The innovation game

Stephen Nadin, managing director of Endurance Doors, talks about the importance of innovation as a business process, which is reflected in product, service and brand.

Austrian-born American management consultant and educator Peter Drucker once said that “if you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”.

This premise can be fully adopted for all types of businesses and it’s certainly an approach and philosophy that we endorse at Endurance Doors.

While the majority of offerings from the composite door sector are based on GRP slabs, we are one of the few that harness a solid timber core in our doors, which is 10% thicker at 48mm front to back. This construction provides extra structural rigidity and allows for more robust fixings when it comes to some of the heavier heritage handles and knockers.

Our Kerto LVL slab from Metsa Wood is a carefully constructed affair made up of 17 individual laminations, and we’ve even tested the slab successfully with a sledgehammer in the hands of Hunter from the TV show Gladiators. It’s also a product that’s been fully certified and used elsewhere in the construction sector, and it’s formed the basis of our doors for the last 16 years.

More recently, we’ve developed our unique Moisture Barrier System using RocFoam technology, which is bonded to the foot of the door, so that if water sits in the rebate of the frame, there’s no risk of capillary action and subsequent water ingress that some other solid doors suffer from.

Added to this is the fact that we wet seal the glazing cassettes, so that product remedials really are a thing of the past. Product performance is critical for us and so we’re continually looking at new materials, processes, and door construction types to see if we can make our great doors even better.

Bonded to the faces of our door slabs are PVCU CoolSkin sheets from 3D Laminates, which have proven to be the best performing products of their type. This is thanks to the Vekaplan substrate and CoolColor foils from international product technology company, Continental, in the construction. As an independent owner-managed business we can also make decisions in the best interests of our customers and quickly, so the demands for better EBITDA financial performance of larger groups is something that doesn’t hinder us.

In recent weeks, we’ve launched what we believe is the industry’s first door-branded ABS cylinder, which carries an Endurance key and the re-assurance of a £1,000 security guarantee directly from us. It’s also part of several hardware additions including a luxurious hot forged heavyweight solid brass door knocker from Carlisle Brass and several unique door knockers from cult hardware manufacturer Brass Bee.

While we have done much to innovate with the Endurance door, we’ve also been highly proactive from a marketing standpoint since the initial lockdown in March earlier this year. No other composite door company has done so much in recent months to support their customer network, and we’re now introducing a large number of new installer partners to our network.

In May, we were quick to publish a Covid-19 Installation Guide, which was aimed at both installers and homeowners and has proven to be a very useful marketing asset. We followed this up in July, when we announced a price freeze for the remainder of 2020 and hosted an industry webinar with our digital partners Icaal. This partnership helped us further, as we launched a 24-page marketing brochure outlining all the digital tools that we could offer installer partners.

These new marketing assets include a bespoke quoting engine Door Designer and CRM system, along with a forward-thinking chat bot, virtual appointment booking page, and even the facility to have the latest customer reviews updated directly to a website.

Innovation is now very much part of our DNA as a business and it’s one example of how we now excel as a forward-thinking brand in the composite door sector. From carefully orchestrated new product developments to marketing initiatives that help our installer partners, we believe there’s never been a better time than now to be part of our success story.