Backing door installers every step of the way
After a shaky few years, the RMI industry is forecasted to return to former levels of buoyancy by 2025. With challenging trading conditions remaining in the interim, it pays for door installers to have the right partner in their corner. Stephen Nadin, managing director at Endurance Doors, explains more.
Over the last few years, the UK’s RMI industry has faced a tough market. Not only has the UK economy flatlined but rising inflation has led to wages falling in real terms.
Repeated interest rate rises have also increased mortgages and other borrowing costs. The net result is that most households have little disposable income to spend on either home improvements or buying a new home.
Despite this climate, Endurance Doors and its installer partners have continued to prosper. We have seen sustained, year-on-year growth thanks to our considered approach and the careful positioning of our products.
Rather than targeting the price-fighter end of the market, we are focused on the needs of the discerning homeowner seeking premium products. This customer demographic still has disposable income to invest into property enhancements.
This focus also helps to preserve our installers’ margins. The problem with adopting a ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ approach is there is always the risk of someone undercutting you, depending on how little profit they are happy to make.
Instead, we enable our installer partners to win orders through their professionalism and the quality of the products and work they offer, rather than by simply offering the lowest price.
We’ve also continued to make major investments into marketing. Some businesses reduce their marketing expenditure during challenging times. However, at Endurance Doors, we’ve actually increased our consumer marketing to create increased differentiation for our products – and more leads for our installer partners.
In addition, we’ve gone to lengths to cultivate a strong online reputation. In today’s hyperconnected world, online reviews can make or break a sale. As a result of our focus on quality, as well as the professionalism of our installer partners, we have amassed over 2,250 Trustpilot reviews of which 86% award us five stars.
Continuous improvement
Endurance Doors and its installer partners may be selling a record number of doors, but we don’t view this as a cause for complacency. To enable us to build on our success, we’ve actually taken steps over the last 12 months to further enhance our offer.
This includes implementing efficiencies across our manufacturing operations, ultimately enabling us to make more doors each day and without compromising in areas such as quality or performance.
We’ve also increased our use of digitalisation. As part of this, we have implemented scanning points across our range of components increasing our right first time production capabilities.
Demonstrating the effectiveness of these actions, we are now able to offer a three-week order lead time as standard even though we are making more doors than ever before.
Looking to the future
To ensure we and our installer partners are better placed than ever to face the future, Endurance Doors has further initiatives planned for 2024.
In the early New Year, we will launch a new and aspirational brochure that will act as a valuable sales tool, enabling installers to easily highlight the benefits of our range to homeowners.
We’ll also be updating our Touch Portal to streamline selling, pricing, and ordering our products as well as to boost lead generation.
Plus, we’ll be making additional investments into sales and marketing to keep our products and our installers’ services uppermost in the mind of consumers.
And this is just a taste of what’s to come.
We have always understood that our success depends on that of our installer partners. As such, we will be unveiling further developments as we redouble our efforts to help them and their businesses prosper – no matter what the trading conditions.
