In last month’s issue of Stone World, we published the year-end U.S. stone import and export statistics, which are provided to us by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Every month, U.S. Customs does a thorough job of reporting the full spectrum of stone imports — from tiles and slabs to cut-to-size work. Generally speaking, these statistics are a good barometer of where we are collectively headed as an industry.
Most years, I use the column in that issue to talk about how these statistics look compared to the previous year — and frankly, I was looking to share a little good news with our readers as we head out of this recession. But when I got out my calculator and crunched the numbers, the growth really wasn’t what I was hoping for — just about 7% across the board.