I just finished proofreading a statistical article for TILE Magazine (one of Stone World’s sister publications), and the basic gist of the piece is captured in the headline you see above. Basically, the author was saying, “The industry is in better shape than it was in 2009, but it is still flat.” This sentence can also describe the stone industry (or pretty much any industry related to the building trade), and the statistics bear out this sentiment.
Each month, when I receive the monthly stone import statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce, I eagerly compare the numbers to the same month the year before. And for the past 18 months or so, I have consistently been seeing increases ranging from 5% to more than 20% over the previous year. Even as late as May and June of this year, stone imports were outpacing 2010, and they were significantly better than 2009, when the industry hit rock bottom (no pun intended). The results were so encouraging that I was compelled to use Social Media to “Tweet” the good news — and believe me, I never Tweet in my personal life.