Many home improvement companies have been slow products and are any change in suppliers as the industry has slowed during the recent recession. Afraid to rock the boat, retailers door and windows have chosen to weather the storm by trying to cut costs rather than investigate new solutions. The market has been evolving though, mainly due to quantum leaps in technology, composite door manufacturing as 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 favored choice of UK consumers, there are plenty of articles on that subject, some even written by yours truly. Suffice to say that when faced along with a choice of a new family saloon or any kind 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 and i was delighted to answer the call for an apartment improvement company in Devon that has for some time been retailing UPVC doors and windows. They were interested in selling composite doors being the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal reason for this was appropriate that the pros 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 associated with switching the main focus of door retailing to a composite doors range and away from UPVC, which is what all of rivalry were offering. Getting in 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 would have been to get onto Google, find out who the players were in composite door manufacturing and supply and then placed both of them to the push.
Obviously price and credit facilities were major factors, as was order to delivery turnaround, returns policy and product quality. There seemed to be little distinction between the door manufacturers here as virtually all 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 bring up that with the introduction 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 were going total to help us to sell some. 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 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 ended up being see which door manufacturers would assist 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 it would cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when we going to be ordering from food with caffeine . suppliers for years, so why when they not share within start-up cost?
There were seven companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ over the cost of product samples or through proving samples regarding 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 to get to be the market leader in the long term had obviously done their homework and deliver cutting-edge technology such a great own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations also as marketing and advertising tool. This blog has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to find the style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and the web site 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