Where did the first half of 2018 go? Wasn’t it only Easter and snowing last week?

We’re at the end of another month and indeed at the end of the first half of this year. I shall be doing a half year review in another post later on this week. But before we get to that I want to take a look back at June. Another hot month and plenty more industry news to talk about.

The state of business

June can sometimes be one of those months that can start to see a bit of a dip in business activity. Summer approaches, we’re into the last school term and families start to think about vacations and those six long weeks of keeping the kids entertained. I felt like in June as though the foot was taken off the gas a little bit. I know it felt like that at our place. Sales took a bit of a gear down, but that I think had more to do with a family bereavement than anything else. I know other were reporting healthy sales still, although not as rip-roaring as it was in May.

Two factors had an influence though I think in June. That would be the weather and the World Cup. May was pretty good on the weather front. We had the hottest early May Bank Holiday on record, and the end of the month was pretty good too. This followed on into June. In fact it only seemed to get hotter, sunnier and drier. Good weather for fitting windows and doors yes, but also good weather for spending your money on beer, BBQ and other outdoor activities. The idea of spending hours going around window and door showrooms when it’s 30 degrees outside wouldn’t have been high on the list of priorities for some people.

Add to that the start of the World Cup. Whenever major events take place they always seem to divert energy away from other things, like home improvement, at least while home teams remain in the competition. As it happens, England made it out of the group stage. From what I can see, business activity has indeed taken a little dip. That may continue depending on how England do and if they can go further into the tournament.

A crisis and a new company

Although there wasn’t any earth-shattering breaking news, there were two subjects of key interest during the month of June. The first was the report that up to a million fire doors may not be fit for purpose across the country. This came to light as the investigations into the Grenfell Tower disaster continued. Councils and companies responsible for manufacturing and installing fire doors are quickly trying to ascertain the size of the problem and organise replacement products. Tens of thousands of fire doors have already been identified for replacing. You can catch up on that story by clicking here.

Another story that caught my eye was the introduction of a brand new high-end aluminium sliding door company, called Viiu. Very little is known about the product, although a quick look on Companies House will show you the people behind the company. They’re aiming at the very upper end of this resurgent market. I will be keeping an eye on Viiu as they reveal more details about their company and product. You can catch up with my initial thoughts on this by clicking here.

DGB Business

How DGB did

As ever, I provide a nifty little inforgraphic showing you the performance of this site in the previous month. Happy to say it was another good one:

This has been one of my strongest ever month-on-month growth figures so far. It was even higher than the figures above at one point. Up to the first ten days of the month page view growth compared to June of last year was up over 70%. However certain personal circumstances meant I didn’t focus as closely on content as I normally do, which caused a slight drop off come the end of the month.

That being said, subscriber growth has remained consistent, and I am also making a bigger push to try and fill the remaining ad slots on DGB to try and bring more news from other companies to DGB. I am still well on track to reach my yearly targets early and to sail past the 300k page views in a single year.

Top 5 most read

Here is your list of the top 5 most read posts published in June:

  1. Listers Open Day Marks Stunning Return

  2. The Five Big Issues To Tackle At FIT Show 2019

  3. Customade Group Sells Bifold Shop

  4. There’s A Fire Doors Crisis

  5. There’s A New Aluminium Sliding Door Company, Viiu

A look ahead

July could well be all over the place. Interest in the World Cup could remain high so long as England remain in it. That could cause business levels for the window industry to dip until England leave it, or, god forbid, win it. Which, let me say, if we do win it, expect to see a pretty hefty spending spree by English consumers. There is also the six week holidays which start near the end of the month. This could also cause the usual summer dip in business activity.

The weather looks set to remain hot for the best part of the whole of the month if you believe the very long range forecasts. Could be good for business. Or could lead to a very tanned generation of window and door installers. Either way, keep hydrated and keep applying the sun screen!

I have a sneaky feeling that in the summer heat and the football our industry could enter a bit of a sleepy phase. I think before a long a few of us might be doing a bit of a rain dance to help wake us all up a bit.

I shall be doing a first half review in the next day or two, so keep an eye out for that as well.

To get weekly updates from DGB sent to your inbox, enter your email address in the space below to subscribe:

By subscribing you agree to DGB sending you weekly email updates with all published content on this website, as well as any major updates to the services being run on DGB. Your data is never passed on to third parties or used by external advertising companies. Your data is protected and stored on secure servers run by Fivenines UK Ltd.