Fay's menace has a business upside

While most places were closed, Steve Mosko was in his Sarasota shop early Tuesday cutting hurricane shutters for a customer.

Of course, by then most of the Tropical Storm Fay drama was over, but after putting off installing his shutters, the customer cajoled Mosko into getting them done. Mosko had fielded more than 40 calls on Monday from people who wanted shutters right away.

"We're absolutely happy to have those phone calls," Mosko said.

"The problem is they call the day before the storm and it's not possible," he said. "Getting a building permit takes several days."

After a two-year slowdown in sales and installation work, it seems Fay's biggest impact in Florida may have been to resuscitate the market for storm protection. Business owners said Fay was ideal -- it did little damage, but served as a reminder of Florida's vulnerability to more powerful storms.

PGT Inc., the Venice-based hurricane-resistant window and door maker, has suffered from the recent quiet hurricane seasons and the downturn in the housing market. With Fay's arrival, the company will now be looking for an uptick in sales, said Debbie LaPinska, vice president of sales and marketing.

"It's not something we typically see right away," LaPinska said. "I will be anxious to see the effect -- not that anyone wishes for a storm -- but we do wonder what will a storm do, will it actually spur people into action?"

LaPinska says she worries that it will take something like a strong hurricane now to motivate more people to protect their homes with the state discontinuing its My Safe Florida Home program. The state program was designed to help strengthen homesteaded properties against hurricanes by offering free wind inspections and up to $5,000 in matching grants for recommended improvements.

Homeowners in high-risk areas, such as barrier islands, are required to have hurricane shutters and other protections if they are covered by Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed home insurance carrier.

Otherwise, hurricane protection is at the homeowner's discretion and with so many people struggling to make ends meet, worrying about job security and even facing foreclosure, hurricane protection sometimes only becomes a priority if there is a tangible threat.

The back-to-back hyperactive seasons of 2004 and 2005 brought in new hurricane protection businesses and programs like My Safe Florida Home helped to bolster the industry by bringing in new entrepreneurs. But the quiet of the last two years left many of those businesses struggling and prompted others to close.

Mike Caruso, who bought the Crystal Shutters of Tampa Bay franchise last year, was relieved to hear his phone ringing after months of quiet.

"There has been a steady decline in sales since 2004," said Caruso, who had worked at Crystal Shutters before buying it. "The start of 2008 has been lame, to say the least."

But when news that Fay was bound for Florida hit the airwaves, "immediately my phone began ringing," Caruso said. "Instantly there's a jump in business."

Estimates that he had given weeks ago suddenly became orders this week.

"The economy has been working against us, because I'm selling a product you may never need, and in this economy that's very difficult," Caruso said. "But once a storm rolls through, it jumps on everyone's priority list from 10 or 12 to 1, 2 or 3."

Typically it is "out of sight, out of mind," said Mosko, the Sarasota shop owner who was building shutters on Tuesday.

"When people see a storm coming, they realize they need to do something," he said.