In the Chinese lunar way, 2021 is a year of the Ox, starting from February 12th, 2021 and lasting until January 30th, 2022.
The recent zodiac years of Ox sign are: 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997 and 2009 and after 2021 the next one will be, 2033. An Ox year occurs every 12 years.
For more about Chinese interesting details: https://www.chinahighlights.com/
I am not a zodiac believer but I start this way to make it clear that I have no idea how this new year will be for our rubber flooring activity, in the same way that I did not expect a 2020 like the one we have had to live.
I think that in our business there are some underlying trends that have been taking place for some time and assuming the rate of vaccination or the appearance of new drugs allow us to forget a bit the COVID current nightmare, we will be looking at the same tendencies during this year of the ox.
The tendencies I refer to and you will notice in your customers are:
- More and more health and environmental awareness is leading to greener products that are recycled and recyclable and with natural or human friendly chemical composition. Everybody is prioritising green infrastructure.
- You will be asked for evidences of low PAH / PBDE and any heavy metals as was normal on previous years but now you will face rising concerns about micro-plastics regulations and requests of materials that reduce the spread of germs or reduce biological growth.
- Installers and material suppliers will look to turn Circular Economy into opportunities for their business.
- Expect some price increase on a few raw materials that will lead to increases on Polyurethane binders and of some granules prices.
- More and more outdoor fitness or street workout areas will be installed, as people have had to deal with the closure of many indoor gyms due to the pandemic. This pandemic highlighted the importance of the outdoors for work, travel, exercise and mental health.
- Some shift of your job sites from big cities to smaller towns in rural areas.
- Economy will recover and some things such as remote working, video conferencing, and wearing a mask will be with us for a while or combined with going to the office some days or holding face-to-face meetings.
If you don’t like my predictions you can look at how it was any of your previous recent Ox years as 1997 or 2009 to do your own forecast. Alternatively you can write me a comment on whatever platform you see this post.
If you have complaints about my predictions please call my lawyer. Don’t worry if it takes a while to get him in the phone. He has a lot of workload due to my a slightly flawed predictions for 2020.
By the way the lucky colours for the year of the ox are: white, yellow, and green but I’m sure your customers will be asking for a lot of other colours and mixes of them.
PD: If doing a job on white colour don’t forget to use the best full aliphatic binder you are able to pay.
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