Many home improvement companies have been slow supplementations any change in suppliers as the industry has slowed during the recent recession. Afraid to rock the boat, retailers of doors and windows have chosen to weather the storm by trying to expenses rather than investigate new solutions. The market is beginning to change though, mainly due to quantum leaps in technology, composite door manufacturing to be a prime example.
Composite doors are recognised as being superior to plain 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 to say that when faced using a choice of a new family saloon or a new Rolls Royce for about the same price, the choice, for many, is imperative!
Anyway, I’m well known locally for my marketing experience, in particular assisting new business start-ups we was delighted to answer the call for a home improvement company in Devon that has for some time been retailing UPVC windows and doors. They were interested in selling composite doors being the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal explanation for this was appropriate that the large players in the renovating industry, the market leaders in fact, had began selling composite doors recently and had positioned these products in the top of their price range, reflecting the superiority of composite over UPVC doors.
The first problem was the cost of switching the main focus of door retailing to an amalgamated doors range and away from UPVC, which is what all of the competition were offering. Entering into the fast growing composite doors market seemed a good move but the cost of outfitting a showroom was prohibitive. So the first thing we did was to get onto Google, find out who the players were in composite door manufacturing and supply and then placed both of them to the test.
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 within the home improvements market and recognised the need for credit facilities, keen prices and fast turnaround. Not to bring up that with the development of British Standards into the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely common.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them the money they were going total to help us to sell many. The lack of marketing support, knowledge and training was truly shameful, indicative of the slow decline in Britain’s manufacturing base (Short term thinking ,worrying about immediate costs versus long-run investment for share of the market has often been the bane of British Industry).
This ‘test’ though allowed certain door manufacturers to shimmer. The ones that we chose as suppliers were easily recognisable as companies that placed heavy increased 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 have see which door manufacturers would allow us to stock a showroom with sample products, provide reason for sales materials and help us to get the word out locally about the superiority of composite doors over UPVC doors. Our reasoning was that might cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when we had been going to be ordering from gonna do it . suppliers for years, so why when they not share in the start-up cost?
There were half a dozen companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ over the cost of product samples or just before proving samples free of 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 become the market leader in one’s destiny had obviously done their homework and provide cutting-edge technology such the own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations as well as promoting tool. This amazing site 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 net ordering center.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279