Yes, 2009 is going to be tough, but we always knew it was going to be. There's no football this year. 

As we all know, even-numbered years are easy for marketing departments: stick a football on your product and, hey presto, you have just created a marketing campaign. 

The Duracell bunny kicks a ball instead of banging a drum, Domino's launch their football-shaped pizza, Suzuki pay Cristiano Ronaldo handsomely to do a few keepy-ups in front of a car, and so on. 

And the same phenomenon hits the crazy world of printwear and promotion. Newspapers offer a free In-ger-land 1966 T shirt for all readers, your stationery supplier gives you a football shaped squeezy stress toy instead of a mouse mat; everything just goes footy mad. 

People don't just switch their spending from one product to another, they actually spend more. And that's not even counting companies with a direct link, such as the tournament sponsors or official licence holders who will boost the spending even further! 

Having observed this phenomenon, back in 2006 we mapped out our plans for expansion and investment leading up to 2012. 

The peaks in the footy years are interspersed with slightly leaner odd numbered years... unless, of course, a squad of overpaid numpties fail to qualify. We estimate that England's failure to make the 2008 finals cost us revenue of around £250,000 last year. 

On top of this we had forked out for the necessary investments in kit and people to boost our capacity to make sure that we were in a position to make hay while the sun shone.

It is fair to say that Steve McClaren was not our favourite person.

England's failure to qualify meant we had to revise our plans.

Three consecutive lean years: 2007, 2008 and 2009. Ouch!

Last year, we were forced to make difficult choices and look hard at our costs. Unfortunately, we had to make some redundancies, but we also focused on other areas - buying as efficiently as we could, cutting back on waste, reviewing phone and insurance costs.

Were we, in short, nailing down the 1,001 little details that make up a business? Maybe we weren't, but we are now: our incredibly flexible staff are now all multi-skilled (production staff can work on print, embroidery and packing machines, office staff can cover the art room and vice versa, and so on), which means no one is standing idle and we keep agency staff costs down to almost zero. Our warehouse and stock control system has been streamlined, our credit control tightened up; we've negotiated better discounts with suppliers, and in a thousand little ways we are a stronger, leaner business than we were 12 months ago.

Yes, 2009 will still be tough, but we are prepared for it. The good news is that as far as we are concerned it marks not the beginning of dark times, but the beginning of their end. 

The really good news it that it looks like Fabio Capello might be the man to whip those pampered prima donnas into shape for a good run in South Africa 2010, and the double whammy of the Euro finals and the Olympics coming to London should make 2012 a bumper year.

As more astute commentators than I have already pointed out, in tough times the best businesses promote themselves more, not less. Our industry will not grind to a halt in the same way the house building industry has.

Moreover, the good news is that the humble T shirt is not an expensive thing. If someone is looking for a low-cost promotional tool then my product should be attractive to them right now.  A recent conversation with John Hawthorne at Fruit of the Loom seemed to confirm this: in previous times of economic hardship Fruit have seen their sales increase as buyers look to optimise value for money and shift their spending away from more expensive flash trash towards the budget-friendly world of promotional clothing.

But I'm sure that this recession will see its fair share of casualties.  Anyone who needs to borrow money will be in a world of pain, so people may be forced to put off investing in any large bits of kit: which is bad news for manufacturers of print and embroidery machinery, as well as for anyone with obsolete machinery they might be looking to upgrade.

Similarly, any business that had previously relied heavily in its overdraft or generous terms of credit from its suppliers might be in for a tough time. On top of all of this there will inevitably be a squeeze on prices.

For the basic, run of the mill, 2-colour-print-onto-a-white-T-shirt sort of work I have to accept that there are enough panicked printers out there to drive the price down lower than I would like it to be. 

I will have to make pragmatic decisions on a week by week basis about whether I am prepared to accept those sorts of prices or not.  The odds are that in June I will not need to, but in November I won't be able to afford to resist lowering my prices just for the principle of the thing.

The good news for me is that we've been through our cost reduction exercise last year, and if the marketplace demands lower prices from its suppliers during 2009 then we're reasonably well placed to respond. 

Those companies strong enough to survive 2009 will have fewer competitors to worry about in 2010, and at the same time there should be more work to share between them in that lovely even-numbered year.

And if demand increases and the number of suppliers decreases, what do you think that might do to prices next year?  

Having said that, the companies that do thrive will be the ones who offer their customers the right products, at the right prices and with exceptional levels of service. 

Maybe the loss of a few of the weakest performing businesses in our overcrowded sector might not only be a bloody good thing for their direct competitors but also for the promotional industry as a whole.

Tel: 0113 238 1644; www.tshirtprinters.ltd.uk

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