Back in the day, well before I came into this industry, on the wood grains front there was very little choice. It was either a poor Mahogany or a disconcerting Light Oak. If you didn’t like those, it was back to White. Naturally, to have these coloured alternatives installers would pay an uplift which would then be passed down to the home owner.

Fast forward to today and that scenario is very much the same. Smooth White is your base, and then you work upwards in price to add your wood grain finishes. However, our landscape has changed and there is now a very wide range of wood grain finishes and grained colours that fabricators keep in stock. Mahogany seems to be eradicated from most quarters now, which is not a bad thing.

But we live in an age of colour now. An age where Light Oak and Rosewood are fading into the background and colours like Anthracite grey, Chartwell Green, Agate grey and so on are being sold in quite significant numbers. So why is it, when volumes of these new coloured wood grains are rising in such vast numbers, that there is such a price disparity between these new norms and the wood grains of old?

Anthracite Grey

I’ll use Anthracite grey vs Light Oak as an example. At our place, there is a low uplift for a Light Oak product over White, I think it’s about 15% off the top of my head. Then, if we want to go to Anthracite Grey, that uplift is around 30% I think. I can stomach that. Our fabricator still sells is as a premium upgrade and home owners are still more than willing to pay the difference to have it.

So there is around 15% difference between a Light Oak product and an Anthracite Grey product on a material costs basis. Relatively small. I was quite shocked then as I was told earlier on today that certain companies price certain newly mainstream colours like Anthracite Grey, with a huge 80%, sometimes north of 100% price uplift. Where can they justify such a huge swing in pricing, on a colour that is now becoming a norm in some areas? For me, this whacks of profiteering.

Even for special order foils, frames that are coloured both sides in a colour that is relatively new should not be costing that much. An uplift yes, but not 100+ percent on top of the material cost.

It is scenarios like this which tell me that given the rising popularity of colours and colourd wood grains, would it not be simpler for fabricators to standardise the cost uplifts to a single or possibly dual rate, rather than having different rates for different wood grain finishes?

DGB Business

Less White, more colour

We all know in which direction the window industry is headed. White windows are decreasing in popularity, with more and more home owners feeling brave enough to go down the colour route. And I’m not talking Rosewood or Light Oak here. Anthracite Grey, Chartwell Green, Agate Grey, Painswick, Cream and many others are quickly becoming more and more popular. Speak to any busy fabricator and they’ll most likely tell you that they’re having to order more coloured and wood grained stock in year on year.

Given the rising popularity of colour now, I think it is probably time to drop the sky high tariffs on colours like Anthracite Grey. And the same goes for any other popular wood grain that could be seen as new.

There are a couple of benefits to be gleamed from such a move. The first would be efficiency. If you’re a fabricator with over half a dozen profiles, each one with at least a dozen coloured and wood grain combinations, that equates to a lot of options and a hell of a lot of work if each one has a different uplift depending on the colour or wood grain. So would it not be easier for the fabricator, and then in turn the installers, if all wood grain prices were the same? If that means raising the older generation ones but then lowering the newer wood grains that are rising in popularity then so be it. A balancing of the uplift charges would remove a lot of work in the pricing departments of installers and fabricators alike.

Secondly, it would open up more colour options to home owners. So instead of a whopping 80% increase for Anthracite Grey wood grain internally and externally, a 25% increase might make that potential purchase from the installers a lot more likely. It is feasible that fabricators could see even more sales of their coloured wood grain products, owed to more reasonable pricing. A win-win scenario for all.

This pricing issue is something that will need addressing sooner rather than later. The popularity of colour and coloured wood grains will only continue to rise. There will come a point where installers may start to feel hard done by if they’re being charged significantly more for a wood grain they sell the most of, but are being charged more simply because it’s newer.

One to think about.

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