We end the month with another DGB weekly review. A catch up and summary of what has been covered this week on here. It’s been a week which has seen the warmest Halloween on record, with temperatures hitting 24 degrees in the south of England. October has also been a record breaking month for DGB, as for the first time page views passed the 30k mark. In fact the site averages over 1000 page views a day. I think the external condensation problems this month had something to do with that! So let’s get right into it.
“Stubborn Minority” At Risk Of Industry Expulsion
I started off the week by covering the story that FENSA had reported earlier that there remains a portion of the industry that continues to fight against the new rule changes, specifically the new rules concerning insurance backed guarantees. They described it as a “stubborn minority”, I suspect that it’s quite a bit more than that.
The system that FENSA uses is automatised and run via IT systems. They can see each time an installer registers an installation, and with it, an IBG too. So they can see all the businesses that aren’t registering properly too. When I read the “stubborn minority” I did think to myself what the number actually is. On the one hand, FENSA won’t want to admit that this problem isn’t as big as it might be. On the other, they also want to portray an image of an up to date, law abiding industry. I think in reality though that the minority might be slightly bigger than a minority.
Now I for one believe there has been far too much legislation in too short a time for the industry to deal with over the last year or so. It takes time for any industry to adapt to change. But the IBG rules I think are some of the most simple to understand. The fact that there remains businesses refusing to conform to this one is petty. As I wrote in the post, I hope FENSA does carry out their threat to expel members for not conforming.
Fuel Prices Set To Drop To £1 A Litre…But There Is A Catch
Tuesday saw me cover a subject of mine that I like to have a rant about, fuel prices. A headline in the Mirror newspaper caught my eye, about fuel potentially falling to a £1 a litre. It sounded too good to be true, so I dug around the report to see what the fuss was about.
Over the weekend the Mirror newspaper reported that petrol prices could soon reach £1 a litre. Now to any driver those sorts of headlines would make for good reading, but don’t get excited too much, it’s not that straightforward. Click there to read the report. At first glance of the report, it looks like you’ll need to participate in supermarket schemes in order to achieve the £1 fuel price. Still, savvy shoppers will be able to exploit this for their benefit. But it’s not just weekly shopper that might benefit from cheaper fuel prices.
So it turned out you needed to shop at the main supermarkets and be part of their loyalty schemes to qualify for the cheaper rate of fuel. That won’t hold some back. But as I covered in the post, I hope that in the future, due to the lower prices, these eventually will filter down to all areas, including our own industry. It’s only fair after all!
Q And A With Malbern Windows Founder
Hump day, or Wednesday as it is more commonly known, saw me post a Q and A kindly provided for me, so a nice easy one for me! It was of course a bit of a promoted piece, but some of the answers, including answers on triple glazing, made for some honest and good reading.
- Triple glazing: is it any better than double glazing?
Triple glazing is often touted as a better option nowadays than double glazing, marketed as being able to offer savings on energy bills as well as improved noise reduction – but that’s not to say that it’s any better than double glazing.
- So does the increased cost not add up to the extra benefits it provides?
In short, no. While triple glazing can offer some extra benefits, there are also several downsides. It’s more expensive, doesn’t offer any more protection against noise pollution than double glazing, and can result in a reduction in light penetration because of the additional glass pane. I wouldn’t recommend triple glazing over double glazing.
It’s nice to see that some business owners will still give their honest answer when it comes to some of the bigger issues in the industry. I also enjoyed reading his answer further down the post when talking about how companies start off at sky high prices then drop right down.
Making The Most Of Your Showroom
Next up, a post about how to make the most of your showroom space. This one was inspired after a an hour or so of pondering what to do about our very own showroom conundrums. After asking on social media, what better place to pose a question like this than right here on DGB.
One of the problems we’re finding at the moment is the lack of space in our showroom to display any potential new products we want to start selling. There is a great deal we want to do, including dipping our toes in the timber and aluminium markets, but with so little space to install really good examples, we don’t want to start selling something without being able to show it off properly in our showroom. So we have a dilemma, we want to move forward with new ideas, but don’t have the space we need to do that properly.
In all honesty this was a post designed to satisfy my own curiosity. Whilst I have my own ideas about how to go about creating more showroom space, I wanted to find out how some of you went about sorting out your own showrooms. I got the odd reply on social media on this one, but no comments unfortunately.
Everest To Sponsor DGB
With this one, I did expect a few comments, and you guys did not disappoint on Twitter! Yes, Everest are going to be joining the DGB family for the next 6 months. But rather than just jump straight in with an advert and post, I thought I would give my reasons why first.
Some of you may be querying why Everest have chosen to advertise on DGB, or in fact why I have decided to work with Everest given previous subject matters about Everest on DGB over the years. Well it wasn’t a quick decision to make. In fact they have contacted me a number of times in the past to see if we could work together.
The reason I have decided to work with Everest now should become apparent when tonight’s post goes live at 11pm. The company is undergoing changes at all levels, including their sales process. From what I have read and been told already, the days of their old style of selling are numbered, with the business wanting to change the way their business is run. It is this change of approach that has helped me to decide to work with Everest.
I wanted to explain my decisions before the first sponsored post went out a few hours later. This will have come as a surprise to a few out there, given the content of some of the posts around Everest in the past. And just for clarification, they are fully aware of all that I have written in the past about the company.
But the company does appear to be on a path of change, and it is because of that I decided that now is the time to be working with the company. They approached me a number of times this year, but it was after contacting me about 6 weeks ago that I thought that it is worth giving this opportunity a chance.
Everest Windows Improving their Infrastructure for the Future
And then it went live, the first of 12 posts from Everest to come over the next 6 months. Needless to say that traffic on DGB that evening spiked as people wondered what the hell I was doing. Their first post though I thought made for some refreshing reading.
“In 2012 we decided to step away from the ‘hard sell’ in favour of setting values,” proclaimed Everest’s CEO, Roy Saunders, at the recent launch of the Everest Training Academy, believing that by providing genuine experts to consult the public, the company would only ever move in a positive direction.
The significance of 2012 is that the company were acquired by Better Capital, who made immediate fundamental changes. Everest’s product ranges were expanded upon, offering a wider variety of choices to the customers. New products warranted glossy new brochures that complemented both the look and feel of the original designs.
If what is said in the post is accurate, Everest are undergoing a massive restructuring which will see them change the way their business is run. Given the size of the company and the ethos bred into it, this isn’t going to be a quick change by any means. But I am an open minded person, and will be interested to see the progress Everest makes as it embarks on this new chapter in the company’s future.
