The Heritage opportunity
Deceuninck UK’s managing director Rob McGlennon discusses Deceuninck’s new Heritage Flush Door.
Timber-alternative heritage PVCU has made a huge splash over the last few years; it’s the perfect antidote to ‘shiny white’ PVCU frames, and demand has been booming.
Homeowners are loving heritage options, almost always sold as foiled colour or classy woodgrain. The heritage look helps them stay true to the style of their period property or adds a wow to a newer home. While the ‘white window’ market and its selling prices and margins have been shrinking, the premium and colour market is growing.
We believe overall market volume was down 5%-10% in 2018, but the two markets (premium compared with the middle and budget volume market) are very different. The volume market, mostly white frames, could be down 10%-15% compared to 2017, while (by our reckoning) the premium and colour market is up 5%-10%.
If you and your customers sell mostly white frames you’ll probably be anxiously asking suppliers and others how the market is doing. But if you sell to the premium and colour market you’ll probably be too busy to ask, and not too worried knowing the homeowners you supply are well-insulated from economic uncertainty.
Heritage and colour trends are driven by a house-wealthy generation with the means to pay a premium to improve their homes. We call them the ‘haves’, and this group of over-55 buyers is growing, so the trend is not going to tail off any time soon. They see a beautifully designed flush sash in an elegant colour, with all the benefits of maintenance-free PVCU and the right authentic hardware, as the perfect solution to their desire for top performance and kerbside appeal. These homeowners also want the full package: windows and doors in the same sophisticated colourways and heritage style throughout.
Deceuninck’s Heritage Flush Sash window is already a star in the heritage market, and now accounts for more than 22% of our total sash sales. Raising the bar even further, we’ve now launched a Heritage Flush Door in the same stunning style.
The Heritage Flush Door is the only dedicated, mainstream open-out flush door sash on the market. It’s designed to replicate traditional timber and, with 26 colourways available from stock, you can achieve the look of aluminium.
It achieves Class 4 600Pa Air Permeability, Class E1050Pa Water Tightness (full frame), and Class A3 1200Pa Wind Resistance. The doorset achieves an A energy rating with U-values as low as 1.0W/m2K with triple glazing, and 1.3 W/m2K with double glazing. The Flush Door also comes with dedicated PAS24-approved hardware and has a Part M compliant threshold.
The Flush Door uses the same platform as Deceuninck’s Heritage 2800 system and comes with dedicated assembly jigs and pre-formed sash corner gaskets for ease of fabrication. It also has dedicated reinforcement to avoid the need for glass bonding, while dedicated sash and frame-positioning blocks improve performance and make it easier to transport.
The Heritage Flush Door comes in the same 26 colourways (soon to be 30) from stock as the Heritage Flush Sash window, so you don’t have to restrict your sales pitch to 10 or fewer colours that you know you can get in a reasonable time.
We invested in a world-class foiling team, warehousing, and a huge stock of colour, logistics and Deceuninck Online so fabricators can order online and put their name on what they see in the warehouse so they know it will be on their next delivery.
Many fabricators sell very little colour and much less than the market average of just under 30% of sales, and they are missing out. For the record, colour accounts for over 55% of Deceuninck’s sales and rising, and our major customers sell over 50% colour too.
Fabricators know they’ll get dependable deliveries so they can provide installers with reliable lead times. This gives installers the confidence to sell complete Heritage window-and-door suites in colour to their customers, and homeowners can finally buy beautiful doors to match the stunning Heritage windows they’ve fallen in love with.
