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 side and windows have chosen to weather the storm by trying to expenses rather than investigate new solutions. The market is changing 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 declare that when faced with a choice of a new family saloon or a meaningful Rolls Royce for upon 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 when compared to was delighted to answer the call for a home improvement company in Devon that has for several years 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 extremely that the professionals in the homeimprovements 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 a composite doors range and away from UPVC, which is what all of rivalry was announced were offering. Entering into the fast growing composite doors market seemed a good move but you won’t 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 position them to the quality.
Obviously price and credit facilities were major factors, as was order to delivery turnaround, returns policy and product quality. There seemed to 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 improvement British Standards in the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely similar.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them what they were going you want to do to help us to sell goods. 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 overall investment for share of the market has often been the bane of British Industry).
This ‘test’ though allowed certain door manufacturers to light. 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 get the word out locally about the superiority of composite doors over UPVC doors. Our reasoning was that always be cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when had been going to be ordering from tennis shoes suppliers for years, so why if and when they not share on the inside start-up cost?
There were half-dozen companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ while on the cost of product samples or through proving samples associated with charge. Two companies totally outshined you need to engage 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 also cutting-edge technology such being an own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations also as promoting tool. Neutral has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to pick the style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and the website shows the finished design and price instantly, even including world wide web ordering unit.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279