Just the other week, Origin, one of the leading bi-folding door manufacturers, announced a brand new aluminium residential door product range. Click here to find out more and download a brochure. At first glance they look good, and knowing Origin’s reputation for quality, they’ll be built well too.
But this isn’t just about a new product, more, what this new product represents. This is a new aluminium residential door product, it’s not the only one though. This is one quietly growing trend that could be the industry’s “disruptor”.
A potential challenger to the composite door?
In the residential door market, the composite door has had a relaxed, unchallenged run at the top of the tree for quite a while now. They have almost buried the full PVCu panel door market, and they are to go to door product for home owners who are wanting to replace their doors.
However, there has been a noticeable trend emerge out of the aluminium market:
Credit: Origin
Aluminium residential doors are being introduced by an increasing number of aluminium fabricators. Above is Origin’s new product, there is the also the very impressive Spitfire range which you can read more about here. NFA Aluminium Compan 2015 Winners The Window Outlet are also producing aluminium residential doors too.
There are plenty more companies producing aluminium residential doors. And this isn’t a case of fabricators pushing a new product in the hope to force a new niche into the market. This is a new niche being driven quite obviously by a growing home owner demand for aluminium windows and doors in general.
Fabricators wouldn’t spent time and money tooling up for products that were never going to sell. So you can expect fabricators to be marketing this relatively new aluminium product hard. And they will be targeting the market that the composite door sector has dominated so very easily for the last few years.
A higher pricing point
If aluminium residential doors are to take on composite doors, then the right pricing point has to be found. But it cannot be cheaper than composite doors.
It would be a crime if we started to see these doors being sold cheaper than composite doors. The public are used to seeing aluminium products being sold at a premium margin. So there would be no need for the industry to rush into a race to the bottom, very much what has happened in the bi-folding part of the aluminium market.
There is no reason why these doors couldn’t be sold at a higher margin than composite doors. But that could hold them back a little if home owners are faced with a choice between those and composite doors.
In the end, this new breed of aluminium door needs to be absolutely sold on the build quality of the product. Build quality is one of this product’s strongest USPs, and if installers are to find luck in selling them, this is one area they should attack.
One other area is the aesthetics. I have seen some very slick aluminium door panel designs, achieving a look no other material type can match. That makes these doors unique among the swathe of door products out there. This is going to be another very strong USP.
It may take some time to start eroding the market share of composite doors, but given time, the right marketing and good product quality, I can see aluminium residential doors shaking up the entrance door market.
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