San Diego—The FEI Group welcomed more than 700 attendees to its annual convention here Thursday evening by hosting its supply partner trade show and its fourth-annual No Child Hungry event.
The group, which is made up of six divisions, 500 independent operators and 1,500 locations worldwide, is going through what has been a tough year for many contractors and dealers, given the soft housing market and lack of affordability in both the single-family and multifamily segments.
“It’s been another challenging year for the contractor in the single-family residential space and that has an impact on our multifamily as well,” Graham Howerton, FEI president, told FCNews. “The thing that is creating the logjam for us is affordability. The median price for a single-family new home is $487,000, and that is a tough place for a first-time buyer to navigate, especially with the high interest rates.”
Howerton added that when the housing economy turns more favorable, as it will at some point, his group will be well positioned to seize on the opportunity. “Our members are doing what they have to do now to prepare for the upturn,” Howerton said. “The purpose of this conference is to have those discussions, to help us be ready for the next 12 months.”
No Child Hungry
As is customary with FEI Group national conferences, the opening evening was about giving back. To that end, hundreds of attendees took part in the No Child Hungry event by assembling hygiene kits and meals for families in need in the San Diego area.
The goal was to pack 40,000 hygiene and snack kits and 10,000 meals and deliver it to the community the next day. “When we go into a community, we are going to make it better than when we came here,” said Howerton, who took part in the assembly line. “One of our core principles is that we give back.”
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