HiTech Blinds has said levels of interest in its new aluminium TRL90 Rooflight, which features an automatic integrated blind as standard, at this year’s FIT Show far exceeded its expectations.

Suitable for new-build installation or retro-fit across residential and commercial markets, the slimline HiTech Aluminium TRL90 Rooflight is supplied with a white pleated and fully retractable, remote-controlled integrated blind as standard.

Officially launching the HiTech TRL90 at this year’s show, Ian Woolley, sales director at HiTech Blinds, said the response from installers (and fabricators interested in becoming supply partners) had been ‘immense’.

“We’d received a lot of interest in the TRL90 in the run up to the show,” he said. “The market for rooflights is growing anyway but the demand that we have seen for the TRL90 Rooflight, as a product with a definitive USP within that sector, has been immense.

“We had a very simple message: ‘if you’re selling an aluminium rooflight and can buy one with an automated blind – as standard – from your supplier and win more business or extract more margin from the sale, why wouldn’t you?’

“That seemed to have sunk-in, people got the concept. Seeing the product up close and personal, how quiet and easy to operate it is, how simple it is to install – that really reinforced their understanding of it and, more importantly, its market potential.”

The HiTech TRL90 is fitted in exactly the same way as a standard aluminium rooflight system, using the same process, with a fix to a suitable upstand and internal plaster boarding and wired into a standard mains supply.

“We saw exceptional demand for the TRL90 but also our core integrated blinds offer,” Ian said. “Again, this was because those installers who visited us really got the potential that integral blinds delivered as a tool to not only win business but build higher margin by selling an added value product.

“For us, it was a very successful show. If I have perhaps one small criticism, visitor numbers weren’t so great on the third day and I wonder if a two-day show might have worked better.

“But that’s for us, a very minor point. We saw a high number of leads and, importantly, the quality of those leads was also good.”