Performance and relationships

Gareth Busson, head of sales and marketing for Solidor Group, highlights the importance of world class performance credentials, on trusting and engaging business relationships for the long-term.

True business relationships enable both parties to thrive, not just as a short-term quick fix, but as part of a longer-term vision and opportunity. As part of DW3 Products Group and ultimately Masonite International, Solidor builds relationships with customers, suppliers and all respective stakeholders, and the results over recent years speak for themselves.

We’ve invested considerably over the years to cope with continued strong growth, yet with a focussed eye on the future in how we can best meet the expectations of customers from a marketing, operational, product quality and customer engagement perspective. Solidor is a respected and trusted business that’s constantly evolving, yet taking care in meeting and exceeding the needs of a nationwide customer base.

When the DW3 Products Group came in to being, it was a time to invest in people and processes, with a market-defining, solid core composite door offering. Mike Price came on as group operations director with a world-class reputation for operational improvement and change management, and now Solidor Group reports otif levels consistently in excess of 99%.

Solidor is now a lean business from an operational perspective with new processes, production methodologies and people enrichment, three of the cornerstones of the new environment we’ve created. Not only do our customers like our feature-rich composite doors, as is evident across several social media platforms, but our staff are proud, and that’s important to us as a diligent and responsible manufacturing business in Stoke-on-Trent.

Product quality and consistency has improved from a good standard to one that’s exceptional, and so the level of trust with Solidor has never been so good. With the recent introduction of Solidor Cloud 2.0, we’ve been able to add the ability for our customers to track their orders through the business in four key stages. In time we’ll look to enhance the user experience further, so our customers benefit from greater knowledge about their relationship with us in terms of quotes, orders and sales lead management.

Companies and consumers align themselves with brands and companies that we buy into – some people prefer a Samsung, while others will be heavily loyal to Apple for example. The same can be said in the composite door market, with our customers buying into the product and everything else that comes with it, including the marketing programme.

With an ability to drive leads from consumers to local installers makes us, I believe, one of the most stand out brands in the glazing and fenestration markets at present. That’s not to say we’ve created an air of egotism, but the fact that we’ve worked incredibly hard to make us a stand-out business in a competitive marketplace.

Building relationships is something to be cherished for the long term and can only be nurtured when the supply chain delivers excellence and world class performance levels. It’s also about adding value in all aspects of customer engagement and through proactive marketing programmes. But above all, trust in your supplier should mean everything to you as a business.