Colour inspiration
Midlands fabricator Central RPL recently launched its new Central Inspired colour division, promising a new kind of colour service for installers. Central’s Cara Lansley and Gary Morton talk about about the new service, how it works, and what it means for their customers.
As any fabricator will tell you, demand for coloured windows is growing rapidly. We’ve already seen it with doors — especially composites — and all the indications are that the same is happening with windows.
Mainland Europe is already there; market data shows that 70% of windows and doors there are coloured. Now the UK is catching up. It’s estimated that last year one in four windows and doors in the UK involved colour, and already this year installers are reporting greater demand.
With coloured windows no longer a rarity, and with Kolorseal Midlands on-site as part of our group, it made sense for Central RPL to place ourselves at the forefront of this new market direction.
Although coloured products are becoming incredibly popular, actually buying them can be a headache for installers, especially when dealing with a host of different suppliers. We wanted to offer something better to our customers; a complete end-to-end service that removes the hassle and uncertainty, while allowing them to really differentiate themselves from their competition and offer a business-winning service to homeowners.
Central Inspired is more than just a paint shop; it’s a complete turnkey service that allows our customers to buy coloured products directly from the manufacturer, which they can then install with confidence. And it doesn’t just cover our windows and doors, although our full range of both is included. We include conservatories, roofline products like soffits and fascias, cladding, panels, trims, add-ons, and even glass. As a result, our customers can sell a whole-house project using any combination of products, while getting everything on a single order.
As part of our group we’ve invested heavily in Kolorseal Midlands and its on-site, state-of-the-art paint facility. That’s key to the Central Inspired service and offers significant advantages over some other colour services. Not only does it mean we can produce any colour a customer needs – from colour systems like RAL, BS, Dulux and Farrow and Ball or through our colour matching service – but also four finishes: satin, matt, gloss and metallic.
Central Inspired is built on the knowledge and expertise of Kolorseal, the industry’s original colour coaters. Applying coatings to windows and doors correctly is a complex process, sometimes underestimated by companies getting into it for the first time. If not done properly the cost of service calls or replacements can be high. With Central Inspired, every painted product is manufactured and coloured on-site, and backed up by a 10-year double guarantee covering both colour stability and adhesion.
Choice and quality are two key pillars of Central Inspired. The third is service. Providing an outstanding service to customers and helping them succeed is a critical part of what we do at Central RPL, and it’s exactly the same with Central Inspired. Our philosophy is to not only provide the products that our customers need, but also the encouragement, backup and support. Every day we make sure that we’re not only supplying the right products for our customers, we do it as a supplier they can trust. It’s an easy thing to say, but when the customer finds it really making a difference to their day-to-day business, then you know that you’re doing it right.
