Silly season continued in full swing in October as the industry grapples with the usual end-of-year demand from home owners looking to get their new windows and doors installed before Christmas.
Add to the mix two pretty big industry acquisitions, a US Presidential election that became closer than anyone thought, and this website reaching the million page view milestone, it was a pretty busy October in the world of windows and doors.
Silly season continues
At our place, we ended October comfortably above our monthly sales targets, and for the year as a whole we’re also ahead of target. In fact at the time of writing we have already surpassed our sales figures for 2015, and only a small distance away from reaching our 2016 yearly sales target, with plenty of time to spare.
From what I could judge during October, many other installers were experiencing the same positive trading conditions. Anecdotally, leads have remained healthy, as have sales. This is of course silly season. The time of year where people are rushing to get their window and door purchases in and have them installed before Christmas. So you would expect this time of year to be busy anyway. But against the backdrop of Brexit and wider global economic uncertainty, the fact that our industry is as busy as it is is great news.
There is one exception. I have been told that the very biggest installers and syscos have seen a small drop in sales compared to 2015. As you can expect Brexit is being blamed. Although I’m fairly confident other external factors will have also had an impact, and not just the EU Referendum. It is much more difficult for bigger becomes to be agile and adapt to changing market conditions. This is where SME’s in our industry have the upper hand. They can adapt and change to the evolving market much more quickly and efficiently, so they can keep their targets in sight and ensure growth continues.
November should see a continuation of the brisk trading conditions before tailing off at the end of the month as the general public get into Christmas mode.
A good month for acquisitions
At the end of September I wrote how I thought that the acquisition season might be over for the industry for this year. And right on queue we had two pretty big deals in October, within a few days of each other!
On October 17th we had the news that Polyframe had acquired the WB Group. A big fabricator deal that sees Polyframe begin to exercise their financial muscle after their management buy-out earlier on in the year.
Then just three days later, on October 20th we had the news that ASSA Abloy had acquired Trojan Hardware, in a deal that demonstrated the strong interest from overseas companies in British businesses, despite what is going on in the political world.
I’m reluctant to say that these might be the last deals for this year. I said that once before then we had these two!
DGB in October
October was a great month for this website. September, October and November generally see site traffic increases as the summer holidays end and focus returns to business before the Christmas period. Here’s how DGB performed last month:
It’s great to see page views back above the 17k per month level. Crucially, it’s a higher number than last month, and the previous October in 2015. What was even more impressive was the big jump in visitor and unique visitor numbers.
As you may have already read, DGB has now surpassed one million total page views. Something I am personally quite proud of, and will use this milestone to build towards the next million page views much quicker. So expect to see DGB grow over the coming months to attract new traffic from sectors previously untapped, and improvements in content to make sure readers keep coming back!
I’ll be working hard in November to keep the energy up and ensure that figures for November beat those of last November.
A look ahead
November will be the last month in which the industry really digs deep to keep business activity up and ensures that the order books are filled for the New Year. The end of November will see the usual drop as home owners think less about home improvements and more about Christmas and the holiday period.
This will also be the time of year where I start planning my end of year content, looking back at the year, including reviews, predictions for 2017, analysis of companies that have done well, and those to look out for in the coming 12 months.
Here’s to a busy and profitable November!
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As you review October DGB , I recall the Zenith debacle breaking out and the GGF writing a lovely piece in your comments about Zenith not being GGF members while taking the opportunity to explain how wonderful GGF codes of conduct are. I did ask them the question of the provenance of the climate data and asked if the climate data in used in the WER Scheme had any factual traceability or whether the WER scheme was fraudulent , I don’t recall them answering that. I am sure they have seen the question, the President elect , Alan Burgess often… Read more »