Over-Diversification

Two to three years ago, as the recession was taking hold and the industry was battening down the hatches, we were told that diversification of the products we sell was one of the ways we could make sure our revenue streams remain flowing.

The idea was good in principle, but is diversification leading us to take our eye off the ball? What I mean by this is that our staple products of windows, doors and conservatories may have been slightly overshadowed by the effort to establish new products into the portfolio. 

New products often take time to establish, within the company. It takes time for the public to recognise, which often means to draw them in, low profit margins have to be applied if the product is a small one. Large products can demand a larger margin, but in a recession where people are tightening their belts, big ticket purchases are few and far between.

I'm not against diversifying the range of products we sell. But I do think that if we add new products to the range, they need to be in conjunction with the staple set of products and services sold. Some could be in danger of putting too much effort into new products and leaving windows and doors behind, which to me is dangerous. 


Personally, I'll stick with my windows, doors and conservatories - it makes up the bulk of our work and it's working for us right now.


Feedback welcome!


PS: I will make more a conscious effort on here and Twitter in the future!

Potential Slowdown In Product Development

With the economy grinding to a halt, and with personal spending on a steep slope down, the spare cash available to businesses is becoming ever more stretched. Yet at the same time, our industry is told we need to diversify the products on offer, improve and innovate. But how businesses do this when their cash reserves are dwindling?

Introducing new products to market is a long and expensive process. They can't be rushed otherwise it will cost yet more money to put the potential mistakes right. New and improved products are what have kept this market moving during these turbulent economic times. But with spare cash, that would have been earmarked for R&D, becoming a rare commodity, could we face an era where new product arrivals are rare and celebrated events?

The other factor we have to look at are companies' willingness to spend their spare cash. If they think that the economy is heading for the rocks again, they're going to need that sterling to keep the business solvent and their employees in jobs. Weigh that up against new products, and you're only going to find one outcome. Though I know there is the argument that a revolutionary new product may bring in more money than the cost to develop it and bring it to market.

Let's face it, confidence to spend is pretty much non-existent right now. That goes for me, you, our customers, manufacturers and profile companies (apart from Veka obviously!). I think we're are going to see falling levels of investment, if we aren't already. On the plus side, the last three years has seen wave upon wave of new products and innovations come to bare, so it's not as if we don't have anything to go on!

I Changed Back!

Well, that change was short lived!

I've had to revert back to the original layout on my site. The new layouts did look fresh and modern, but came with too many limitations. I couldn't have any of the gadgets I have on this current layout. In fact I couldn't have any gadgets at all! Editing the colour scheme, layout of the page, sizing and other features weren't available either. At least with this layout I can alter almost anything I want.

Blogger tells me that as these are new layouts, they are listening to feedback and are looking to integrate more and more features as time goes by, but they're not going to rush it. So I'm going to wait for some more updates, and when they arrive, I shall make the changes!

Explanation Of Changes

Right, time to explain what is going on with my site.

As always, I like to give the look of my site a tweak now and then, this is rather a large one. In fact it's probably the biggest one I've done. I had the rainy mountain background and layout for a while, so I though it was time for a change. Blogger has brought out the 'dynamic view' layouts which give the site a far more modern and interactive look.

But at first you will notice some items that aren't there that were on the previous look. My 'subscribers' and 'monthly page views' gadgets aren't there, neither is my 'tag cloud' gadget, 'previous comments' gadget and 'top read' gadget. Blogger's reason for this is that because these templates are new, they are gauging response and feedback, and changes will be made over the coming weeks and months to make sure it's all integrated properly. 

We're these gadgets necessary to the site? Did you find them useful? I'd like to know so I know whether or not to revert back to the old site while Blogger works on getting the gadgets back up and running for the new layouts.

I'm still toying around with the colour scheme slightly, so please bear with me on this one until I get it right.

Feedback welcome!

How Long Left For The Industry Mags?

Anyone else noticed that the majority of industry magazines are getting thinner by the month?


Some of them are barely braking 30 pages, half of which are filled with massive adverts and repeats of stories I read months ago! I don't want to read about a company's 20th anniversary for four months running thank you very much! Nor do I want to read about the development of new screws or the delivery of a slightly different yet completely new cutting machine to a tiny little manufacturer I've never even heard of!


When I first joined the industry the magazines were filled with issues people could engage in. It would carry stories of rumour, articles that would piss people off a little and get debate going. Where has all this gone?


Luckily I write for a magazine who is trying to get back to those ways. They're trying to keep their articles fresh, no major repeats and no boring adver-articles. Obviously I'm going to be slightly biased and in Clearview's favour. But if I thought they were a backwards magazine on the way down like many of the others, I wouldn't write for them.


They've managed to scale their magazine way up over the last few issues, almost making the 100 page mark, which is about as big as an industry magazine needs to be. But they've now also launched their new website, which includes a fresh forum. The layout is clean, modern, easy to understand. Again, I know it might sound slightly biased, but I honestly am speaking truthfully.


Now to get to the point of this post. With many magazines slowly dying, and the advent of tablets and e-readers, how long will the printed word have in our industry? Clearview already have PDF versions of all their issues, as do a couple of others. Everything is becoming mobile as we all become busier during the day, so will the 25+ generation ever sit down to read the magazines, or would they prefer to read what's going on in our little word on a screen?


My personal opinion for now is that we still need print. There are still many older, techno-phobic people in our industry who will always prefer a magazine to a touch screen. But there will come a day where these people make way for people my age, who are far more used to screens than paper. It's at that point we may see the slow demise of the magazine. You never know, I might be wrong!

Forever Learning

Having just been on a cruise in the Caribbean, with the majority of passengers being either American or Canadian, you get to learn a little bit of their way of life, their personalities, and how they interact with others. And I can tell you now, even though we're a far older country than they both are, we have a lot to learn from them!


Speaking to them on the ship, they come across as far more open and positive with people. Never afraid to start a conversation with people in the lifts (elevators!), always joking and seeing the best of a bad situation. For example; we got held up in a tropical storm outside the port terminal for two hours due to a suspected hand grenade found in someones luggage (it later turned out to be a belt buckle which was the same size and appearance of a grenade!). Yet while we were stuck out there in the horrible weather, they were all joking, making conversation with us, not letting the situation ruin the start of the holiday. I know that if something like that happened here, the response would be far less friendly, far more agitated and far less reasonable.


When I look at our country, our demeanor and the way we go about our business, it makes us look so uptight, miserable, depressing and pessimistic. I think our country could benefit by being a bit more open, embracing and generally more cheerful, even in the face of all the negative news we're having to face up.


We need to learn from these other countries and how they embrace life. A personality change for the country might even be able to turn things around in a positive way. Spending time with these people and those places has just reinforced my idea that I want to leave this country to move to America.