Sweet in name, and impact

Nick Dutton, CEO of Brisant-Secure talks about the true definition of suited when it comes to door furniture ranges. There is also an underlying demand for better, as he goes on to highlight.

Brisant-Secure offers a suited hardware system alongside our high security lock, Ultion. When Ultion, the three-star plus, Sold Secure Diamond lock, is fitted with a suited Lock Lock handle, the combination gives the most security that can be offered today.

We have also created a truly suited offer with the Sweet Hardware system, so the door looks incredible from a design perspective.

It’s also important that we clearly define the difference between a normal hardware system and the truly suited hardware system, which we offer at Brisant. In 2000, I was involved in launching a conservatory system at a time when the market was full of conservatory roof systems. The subtle but significant difference was that it was definitely an entire building, as opposed to a roof put onto generic doors and windows.

One of the images we used at the time to explain this difference, was the image of a convertible Mercedes with a VW Beetle roof on top of it. This image resonated with conservatory installers and reformed the question of what is a system. The concept of the Sweet furniture range is very similar.

While fabricators and installers for years have demanded their door furniture be ‘suited’ it has become very normal for this suiting to go only as far as colour alone. It’s a bit like a conservatory roof that ‘fitted’ onto a window and door system, rather than one that was designed to complement the profile designs. When we designed Sweet, we looked at every component from the numerals to the escutcheons and to the security handle.

With aesthetics being such an important factor, when deciding to buy a door, our objective was to create a range where every element had been considered and that every element knitted together in design and not just colour.

When making the initial investment we had the opportunity to tread the same path as many before us and take advantage of existing tooling for numerals and escutcheons and suite them to our design of handle and letterplate by just coating them the same colour. But to have flat stamped, face screw fix, Times New Roman numerals would have created just another ‘me-too’ furniture range. This was not our Sweet vision. The result was Sweet, in both name and impact.

This obsession with being truly suited didn’t stop. Sweet already boasted the most secure handle on the market. Lock Lock is the only 2-Star security handle that has Sold Secure accreditation and is identical in design to the normal Sweet handle. We then took this ethos into the world of Smart and the Internet of Things. The Ultion Smart handle is designed for the UK market in terms of functionality and appearance. It is seamlessly Sweet, too.

All doors need to look great at first, the customer won’t pay for it if it doesn’t. But we wanted to go one giant step further. We wanted it to look great for good. Every component is coated with six layers of armour coating and carries a 20-year direct-to-homeowner guarantee.

Sweet is a furniture range designed for the UK for today. It not only answers the question about what a system is, but reforms the question. Recent adopters see that door furniture is no longer just about a same colour function, they see it as something to help sell a door.

It is considered, new, long lasting, secure, low maintenance, and now Smart too – everything that door buyers today are looking for.