Zero to hero
The Gerda brand may still be relatively new in the UK, but confidence – and sales – are starting to build in a growing installer network, says director, Danny Williams.
What do AirBnB and Brewdog have in common? Answer: they are both hugely successful brands that were initially slow starters but have since flourished to become household names.
In 2008, when AirBnB CEO, Brian Chesky, was reaching out to potential investors, he was met with outright rejection. Yet once the concept of the holiday rentals company started to gain traction, its growth was stratospheric, with hundreds of millions of guests booking through the letting service ever since.
In 2007, Brewdog’s Martin Dickie and James Watt spotted a gap in the UK market for craft beers and after running the company for a couple of years, they applied for Dragons’ Den – but were reportedly rejected before even having the opportunity to pitch in front of the show’s investor ‘dragons’.
Such is the success of Brewdog now, that the original £100,000 investment they wanted for 20% of the company would be worth over £360 million!
These are two extreme examples of brands that struggled to take off at first, but which perfectly illustrate how new products can sometimes take time to ignite, especially when they are introduced into a crowded marketplace.
It is something that Danny Williams, director of Gerda Doors, has experienced with bringing the Gerda brand of high-performance entrance doors to the UK.
“The inspiration for finding a new and improved entrance door solution, was that I was fed up with the performance – and also the service – from the established composite brands here in the UK,” he says.
“Composites should be an easy win for installers, but as most fitters will know, they can often cause more problems than they’re worth. That’s because they warp and bow, which ultimately falls back on the installer to remedy and is made worse if there isn’t sufficient support from further up the supply chain.
“So the solution as I saw it, was to introduce a door that could fit securely into a neat new niche,” continues Danny. “One that could be positioned above composites in terms of quality and overall performance, but still priced competitively against other premium brands while delivering the equivalent aesthetics, U values, strength and security.
“That is what we have with Gerda. It is still a relatively new product for the UK market, and like many new brands there have been challenges to its adoption – especially in such a crowded sector – but once homeowners have experienced the difference, the advantages become clear.”
Engineered around a polyurethane core for optimum energy efficiency and finished with premium steel and aluminium facings, the Gerda range offers exceptional U values from as low as 0.74 W/m2k.
Featuring four distinctive options – Optima, Thermo Premium, Thermo Prime and the Altus Series – Gerda doors offer a wide range of contemporary designs and a premium aesthetic.
The inherent strength of Gerda’s design, which is designed to eliminate the bowing and warping commonly associated with inferior composite doors, also means they are incredibly secure, a level of security that’s underlined with three-bolt main locks, multi-point locks and anti-burglary vertical bolts – all contributing to a PAS24 rating for security.
“The performance, premium aesthetic and the price point – the fact that you can upgrade to a far superior product for a minimal additional investment over a composite – these are all big selling points for Gerda doors,” says Danny. “But often, it’s not until homeowners can see and feel the difference in a showroom, that the penny drops.
“It’s the audible ‘thunk’ that you get when you open and then close a Gerda that perfectly conveys the difference in quality and engineering that goes into their manufacture. There’s a ‘weight’ of operation that cannot be replicated by a composite, simply because it’s not as robust.
“This is the experience of our growing installer network,” concludes Danny. “Once a homeowner customer’s eyes have been opened to the Gerda range and that first sale is secured – we are seeing confidence in the brand building – and the subsequent orders starting to flood in.
“It may still be a relatively new brand, but Gerda has all the attributes you need to succeed.”