Many home improvement companies have been slow come up with any change in suppliers as the industry has slowed during the recent recession. Afraid to rock the boat, retailers side and windows have chosen to weather the storm by trying to cut costs rather than investigate new solutions. The market is beginning to change though, mainly due to quantum leaps in technology, composite door manufacturing as being a prime example.
Composite doors are recognised as being superior to straightforward UPVC doors and improvements in the manufacturing process have meant that composite doors are now priced around the same as UPVC doors. I won’t go into much detail as to why composite doors are becoming the preferred choice of UK consumers, there are plenty of articles on that subject, some even written by yours truly. Suffice declare that when faced using a choice of a new family saloon or some sort of Rolls Royce for towards same price, the choice, for many, is beckoning!
Anyway, I’m well known locally for my marketing experience, in particular assisting new business start-ups . i was delighted to answer the call for an apartment improvement company in Devon that has for decades been retailing UPVC windows and doors. They were interested in selling composite doors just as the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal explanation for this was males that the pros in the home improvement industry, the market leaders in fact, had began selling composite doors recently and had positioned these products at the top of their price range, reflecting the superiority of composite over UPVC doors.
The first problem was the associated with switching the main focus of door retailing to a composite doors range and away from UPVC, which is what all of the competition were offering. Moving to the fast growing composite doors market seemed a good move but the cost of outfitting a showroom was high. So the first thing we did would have been to get onto Google, find out who the players were in composite door manufacturing and supply and then back up for sale to the analyze.
Obviously price and credit facilities were major factors, as was order to delivery turnaround, returns policy and product quality. There did actually be little difference between the door manufacturers here as nearly every one of those approached had many years experience with the home improvements market and recognised the need for credit facilities, keen prices and fast turnaround. Not to cover that with enhancing British Standards in the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely quite.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them everything they were going to achieve to help us to sell their products. The lack of selling support, knowledge and training was truly shameful, indicative among the slow decline in Britain’s manufacturing base (Short term thinking ,worrying about immediate costs versus long term investment for market share has often been the bane of British Industry).
This ‘test’ though allowed certain door manufacturers to luster. The ones that we chose as suppliers were easily recognisable as companies that placed heavy concentrate on customer service and, more importantly recognised that their customer was in fact the retailer, not the end purchaser of a new door.
The simple test we put would be to see which door manufacturers would allow us to to stock a showroom with sample products, provide reason for sales materials and help us to obtain the word out locally about the superiority of composite doors over UPVC doors. Our reasoning was that end up being cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when we were going to be ordering from food with caffeine . suppliers for years, so why if and when they not share as start-up cost?
There were six companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ within the cost of product samples or through proving samples freed from charge. Two companies totally outshined the rest and my Devon-based door supplier has signed up with both of them:
Door-Stop International, tipped by many people to end up being the market leader in the longer term had obviously done their homework and also cutting-edge technology such as an own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations as well as advertising and marketing tool. This blog has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to discover style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and the website shows the finished design and price instantly, even including the web ordering facility.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279
https://goo.gl/maps/aKU8vYqor4K2
Posted on:
December 24, 2018