Internal Doors: Preparing for the winter months Season
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 doors and windows have chosen to weather the storm by trying to expenses rather than investigate new solutions. The market is evolving though, mainly due to quantum leaps in technology, composite door manufacturing to be a prime example.
Composite doors are recognised as being superior to standard 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 by using a choice of a new family saloon or an innovative new Rolls Royce for inside 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 and i was delighted to answer the call for a home improvement company in Devon that has for years and years been retailing UPVC windows and doors. They were interested in selling composite doors as the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal reason for this was extremely that the big boys in the renovating 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 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. Moving into the fast growing composite doors market seemed a good move but fee of this program of outfitting a showroom was prohibitive. So the first thing we did would be to get onto Google, find out who the players were in composite door manufacturing and supply and then put both of them to the analyze.
Obviously price and credit facilities were major factors, as was order to delivery turnaround, returns policy and product quality. There perceived to be little distinction between the door manufacturers here as virtually all those approached had many years expertise in the home improvements market and recognised the need for credit facilities, keen prices and fast turnaround. Not to cover that with the introduction of British Standards in the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely common.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them everything they were going total to help us to sell goods. 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 overall investment for business has often been the bane of British Industry).
This ‘test’ though allowed certain door manufacturers to come. The ones that we chose as suppliers were easily recognisable as companies that placed heavy focus 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 was to see which door manufacturers would allow us 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 always be cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when we were going to be ordering from gonna do it . suppliers for years, so why if and 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 bring down 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 a lot of to become the market leader in the long term had obviously done their homework and erect cutting-edge technology such being an own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations also as a marketing tool. This blog has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to discover style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and the web site shows the finished design and price instantly, even including net ordering place.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279
