DIY Conservatories

I've been following a great new blog at www.conservatoryblogger.wordpress.com, and he raises the subject of DIY conservatories.

Looking at the cost angle there is an advantage there. But for me there are many things that can go wrong when installing a conservatory yourself.
Firstly the product, in order for Joe Bloggs to install a conservatory themselves, surely can't be made of much. I suspect there would be very little in terms of reinforcement, affecting badly the overall quality of the product. Secondly planning permission. With planning very often a grey area, two calls to the same planning department to inquire if the proposed conservatory would need planning permission can often lead to two different answers. Joe Bloggs will not want to install something illegally I'm sure! The next problem I envisage would be the fitting of the conservatory and the scenario if something went wrong with the product. Now the problem this industry has is that there are plenty of people out there who think they can fit windows, doors and conservatories well, and can't. With a conservatory being such a large item to install, the person that would be installing would need to have some good background knowledge on how to fit them. I'm assuming also that no guarantee would be supplied with a DIY conservatory, so if something was wrong with the conservatory, the downside would be that it would cost the customer to buy the relevant part/parts to replace those that may be faulty.

These are just a few of my main views on the disadvantages of DIY conservatories. From my point of view, it would only benefit the customer, long and short term, to spend a bit more money to make sure that professional fitters install their conservatory. With that, they would get a guarantee, a much better quality of product (depending where you chose to buy from of course!) and providing that the company is a reputable one, there will be no discrepancies when it comes to planning permission.

Triple Glazed Units

We all know how fast the energy efficiency of double glazed units is improving. But does anyone know the energy rating for a window that is triple glazed?

This has only crossed my mind again recently as a customer of ours is requesting a triple glazed, diamond leaded window option, with the lead encapsulated, and wants to know what the maximum energy rating would be on a window with this glass spec.

Any ideas?

My Three Most Hated Words

Here's a list of the three words that make me cringe the most whenever I hear or see them:

1. Discount.
Whenever customer's ask us if we have any discounts on offer, my heart sinks! After we explain that discounts only exist after a company has added money on in the first place, just to take it back off again, they see the light as it were. Most consumers out there now realise that a company isn't just going to take off money willy nilly, they know it's already added on and taken off.

2. Deals.
I HATE this word. To me it screams 'cheap and tacky'. It always reminds me of the type of customer who tends to be a bit of a DIY, hands on kind of person, looking for the cheapest of the cheap, and generally comes out the with the line : 'have you got any deals on at the moment?'
God I hate that word!

3. Sales.
A mix of the two reasons above really. I think the word 'sale' has been plugged as much as it can be plugged, I think the general attitude of consumers towards a sale is: 'oh look, the sales on again'. Customers have wised up a lot and realised that in most cases companies add a margin on, take it back off again and disguise and advertise it as a 'sale' or 'discount'.

I think you could put my frustration of these words and tactics down to the fact that, rather than use these techniques to hood-wink those who aren't as alert to these methods, as a company we just price the job in hand as keen as possible in the first place. We make this absolutely clear to our customers and I think they appreciate this. We get a lot of positive feedback from our customers commenting on the honest and straight forward approach to our pricing methods. What we also see a lot of now is customers asking for the bottom line price straight away, no flanneling or pretend discounts, which suits us to the ground!

Blogs

Here's a thought...

Could the double glazing industry really take hold of the advantages of the Internet?
Now most companies, be it installers or suppliers, either have a website or are developing better ones. But what I'm specifically talking about is communication between ALL companies, both manufacturers and installers. When I say communication, I don't mean simple phone calls or the odd e-mail. We have a great tool with which we can spark great debate and discussion, blogs. Blogs are the new conversation rooms where endless numbers of people and businesses can join in conversations, air their views and ask questions. If we could get more and more companies up and down the country to get online and start talking to each other, start voicing their opinions with others in our industry, I think real progress can be made in the development of products, services and standards within our industry overall.

For our industry to unite, we all need to communicate properly, stop the accusations between companies and start to develop a collective voice. We could become much stronger as an industry and start to have more of a say as to where our industry goes in the future.

No Background Music

Well, of the one whole comment I got on the business of background music, the feedback wasn't too clever, so that's being shelved.

On the business of business, business has been quite good recently!
I think we're definitely on the road to recovery, there has been more of a buzz these last few weeks. Customer's may be taking heart from consistently better economic news these last three or four weeks.

As the dust begins to settle as we make our way out of the recession, we'll be able to see who has come through the worst the best, and who has been left just keeping themselves afloat. Either way, our industry looks and works so differently now, for the better in my opinion.

Plastic Tactics

After all the positive press about timber windows, and how bad PVC windows are, it seems like I've been converted, I mean, look at the sheer beauty of this timber door...

English Heritage your absolutely right, PVC is a blight and a plague we need rid of!

Music

I think I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask any way.

I'm toying with the idea of putting music on my blog, just to be a bit different, no other reason!
If you've read my profile you'll know that I love metal music, so naturally that would be the genre of choice, I know it's not the choice of music most people like to listen to, so opinions please. To have tunes, or to not have tunes, that is the question.

If I do add some 'background' music, I'll keep the shouty stuff off!

Price Hikes!

A short one this one.

