From the Shop to the Show Floor: Manufacturers Weigh in at POWER 2025
Last week in Boston, Paperless Parts’ annual user conference, POWER 2025, brought together a diverse group of shop owners, estimators, and operations leaders. And while POWER is technically about software, it’s also a platform for forward-thinking manufacturers to share what’s actually happening on the ground: how they’re thinking about growth, where they’re placing their bets, what’s keeping them up at night.
In a special edition of The Job Shop Show podcast, host Jay Jacobs hit the floor at POWER and asked attendees across a variety of roles, locations, and sizes three big questions:
- What is your outlook on 2025?
- If you had $500k to put towards any area of your business in the next month, where would you invest it?
- What has been your biggest takeaway from POWER?
We’re breaking down their answers in a three-part blog series, starting with question #1…
2025 Outlook
The outlook for 2025 among manufacturers is broadly positive, with many reporting strong pipelines, renewed customer activity, and steady or growing order volume. While some remain cautious due to broader economic uncertainty, tariffs, or market volatility, the general sentiment is one of optimism tempered with realism.
Here were the responses, in order from most bearish to most bullish:
Joseph Long, Production & Operations Manager, Evans Manufacturing
“I’m generally pessimistic, but optimistic about myself. I see some potential threats in the economy, but I believe our company’s in a strong position to weather any storm.”
Jim Fitch, VP Engineering, Nu-Way Industries
“It’s tough to say. Quote activity has remained steady and strong. Orders are still coming in. I wouldn’t say we’re seeing an increase in orders, but we’re not seeing a decrease in orders either. Right now, I would say cautiously optimistic that things are going to at least stay level if maybe not grow a little bit.”
Ryan Hochstetler, Digital Director, General Stamping & Metalworks
“With lots of uncertainty with certain markets and business outlook for our customers, I’m cautiously optimistic.”
Brandon Brooks, President, Wal-Tek Industries
“Our outlook is cautiously optimistic. We had a really good year in 2024. A couple of projects are coming up and into development for new business and to continue on a third term. It’s steady so far.”
Paul Becotte, VP Engineering, Alinabal
“I think we’re going to grow. We’re a little cautious but we’re optimistic just due to what we’re doing in terms of growing and selling and our marketing efforts. The first quarter has been a little sluggish for many companies. I think the tariff impact has caused some companies to pause and delay some decisions.”
Hernan Ricaurte, President, Ricaurte Precision Inc.
“Optimistic, but careful. With the tariffs, a lot of people are talking about recessions and inflation. From an economic standpoint, the last thing a small company wants is instability. Whether it’s good or bad, as long as we know the landscape, it makes it easier for us to plan. But for us, because we focus on aerospace & defense, the market looks strong.”
Peter Doyle, CEO, Hirsh Precision
“This year is in line with last year so far. We’re seeing an increase, but there is some economic uncertainty our customers are facing. We anticipate this year to be slightly up and expect that trend to continue.”
Emily Anderson, Operations, Method Mfg
“We are positive about 2025, especially looking at changes in leadership in some of the big aerospace and defense companies; seeing the new CEO of Firefly, the new CEO at Axiom, and they’re pushing big into getting new programs kicked off.”
Alex Enriquez, Estimator, Athena Manufacturing
“I think it looks really promising. And, you know, it kind of comes down to really understanding the playing field. But I think that with jobs coming back to America, it looks very promising—manufacturing in particular.”
Joe VanBecelaere, Director of Sales & Estimating, RCO Engineering
“We’ve got a really strong customer base and we want to work on retaining our top 20% of customers. In terms of revenue growth, we’re looking to grow this year as we move from a lot of prototype work into production.”
Matt Fritz, Estimating Engineer, GTR Manufacturing
“We keep moving up. We’re experiencing decent work flowing in. We’re expanding. We’re always looking for new people to come in. This is our second year now with Paperless, and it’s really transformed our quoting process and it’s making everything streamlined and working much better.”
Ted Matherne, Manufacturing Specialist, Laitram Machine
“Our company continues to grow; we expect the same growth this year with a lot of new products. We’re in the conveyor belt market, so very heavy in the postal industry and Amazon’s services.”
Jeff Kalinowski, Estimator, Electro-Metrics
“Our objective is to do 30% more in sales. We have a great backend, we have a great owner, and they’re setting us up for success.”
Eric Henderson, Senior Estimator/Project Manager, Engage Industrial Solutions
“Our outlook is very good. We’ve seen quite a few old customers returning, looking for new stuff, and added quite a few new customers.”
Nathan High, Sales Manager, PBZ Manufacturing
“2025 is looking good for us. We’ve got a lot of work in the pipeline. We have customers asking about reserving capacity. So we’re buying new machinery and being pretty bullish with the market right now.”
Mark LaMoncha, CEO, Humtown Products
“Our business is really taking flight rapidly. A lot of it is coming from our 3D sand printing division.”
Justin Quinn, President and Owner of Focused on Machining
“2024 was a down year, but immediately at the end of 2024/beginning of 2025, business picked up drastically. We’re working with many of our customers on multi-year projects. My outlook is extremely high going forward.”
Subscribe to In the Shop to read parts II and III coming soon, or tune in to the full episode of The Job Shop Show here!