Normally I like to make these reviews as detailed as possible. But, I spent much of August out of the country on honeymoon, so you’ll have to forgive me if some of the things in this post are a bit vague!

However, I have been told that while I was away it was a fairly typical August on all fronts. School holidays firmly in play, good weather keeping people in the beer gardens, home owners sitting on quotes until September. I’ll flesh this out best I can!

Typical August

I view things through the prism of our family run installations business. Every year we expect August to be a sleepy one as most buyers are away on holiday with their kids and family. The idea of having new windows and doors installed is low on the list. It seemed that this was very much the case this year too.

I was able to keep an eye on the diary for leads, and that seemed pretty healthy, but when it came to sales, there was a definite slow down like we experience every year. People getting quotes in, then sitting on them until they have more time to study the work involved and then progress things forwards.

As we ended the month and the new school terms began however, it was as though a tap was turned back on. Everyone who had sat on quotations but did intend to have the work done were all going ahead. I’ll focus on this in the September review because the effect was dramatic to say the least.

Big news

Despite being away for most of the month, there were a few big hitting stories that are definitely worth a mention again.

As we started August, Eurocell announced that they had acquired PVCu recycling company Ecoplas. A company we had actually used ourselves in the past. You can catch up on that article by clicking here. Eurocell have been one of the most proactive, if not the most proactive companies in UK fenestration when it comes to green policies and recycling. A topic I’ll mention again shortly.

Perhaps one of the most significant stories in August was the announcement that Tradesmith have suspended the sale of bought-in fire-rated doors. This was following the news that five manufacturers if fire doors had failed to meet fire performance standards. This story of course is all part of the fallout of the disaster at Grenfell tower. To catch up on that news click here.

Finally, one of my own personal bigger talking points comes back to the use of plastic and recycling. This was a post written after my visit to Thailand. A truly stunning country, whose beaches were unfortunately being badly tarnished by the plastic waste from other countries. It only brought further into focus the efforts of our own industry and the use and re-use of PVCu as a building materials. Have a read of that one by clicking here.

DGB People

How DGB did

As always, I give you a little report as to the performance of this website. A bit of a mixed pictures this time round:

As I have already mentioned, content flow was light this month as I was not here. So, to get any sort of growth in the visitors and unique visitors columns I’m happy with. Page views, as I expected, took a small dip compared to the previous August. Still, the first 6 months of this year had been so strong that any sort of pull back in future months wouldn’t really derail progress on achieving and going past my yearly targets. I still look set to reach my goals well in advance, possibly before the end of November.

Top 5 most read

These were the top 5 most read posts published in August:

  1. Eurocell Acquires Ecoplas
  2. Does The Composite Door Sector Have Quality Problems?
  3. Eurocell Publishes It’s Half-Year Results
  4. The World Has A Major Plastics Problem, And Our Industry Won’t Be Immune
  5. Tradesmith Suspends Sales Of Bought-In Fire Rated Composite Doors

Looking to September

Having written this post a little late, I can already tell you that it was very much back to normal across the boards in September. That sales tap turned back on. Content flow resumed to it’s normal brisk pace. Plenty of big news stories to cover. Much to talk about in the next review which will be being published soon.

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