Come on PVC industry, we all know these glass price hikes are unfair, lets get our voices heard properly and start to do something about it, lets not all talk about how unfair it is all the time. There's some very influential people out there in our industry who I'm sure could start the ball rolling on some action, I'm sure a threat to buy our glass elsewhere might gain some attention.

Authorised Retailer Scheme from the BFRC

As of the 1st September, installers will now be able to install their energy rated windows under their own labels, and not their supplier's. From the selling angle, this is great for installers, as I'm sure many would rather advertise energy rated windows under their own label, and not their supplier's.

For a change there doesn't seem to be much hassle and hard work to gain this status. After early study, to become an Authorised Retailer the installer must purchase the complete product from a licence holding manufacturer (which is what almost all will be doing now), fill in application forms which would be supplied by the BFRC, agree to the T's and C's and pay the relevant BFRC fees. So there shouldn't be much leg work.

Installers will now be able to push their own energy rated window labels to their advantage.

One thing that's lacking is any substantial information on the scheme on the BFRC website, but it may just be that it's waiting to be updated. Personally I've always found the website a bit wishy-washy.

Colours

For well over a year now, a huge new range of colours and wood grained effects have been available, yet the interest shown by the public has been quite low. The original wood grains of Rosewood and Light Oak remain a popular option, with white uPVC still being the main choice of colour.

Cream wood grain in particular is a colour option which seems to come in for most of the criticism. Whenever presented to the customer, the immediate reaction is: 'that looks discolured!'

We also never come across customers actually asking for something different other than the main three colour options. This could be down to a couple of reasons. Firstly, the majority of customers may actually not like any of the new options. But secondly, and more likely, the general public may just need more time to get used to the new varieties. Just as Light Oak would have taken time to take it's place next to white and Rosewood.

Quality of Leads

There's no doubting it, it's been a topsy turvy year this year. But is it me, or have the quality of leads this year been distinctly poor? Now up to the end of June my conversion rates have been bang on the 50% mark, but July was so different, much less than compared to the rest of the year.

There seems to periods of time, weeks, sometimes a whole month, where we come across complete tyre-kickers and those who are looking for the cheapest of the cheap. As a company we focus on high quality, energy efficiency and high-spec security, so naturally we are going to be more expensive than those just giving it away. So you could argue we were never going to win those anyway.

The obvious reason for this is because of the dire situation the economy has been in, hopefully the better recent economic figures might inject a bit more confidence into people.

Let me know if any one else has found the situation to be the same with them, or if it's just me having periodic bouts of bad luck!

New Confidence?

Two of the biggest banks in the UK posted figures on Monday showing a profit of nearly £3 Billion pounds each. Quite easily the best financial news we've had in what seems an age. But will it filter into the psyche of the general population?

My own confidence in the economy is slowly starting to return. Manufacturing levels are up, consumer confidence has had steady stabilisation and growth, the pound is doing much better against the dollar and the housing market is showing healthy signs of stabilisation also.

With a bit of luck, it won't take too much time for people to take notice of these signs of recovery and start to feel more secure about spending their money.

My one big gripe about all this economic turmoil was that we were put in such a volatile situation, yes due to tremendous greed by the banks, but also due to massive media hype. It's well known there were major problems with the banks, but with the media always hungry for headlines, they were quick to tell us how bad a situation we were all in, therefore worrying much of the population into holding onto their money. My view on all this is that if the media kept their mouths shut and didn't put so much focus, graphics and dramatic music on the situation, public confidence may not have been as low as it has been.

Iv'e Got A High Profile Reader

Hi RCG

Nice to see you having a look at my blog.

The last post was never meant to insinuate that being number one on google searches was a waste of time. In fact my personal opinion is that the Internet should be considered as important as any other marketing tool, if not one of the most vital, as well as the showroom.

As regards to newspaper advertisements, which ever company you may be, in any industry, to be in the local press is vital for those not so enthusiastic towards the Internet, or for those who don't have access to a computer.

Investment in the blog is not a main priority right now unfortunately, this is my own personal little venture and just a place to vent view's or frustrations. It would be nice to have a few more readers and fire up a few healthy debates about the industry though, we both know that there are plenty of areas for our industry to be focusing on, especially 5 % VAT rates on energy rated products etc.

It may be mundane but it's whats paying our bills!

Website and Other Points of Interest

The new website is coming along nicely. Though more pages which I think could be relevant keep getting added, making the task bigger by the day!

We've had a sudden, and I mean sudden, surge of business. A constant steady flow of customers into the showroom, the quality of the appointments has picked up dramatically in the last week and appointments numbers on a whole has gone up. We've also had more activity generated through the Internet. We put in a lot of effort in improving our Internet presence months ago, since then there has been a steady increase in the number of appointments made via the Internet, most of them coming from google.

I think one thing to remember is that while the Internet is becoming a great new tool in which to create business, companies can't rely on the web for all their business (as i know one of the larger double glazing companies in West Yorkshire are) and put all their eggs in that basket. As a company we are always wanting to expand our presence on the web, but our focus will also be on bringing customers into the showroom, which, in our opinion, is the key to obtaining orders from clients.

On a completely different subject, last Thursday we were able to negotiate a deal with our manufacturers to be able to sell our energy 'A' rated windows at the same cost of 'E' rated. Meaning we can now advertise energy 'A' rated windows as standard. A useful tool, especially as most other companies will still be having to show an extra charge for 'A' rated windows.