Review: January 2015

Is it me, or has this January seemed to fly by? Usually a month that drags due to post-Christmas blues and a lack of funds to spend, for a change it really zipped on. That’s not to say the reason was due to booming sales across the board keeping us busy at our desks and in people’s homes. As we found out via a poll in one of my posts, the state of the industry looks a bit ragged right now.

Very up and down

For us, the beginning of the month started in energetic fashion. The leads we made over the Christmas period meant we have a good week to start the New Year off. Not only were leads healthy, but the sales in the first part of the month were healthy too. Signs at that point were that targets were going to be met, at least by the end of the month. But it didn’t go to plan like that, as during the middle of the month business really tailed off. We didn’t see it coming, and it’s put us off our stride a little bit.

Confident that it was just a blip, we got our heads down and right at the end of the month signs that the industry was firing up again were showing. Leads have shot up massively at our place and sales have started to flow back in again.

Judging by some of the feedback via my poll and some of the things suppliers have said to me, parts of the industry seemed quieter this past month than they thought they would be. Providing the weather doesn’t muck things up, I do honestly believe we could all be in for a bumper month.

New products

On the product front we had a few companies release either brand new products, or added to their own ranges.

Ultraframe entered the lantern roof market properly with their UltraSky roof. A nifty looking lantern roof that is available in both PVC and aluminium, the industry’s biggest player in the roof market should spark a lively battle for market share.

Composite door makers Solidor released a brand new colour to their range, called the Painswick, which looks like a very pale mix of light grey and very light green. It looks quite nice actually!

Door-Stop announced not one but four new hardware ranges to their composite doors in January. I think there is going to be a big push on the contemporary hardware front this year.

DGB

On the DGB front, I also announced a brand new online magazine feature called Design. This is going to be a place for installers to show off some of their most spectacular work. Inspired by the rise of home and architecture websites, I saw that there was not yet a site that I could see which did the same sort of thine for our own industry. All being well this is going to be launched some time on Monday 2nd February.