In a world of widgets

With more than 1,500 products in its product portfolio and boasting more than 2,000 customers nationwide, Window Widgets has become a trusted ancillary partner for the glass and glazing industry, as national sales executive Tom Edwards and technical sales executive Adrian Clare discuss.

Window Widgets was born when founder Dan Gill identified a gap in the market for a business to produce the PVCU consumables and ancillaries that the large systems houses typically tended to shy away from.

With these large industry players focused on running extrusion tools for many hours for optimal efficiencies, it conflicted with the smaller financial demands for these other products including packers, corner protectors and other related items.

Today Window Widgets not only serves the entire PVCU market with ancillaries and consumables, but also with sills, baypole jacks, couplers and even structural mullions. It also has a product range that’s dedicated for the aluminium and composite door sectors.

Supplying many of the industry’s most respected and trusted manufacturers, the business has grown significantly and has subsequently continued to re-invest. Nor can anyone forget the fact that The Residence Collection is part of Window Widgets, which has inspired the industry with the emergence of the new flush sash product category.

After the acquisition by Masonite in January 2018, the business underwent an MBO in December 2019, ironically just a matter of months before the first lockdown. But now the business is back to the owner-managed entity that has served it so well in the past, and once again there’s a real sense of entrepreneurial flair resonating throughout the building, with firm investment plans in place.

The resources are significant within the business, including extrusion, injection moulding and even assembly of the baypole jacks, which are fully manufactured within our production facility in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire. There’s also a technical function led by Mike Hart, with rapid product prototyping and the dedicated support of Adrian Clare, technical sales executive, who boasts unrivalled knowledge of all thing’s widget related.

The marketing and branding are unquestionably strong, and we’re widely associated with our pink branding, which has spurned the renaming of our product catalogue to the big pink book. A complete redesigned website with online ordering has also been a development from 2020 as we look to support window and door manufacturers and installers with the very best support.

With CE Marketing and BBA Certification of products, there’s also the re-assurance that we’ve designed and engineered our products to surpass the most stringent testing requirements and the demands of real-life applications, as a recent case study from the west coast of Scotland shows.

Our green credentials are world-class too, like the rest of our facility, as we look to recycle everything possible and, in the coming weeks, we are looking to be able to confirm that we no longer send any waste to landfill. Our ethos as a business includes reducing our impact on the environment and in constantly looking at new ways in which to reduce our carbon footprint.

When Window Widgets was founded in 2000 few could have predicted the influence the business would have on the glass and glazing industry, supplying a huge breadth of products to the vast majority of leading companies in the sector. Now back in ownership with the management team and with a robust financial platform in place, we’re in the perfect position to further accelerate the business opportunities and plans that we now have in place.