It’s the second to last week of the working year and I’m sure that we’re all looking forward to enjoying some hard earned time at home with the family and some festive fun. But, we’re not quite there yet. So, in a week which saw £112bn wiped off the FTSE stock exchange and fuel prices drop to a four year low, it’s time to take a look back at the stories covered here on DGB.
I think if we all took a look back at the first six months of 2014, we’ll be surprised at how busy it actually was. At the end of 2013, we were told that as a country the economy would fair relatively well. Growth would be in the low percentages. But the pace of the recovery really seemed to take off from the word go as January for us saw us sail past our target. Was it to be a one off? A fluke? We’d all have to wait and see as the next few months rolled by. It was no fluke.
Summary
We began the week with my continuation of the series of reviews of this year. I wanted to take a look at the confidence levels in the market place and how they compared with previous years. It was a fairly easy one to write as I think the majority of the industry found consumer confidence to be quite high in 2014, certainly higher than in previous years. Barring any major shocks to the system, I am expecting 2015 to be another year of growth for all.
You can see from the graph above, the search results for triple glazing have never really got going at all. It’s worth pointing out that these are purely results from the UK, no other country’s results are included in this. The search terms are also very generic, I wanted to capture as many results for each of the terms. But I would think that most typing in “double glazing” or “orangery” are actually looking to buy those products at some point. This isn’t the most scientific method of research, however it does give us a flavour of what people are searching for when it comes to home improvements and how each products is performing.Summary
Triple glazing. It’s an issue that’s never really gone away this year, so I thought it might be worth having a look at exactly how much people had been searching for it. Turns out, it wasn’t a lot, and it wouldn’t get any better in 2015. I compared various industry search terms on Tuesday to check out the performance of each main product type. It didn’t look great for triple glazing, despite the increased awareness in 2014.
Wow, what a night on social media it was on Tuesday! After a year long campaign, hundreds of nominations, hundreds of voters casting thousands of votes, it all boiled down to just nine minutes and thirty seconds. Here are the winners of this year’s National Fenestration Awards:
Summary
It was a day of celebration on Tuesday evening as the winners of the National Fenestration Awards were finally announced. So naturally I had to dedicate the next post to the winners and the winners video. It was amazing to see so many excited people and companies sharing congratulations on social media!
A little while ago I was challenged on my views about a lack of youth coming through the ranks in this industry and the wider construction industry as a whole. My frustration is that in our industry, as well as many other trades, there is simply a chronic lack of youth and new skill coming into the market to replace those that are leaving it. Its a problem that I believe is rapidly out of control. And a report in the Guardian today reinforces my concern.
Summary
A headline which I am sure many saw on Wednesday, the story that the UK was calling on the manpower of Portugal to plug the skills gap in the construction sector, at a rather hefty £1000 per week. I had to acknowledge that sort of story and the skills shortage in our own industry has been a topic of mine for much of this year. Hopefully 2015 will see an improvement in skilled employment.
Facebook and Twitter announced their Top Tens earlier on today, so in the spirit of lists and reviews, this is my very own Top Ten most read posts on DGB this year. To be clear, this is the list of most read posts that have been published in 2014. There are historical posts from years ago which have racked up way more views.
Summary
Continuing the theme of reviewing the year, and after Facebook and Twitter decided to publish their own top tens, I thought it was about time that I published my own top ten. This was in the form of the top ten most read posts published in 2014. There was some good ones in that list, I hope some of you had a gander!
When a customer picks a composite door, the colour of the door is often what they focus on. The industry has served up white for decades, so there is a strong appeal for colour when customers know they can have something different. But what about the glass? Colour makes a big difference to a door, but the glass design is what really completes a high quality composite door.Summary
Always room for a sponsored post on DGB! This time it was for Door Supermarket and their range of glass designs.
Every year, there’s always a company that released a game just for Christmas. The last couple of years it has been Synseal. Their games were good, if not a little addictive and got quite a few of us over-competitive! This time round however, digital specialists MotionLab have come up with their very own app game, called Chuck Save Christmas. It’s available on all major platforms, and it’s very festive!Summary
To end the week, I thought I would take the time to play a game, for research purposes you understand ;-) I was reviewing the Christmas game released by MotionLab. A very fun game, addictive and generally festive, it’s worth you downloading and wasting to hard earned time off on it!
