Mike Duvall is the owner of Harbor Duvall Graphics, a Baltimore City-based graphic design firm and one of many local businesses hit by skyrocketing gas and fuel prices.
For more on how gas prices are affecting Baltimore-area businesses, see the feature story on page 16.
How does your business use gas?
We use gas for our delivery fleet as well as our salespeople?s vehicles.
You?ve got, between the two, half a dozen people on the road all day long. It?s dramatic.
I couldn?t put a figure on [the cost increase], we just know that we?re seeing it. …
We?re writing the checks for it.
I?m probably getting hit with it in ways I don?t even know.
How have you tried to cope?
If you want to stay in business, you have to pass it on, that?s the way it is.
Anyone who thinks they can survive today, particularly as a small business like we are, without passing the costs on is kidding themselves.
We?re responding with an increase in delivery fees, as well as the costs of production.
What?s the response been from your customers?
You?ve got two groups: You?ve got the group that?s businesspeople that understand you?re bringing value and you have a cost and you have to pass it on; then you have the other group, which is just concerned with the bottom line.
This sounds like a permanent, structural change in your costs of doing business.
That?s the way we feel. We can?t plan on it returning to normalcy, that?s for sure. We?re taking the approach that this is the new world. [Fuel costs are] going to have to be built in and passed along.
