Demand for upmarket products

Bohle’s managing director, Dave Broxton, discusses how to seize opportunities while remaining competitive.

After a slow start to 2024, the second half of the year is looking more positive, Bohle’s managing director, Dave Broxton, believes. But we aren’t going to immediately see record levels of contracts crossing our desks.

“I think the biggest impact the stagnant economy has had on the glass industry is that the big low-cost commercial contracts are hard to find,” Dave says. “These are typically the bread-and-butter jobs that, in good years, we rely on to keep our turnover up.

“This year, we’ve seen our customers increasingly move up market – into high-end domestic work for example – because that end of the market has been less affected by the downturn. As a result, the demand for quality products has increased significantly.”

Dave argues that this has been a win-win for all parties.

“It benefits us as a business because we are at the quality end of the market, and it benefits our customers because that’s where the decent margins are.”

Dave says there are many examples of where quality is driving demand, including bathrooms.

“Providing a wide range of products for bathroom projects is a clear example of the synergy between Bohle and our customers,” he says. “Companies approach us because we have a reputation for agility and supplying products that meet the evolving needs of that market, while we create new opportunities for other companies looking to broaden their offering.”

Bohle supplies several ranges of bathroom hardware, each designed to meet specific needs of both the customer and the installer.

The Juna hinge, for example, was developed and designed by Bohle for glass shower doors, and boasts minimal gap dimensions, which give a clean high-quality appearance. Other modern aesthetic features include no visible screws, a practically continuous sealing strip, and the above-average return angle of 20°, which closes the glass door automatically.

Bohle recently added five colours to the Juna shower door hinge range – stainless steel effect, copper, black, polished brass and brushed brass – to give architects, builders and installers a total of eight separate finishes to add a sophisticated design touch to every bathroom, no matter the style.

“The key reason behind expanding the range of Juna colours is simply that the bathrooms and shower rooms/wet rooms market is evolving all the time,” Dave says. “And the colours that the plumbing companies are using for taps, towel rails and shower heads are expanding, and we need to provide shower hardware that matches. Matte white and graphite will be the next in line.

“And it provides another opportunity for our customers because these colours have never been seen in shower hardware before. Colours like copper, graphite, and matte white are a stretch from the old days where everything was shiny chrome, although the return of polished and brushed brass is a nod to the origins of bathroom and shower design.

“What we’re basically doing is responding to the customer’s needs. They say that they want a wider range of colours, and because Juna is our premium product, that’s where we’ve started. And that’s where we’re offering the largest range of finishes.”

Bohle’s pre-eminent position in the bathroom hardware market also extends to being certified to specific standards that allow certain products to be specified where others can’t.

For example, Juna has been successfully tested for 100,000 cycles (DIN EN 14428:2015-09 para.5.5) and Bohle’s pioneering new self-adhesive mirror plates are the first in the world to be certified to the DIN 2304 manufacturing process.

This is designed to give greater confidence to installers of glass and mirrors in public spaces, and gives customers the assurance that installed products meet the highest safety standards.

“Thanks to easy assembly and installation, and the need for no specialist tools, installers who would be installing other bathroom hardware, including showers, can now confidently add mirrors to their range of products,” Dave says.

Dave argues that companies who are used to working on low-cost commercial contracts won’t have a problem targeting the high-end market if they partner with the right suppliers.

“And if you want to be an upmarket company then the focus needs to be on design, quality and availability,” he says. “As long as the price is competitive, then you are always likely to succeed.”