Summer’s back! And sales are up…

After six weeks of fairly typical British weather, summer has finally arrived. Forecasts are for a heatwave with temperatures as high as 30C – excellent news for all the industry folk headed to Epsom next week for the Glass Times Race Day!

Sunny weather can also have a positive impact on consumer spending habits, although if the latest data from Business Pilot is anything to go by, even the drizzle of August has failed to prevent homeowners from splashing the cash on new windows and doors.

According to Business Pilot, sales are up 5.8% in August on July and 20.3% higher year on year. Leads are also up and, perhaps most importantly, so is the average order value. You can read the full report here.

Leads 2 Trade, which provides ‘double-qualified’ sales leads to installers, is also reporting strong demand from homeowners. The company is said to be generating 13,000 ‘raw’ enquiries every month.

And if you’re wondering what it is that consumers are looking for, Tommy Trinder has been crunching the numbers and according to its data, more installers than ever before are selling aluminium.

85% of installers using Tommy Trinder’s Framepoint quotation software are now said to have aluminium products in their portfolio, up from 78% in 2022. And aluminium may still have a relatively small market share compared to PVC at 16%, but it accounts for 35% of the market by value.

That market share is, however, biased towards the southern regions of the UK, accounting for over 40% in the south east and getting progressively smaller as you head north. In Scotland and the north east for example, aluminium has just 12% market share…

The most important takeaway from all this of course, is that platforms such as Business Pilot, Framepoint and Leads 2 Trade are vital if you are an installer and you’re keen to make the most of all the opportunities in the home improvement sector.

Times may be tougher post pandemic, but by investing in the latest business management systems, lead generation and quotation software, you can help to eliminate the guesswork and concentrate on mining accurate data instead.