product offering, defined for our purposes as having no more than 65% of sales from any one segment of the industry, expecting the largest increase next year with an average of 11.2% growth compared to a 7.2% expectation in 2014. Continued Growth Having just completed a particularly contentious election cycle, […]