Internal Doors: Preparing for the winter 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 of doors and windows have chosen to weather the storm by trying to expenses rather than investigate new solutions. The market has been evolving though, mainly due to quantum leaps in technology, composite door manufacturing as being 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 point out that when faced with a choice of a new family saloon or an innovative new Rolls Royce for about the 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 when compared to was delighted to answer the call for a real estate improvement company in Devon that has for decades been retailing UPVC windows and doors. They were interested in selling composite doors given that the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal aim of this was the fact that the large players 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 price 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. Getting in the fast growing composite doors market seemed a good move but fee of this program of outfitting a showroom was 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 position them to the analyze.
Obviously price and credit facilities were major factors, as was order to delivery turnaround, returns policy and product quality. There appeared to be little distinction between the door manufacturers here as virtually all those approached had many years experience within the home improvements market and recognised the need for credit facilities, keen prices and fast turnaround. Not to cover that with the creation of British Standards into the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely very.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them what they were going to achieve to help us to sell goods. The lack of advertising support, knowledge and training was truly shameful, indicative with the slow decline in Britain’s manufacturing base (Short term thinking ,worrying about immediate costs versus long-run investment for market share has often been the bane of British Industry).
This ‘test’ though allowed certain door manufacturers to shimmer. The ones that we chose as suppliers were easily recognisable as companies that placed heavy increased 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 were see which door manufacturers would allow us to 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 it would cost several thousand pounds to outfit a new showroom and get initial customers, when we were going to be ordering from food with caffeine . suppliers for years, so why whenever they not share the actual world start-up cost?
There were half a dozen companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ while on the cost of product samples or just proving samples associated with 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 a lot of to get to be the market leader in the longer 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 marketing and advertising tool. Neutral has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to select the style, colour and furnishings for their ideal door and the internet site shows the finished design and price instantly, even including world wide web ordering place.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279
