Staying ahead in the new normal

By Rhonda Ridge, creator of AdminBase.

In the weeks leading to Christmas 2019, there was little mention of the virus that was beginning to take its toll on the population of Wuhan, the largest city in Central China with more than nine million people.

By early February, news of the disease was reaching our shores but with just a couple of hundred cases reported outside China, few were alarmed; it was something that affected other people, a long way from Britain.

On March 23, Britain was placed in lockdown and, since then, Covid-19 has dominated the political and social agendas across the globe.

But humans have an instinct to not only survive, but to adapt and even prosper under the most extraordinary conditions. Amid the growing crisis, and confined to home, many in the UK took the opportunity to relax and settle into an enforced holiday, and many of us adapted well. Since the window and door industry was forced to shut up shop, because home improvement installations firms were unable to enter other people’s homes, many decided to catch up with the housekeeping.

Our busiest period each year is usually after the Christmas festivities. In the days following Boxing Day, the emails start coming in as installers ready their businesses for a return to work and when they have the time to carry out the things that they may have been putting off for weeks, when they were busy fitting windows and doors.

And the same happened during the coronavirus lockdown. We were all a little shell-shocked for those first few weeks, but after people had settled they began to look at how to get on with their lives. And that included installers, who had no idea when they would get back to work but who had the opportunity to plan for when they could open their business again.

So, many of them looked at how they could become more efficient, sell more windows and doors and conservatories, but also to manage surveying, installation, sign off and even money collection and marketing. And just like in the new year break, our phones started ringing off the hooks.

The upshot for AdminBase is the strongest sales ever in the company’s 23-year history. The enquiries that we received during lockdown developed exponentially into sales of AdminBase systems, to the point where we have enjoyed a 10% increase in overall revenue this year, despite the lockdown.

And this has continued, spurred on by the extraordinary surge in sales of new windows, doors and conservatories since May, and which shows no signs of relenting.

We have also experienced a significant increase in new users from our existing customers which, with new AdminBase customers, resulted in a 17% increase in September compared to August, itself a record month.

There is no sign of this demand letting up. Visits to our website are at record levels, including views of the explainer video that we created and launched in July. And because our demonstrations and installations have been carried out online for years anyway, we are very used to managing both safely and effectively, so we have been installing AdminBase uninterrupted by any restrictions.

Furthermore, this is evidence that installers do not rest on their laurels but improve and adapt to challenging conditions.