Internal Doors: Preparing for winter months Season
Many home improvement companies have been slow to make 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 as being 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 upon 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 house improvement company in Devon that has for decades been retailing UPVC doors and windows. They were interested in selling composite doors like the demand for them amongst local residents was growing quickly.
The principal reason for this was numerous that the large players in the homeimprovements 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 level of competition were offering. Getting into the fast growing composite doors market seemed a good move but kitchens . 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 put them to the push.
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 each one 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 creation of British Standards in the composite manufacturing industry, the manufacturing processes were extremely quite.
Where some companies fell down though was when we asked them the actual were going test and do to help us to sell goods. The lack of selling 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 term 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 increased exposure of 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 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 had been going to be ordering from the same suppliers for years, so why should they not share on the inside start-up cost?
There were half a dozen companies that were willing to help, either by proving a ‘credit’ over the cost of product samples or just proving samples associated with charge. Two companies totally outshined others and my Devon-based door supplier has signed up with both of them:
Door-Stop International, tipped by a lot of to become the market leader in the forthcoming had obviously done their homework as well as supply cutting-edge technology such as an own-brand website which retailers can use for in-home demonstrations also as a marketing tool. This amazing site has a design feature that allows potential purchasers to pick 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 place.
Nick’s Building Supply
11100 Broadway, Crown Point, IN 46307, USA
(219) 663-2279
