There’s a time in the life of every offsite factory when the owner realizes the phone has stopped ringing. Sales are sliding, contracts are tougher to get and the production line feels quieter.
It can happen fast, and before long the sales team is spending more time chasing leads than closing them.
It’s tempting to dive into cost cutting — laying off workers, freezing marketing, canceling travel and postponing equipment upgrades. But factories that have weathered past downturns know that survival doesn’t come from squeezing payroll — it comes from rethinking purpose.
To thrive in the future, the discussion must shift from “How can we save money?” to “How can we create value differently?”
After the 2008 housing crash, and later after the COVID-19 pandemic, many offsite companies began chasing commercial projects — schools, hotels and multifamily buildings. Some made it work; others drowned in complexity.
Planning made all the difference. Big commercial projects follow a different playbook than single-family homes. They require new engineering standards, longer cash flow cycles and more complex project management.
The winners didn’t just add commercial work — they rebuilt their business model around it. They retrained staff, hired specialists and rewrote processes.
While I’m not saying you need to chase commercial work, I am saying you need to adapt in some way. A Pennsylvania factory owner once told me, “We thought we could sell our way out of [the downturn].” They couldn’t. The sales team brought in jobs, but they weren’t profitable, and included rushed bids and custom orders that slowed the line. Within a year, the company had burned through its cash reserves and was forced to close.
Another company, an East Coast panel and truss factory, took a different route. Working with outside advisors, they spent three months evaluating what they could do profitably rather than what they wanted to do. The result? They added panelized multifamily walls to their existing, but declining, line of single-family panels and trusses. That decision saved the company, and they’re still in business today.
It’s a reminder of the value offered by fresh eyes. Outsiders can see what management can’t. They’ll point out bottlenecks in your system, inefficiencies in your quoting and outdated customer assumptions.
In fact, the most successful reinventions begin with a single sentence on a whiteboard: “What business are we really in?”
This forces clarity. Are you a modular manufacturer, or a housing solutions provider? A project partner or a production vendor? Are you investing in the training and technology needed to build what the market wants?
Smart companies see downturns as an opportunity to move in new directions. They seek advisors, they listen and they’re not afraid to let go of outdated habits. They get ahead of change rather than waiting for it to crush them.
Every offsite company finds itself at this crossroads sooner or later. The difference between those that wither and those that thrive isn’t how aggressively they trim expenses — it’s about how they redefine themselves when sales slow.
Because when the phone stops ringing, that’s not the end. It’s the moment to decide what kind of company you really want to be.
