With competition across the door market continuing to intensify, installers need more ways to differentiate their offer and protect their margins. Suzanne Nicholl, sales and marketing director at Kenrick, explains how the retrofit capability of the AK Touch Secure is creating new opportunities for installers to add value and move the conversation beyond price alone.

There’s no question that today’s door market is competitive. Installers are operating in a market where homeowners have more choice than ever, and it can be all too easy for the sales conversation to come down to one thing: price.

For us, that makes it increasingly important to give installers something different to talk about. Because if we can demonstrate additional value and capability, we can help shift the conversation away from simply how much a door costs and towards what that door can actually do.

This is where we see a significant opportunity with the AK Touch Secure.

Smart technology is becoming an increasingly familiar part of everyday life. We use our phones to control our heating, answer our doorbells, manage our security cameras and monitor our homes, so it’s a natural progression that homeowners are looking for the same levels of convenience and control from their entrance doors.

But one of the things that makes the AK Touch Secure particularly interesting from an installer’s perspective is that this opportunity isn’t restricted to the sale of a new door.

Unlike some smart door solutions that need to be incorporated into the original specification or require significant changes to the existing hardware, AK Touch Secure can be retrofitted in minutes with no major hardware modifications, providing the door has a 3 Star locking cylinder.

That immediately opens up a much wider potential market.

Of course, it gives installers an additional upgrade when they’re selling a new door, but equally importantly, it gives them something new to offer their existing customer base. There will be thousands of homeowners with perfectly good entrance doors that they have no intention of replacing, but who could be interested in upgrading those doors with smart functionality.

For installers, that creates a valuable additional sales opportunity. They can go back to customers they may have fitted doors for several years ago with a genuine upgrade proposition, without needing to sell them another complete door.

With AK Touch Secure, homeowners can operate their door using the touch-sensitive panel, keypad, encrypted fob, voice command through Alexa or Google Home, or a traditional key. Through the app they can remotely lock and unlock their door, check its status, view access logs and create temporary access codes.

These are features that translate very easily into everyday benefits. A homeowner can give a family member or tradesperson temporary access without handing over a key. They can check whether their door is locked after they’ve left the house. For rental properties and short lets, access can be managed without the complications associated with physical keys.

It gives installers a completely different conversation to have with the homeowner. Instead of comparing one door with another purely on price, colour or style, they can demonstrate how additional functionality can make that door more convenient to use and easier to manage.

We think that distinction is increasingly important because there will always be someone prepared to sell a product more cheaply. Competing on price alone becomes a race that ultimately benefits nobody. Giving homeowners a compelling reason to upgrade creates value instead.

At the same time, smart functionality can never come at the expense of security. AK Touch Secure holds Secure Connected Device accreditation from Secured by Design and IASME IoT Cyber Assurance Level Two. These credentials provide important reassurance that homeowners aren’t being asked to choose between convenience and security.

We deliberately designed AK Touch Secure to combine the two. It offers the convenience homeowners increasingly expect from connected technology while retaining the strength, reliability and security that should always sit at the heart of an entrance door.

For installers, AK Touch Secure creates a very real commercial opportunity, adding value to a new door sale and creating an additional upsell from doors already installed. In a competitive market, the answer doesn’t always have to be reducing price. It’s about giving customers more reasons to say yes by selling not just the door, but what the hardware allows that door to do.