Brexit, bonding and boundaries
Vista’s marketing manager Ian Smith discusses Brexit, partnering with Eurocell, and pushing boundaries in the door market
Two things have stood the XtremeDoor out from the crowd since we first released it: performance that excels on all fronts, from security and robustness to thermal efficiency and weather resistance; and flexibility – enough hardware and aesthetic options to let installers and end users customise it to suit any property or project.
But over the past six months we’ve released a number of other upgrades and new options designed to push those boundaries even further – achieving even better performance with a GRP skin that’s now 100% thicker, and giving our customers even greater choice with three new styles (Tudor, Verona and Regal) and two new colours (French Blue and Royal Magenta).
We’ve also merged our additions brochure with this new one, so salespeople only have to take the one brochure out with them. Customers want choice, but at the same time they don’t want to be overwhelmed. I’ve seen companies produce up to three brochures covering all their products – but the glowing feedback we’ve received on this one tells us we’ve managed to find the right balance.
We all know it’s an uncertain time for all businesses at the moment, for example, no-one knows what impact that will have. But we’re still very optimistic about the direction the door market’s going in.
All the indications I’ve seen suggest the home improvement sector is performing fantastically. Yes, Brexit does present challenges – and after sterling crashed against the dollar we had to reassess the way we did things. But the latest Palmer Report paints an extremely positive picture of how the market will fare over the next few years – predicting 22% growth over the next three years, and suggesting that Brexit won’t have all that much impact on our industry at all.
Demand for good service and a quality product is as good as it’s ever been, and even if the market does take a hit, all the evidence suggests that it’s products like the XtremeDoor that are best placed to weather the storm – stylish, high quality, cost-competitive, and customisable enough to be tailored to any project or property.
For a number of years now, we’ve heard analysts, forecasters, and other companies – albeit mostly ones that only manufacture composite doors – predicting the terminal decline of PVCU panels.
It might well be the case that, overall, the market has shrunk – but if that’s true, we’ve not seen the effects of it yet, and predictions of the imminent death of the PVCU panel are extremely premature in our view.
It’s an extremely versatile product, used on all manner of installations. The panel itself now comes in a wide range of foiled finishes, like chartwell green and anthracite grey, and this versatility is contributing to its longevity.
We said it at the time, and we’re still saying it 12 months on – the partnership with Eurocell was overwhelmingly positive move, and really just the final phase of an extremely close relationship between the two companies that had developed over years.
What makes our partnership unique is Eurocell’s network of 160 depots across the UK and Ireland. Eurocell is hugely successful and have massive potential for further growth. The rest of the market will always be playing catch up with a company of this size and ambition.