Internal Doors: Preparing for the cold winter months Season
Many home improvement companies have been slow generate any change in suppliers as the industry has slowed during the recent recession. Afraid to rock the boat, retailers doors and windows have chosen to weather the storm by trying to cut costs rather than investigate new solutions. The market is evolving though, mainly due to quantum leaps in technology, composite door manufacturing being 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 favored choice of UK consumers, there are plenty of articles on that subject, some even written by yours truly. Suffice declare that when faced by using a choice of a new family saloon or a meaningful Rolls Royce for about the same price, the choice, for many, is outstanding!
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 your house improvement company in Devon that has for quite a few years been retailing UPVC doors and windows. They were interested in selling composite doors like the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal explanation for this was numerous that the pros in the upgrading 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 level of competition were offering. Moving to 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 were get onto Google, find out who the players were in composite door manufacturing and supply and then put them to the analyze.
Obviously price and credit facilities were major factors, as was order to delivery turnaround, returns policy and product quality. There appeared to be little distinction between the door manufacturers here as nearly every one of those approached had many years experience in the home improvements market and recognised the need for credit facilities, keen prices and fast turnaround. Not to mention that with enhancing British Standards into the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely similar.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them the money they were going to achieve to help us to sell their products. The lack of advertising support, knowledge and training was truly shameful, indicative with the slow decline in Britain’s manufacturing base (Short term thinking ,worrying about immediate costs versus long-run 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 increased exposure of 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 ended up being see which door manufacturers would allow us to to stock a showroom with sample products, provide point of sales materials and help us to obtain the word out locally about the superiority of composite doors over UPVC doors. Our reasoning was that it would cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when i was going to be ordering from the same suppliers for years, so why when they not share in the start-up cost?
There were half-dozen companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ on the cost of product samples or just before proving samples involving charge. Two companies totally outshined in conversation with and my Devon-based door supplier has signed up with both of them:
Door-Stop International, tipped by many people to get to be the market leader in the longer term had obviously done their homework and provide cutting-edge technology such with regard to own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations also as advertising tool. This amazing site has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to select the style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and the website shows the finished design and price instantly, even including a respectable ordering unit.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279
