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 favored 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 about the 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 we was delighted to answer the call for a home improvement company in Devon that has for decades 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 aim of this was extremely that the professionals in the home improvement 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 an amalgamated doors range and away from UPVC, which is what all of declared were offering. Moving to the fast growing composite doors market seemed a good move but kitchens . of outfitting a showroom was too high. 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 quality.
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 all of 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 development of British Standards into the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely similar.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them the money they were going test and do to help us to sell goods. The lack of advertising 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 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 ended up being see which door manufacturers would allow us to to stock a showroom with sample products, provide reason for sales materials and help us to obtain 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 i was going to be ordering from tennis shoes suppliers for years, so why when they not share as start-up cost?
There were half-dozen companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ over the cost of product samples or just proving samples free of charge. Two companies totally outshined the rest and my Devon-based door supplier has signed up with both of them:
Door-Stop International, tipped by many to become the market leader in the long term had obviously done their homework as well as supply cutting-edge technology such being an own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations also as promoting tool. This amazing site has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to select the style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and the website shows the finished design and price instantly, even including an online ordering place.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279