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 of 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 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 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 having a choice of a new family saloon or some sort of Rolls Royce for towards same price, the choice, for many, is irresistible!
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 some time been retailing UPVC windows and doors. They were interested in selling composite doors just as the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal aim of this was appropriate that the big boys in the upgrading 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 a composite 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 too high. So the first thing we did were get onto Google, find out who the players were in composite door manufacturing and supply and then position 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 all of those approached had many years knowledge in 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 into the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely very.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them everything they were going to achieve to help us to sell many. The lack of selling support, knowledge and training was truly shameful, indicative in the slow decline in Britain’s manufacturing base (Short term thinking ,worrying about immediate costs versus lengthy investment for market share 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 concentrate on 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 be to see which door manufacturers would assist us 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 we had been going to be ordering from tennis shoes suppliers for years, so why when they not share as start-up cost?
There were six companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ within the cost of product samples or just proving samples free of 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 end up being the market leader in the long term had obviously done their homework and provide cutting-edge technology such as an 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 website shows the finished design and price instantly, even including the web ordering unit.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279