JP,
True enough. After college I helped start a small panel shop with one friend and one then customer of mine. All was going well until the middle of 2000. About that time companies quit investing in new machinery and actually started decreasing their Maintenance and Repair Operations budgets. The jobs that were available were being quoted by large panel shops at cutthroat prices, prices we couldn't even manage to buy hardware and components at. These panel shops and integrators desperately needed the business because their large accounts were becoming “assembly” hubs. This meant that all components were being made elsewhere, but shipped to the states for assembly. This will change too… as soon as the US is no longer the #1 consumer in the world, assembly will move to whatever region is.
We had very low overhead due to the number of employees, our dependency on distributors and the payment structure we implemented, but even with this low overhead, we simply could not compete for the fewer jobs. The manufacturing sector in the States use to be able to support an entire network of auxiliary businesses… but no longer my friend, and soon the assembly jobs will move overseas as well. Every piece of consumable we buy in the near future will made, assembled and marketed overseas.