Internal Doors: Preparing for a bitterly cold winter Season
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 of 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 as a prime example.
Composite doors are recognised as being superior to straightforward 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 point out that when faced using a choice of a new family saloon or a new Rolls Royce for towards same price, the choice, for many, is alluring!
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 real estate improvement company in Devon that has for several years been retailing UPVC doors and windows. They were interested in selling composite doors as the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal reason for this was the fact that the professionals in the home improvement 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 price 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. Getting in 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 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 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 distinction between the door manufacturers here as each and every 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 note 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 money they were going to do to help us to sell their products. 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 long running investment for share of the market 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 would have see which door manufacturers would assist us to stock a showroom with sample products, provide reason for sales materials and help us to get the word out locally about the superiority of composite doors over UPVC doors. Our reasoning was that might cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when we were going to be ordering from the same suppliers for years, so why especially if they not share within start-up cost?
There were some companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ within the cost of product samples or bring down proving samples freed from charge. Two companies totally outshined others and my Devon-based door supplier has signed up with both of them:
Door-Stop International, tipped by many people to end up being the market leader in one’s destiny had obviously done their homework and erect cutting-edge technology such the own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations too as marketing and advertising tool. This blog has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to pick the style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and many of the shows the finished design and price instantly, even including the web ordering gym.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279
