I am the purchasing agent for a company that makes lifts for A/V equipment.
I have had a hard time with the mills shutting down, and with them merging. We used some channel that is now no longer available as it was dropped from the catalog by the remaining mills. I now have to have heavy sheet custom cut and bent to keep us in production. This has happened several times in the past year, forcing us to do design changes on the equipment we produce, that are not for the better. It also increases our costs at a time when we can't afford to have a price increase.
So our already slim margin is reduced, and we had to reduce staff even though sales as a whole have not gone down so much. If we close our doors, the A/V industry will suffer, as ours is the only company that will do custom work, and builds lifts that handle loads over 50lbs in continual service. In turn, it will hurt architects and contractors who will then have very limited options in designing and building media space. So everyone will get small, boring cookie-cutter media rooms and convention centers with limited capabilities, not to mention auditoriums and churches, even Disney World uses our equipment.
The demand will not be high enough for someone to invest the time and capital to replace our company, as the limited market would make the investment risk too high. Our competitors (of which there are only 3, with one getting out of the lift business to pursue other products) would not expand their production capacity for the same reason. So it really becomes a "for lack of a nail" situation. The A/V industry is hard hit right now with a lot of the smaller dealers and contractors going under, which is in turn hurting our sales as it reduces the outlet for our products, so we are getting hit from the other end as well.
Apply the same scenario to other industries, and you end up with Soviet bread lines.
I don't think people really understand the ripple effect that things like mill closings have on the economy as a whole.
