Wow, what a rip roaring start to the New Year. I personally have not seen such a bright start in this industry for a very long time. The high confidence from installers at the end of 2016 seems to have carried straight through to the start of this year, with a lot of installers and fabricators I have spoken to reporting record month-on-month sales, high lead levels and plenty of fitting scheduled in months in advance. Roof makers iX250 seem to have had a really great January:

A 45% jump in January is superb, and helps to demonstrate the confidence being reported by installers and fabricators too.

So, as we forge ahead during the shortest month of the year, now is a good time to take stock at January just gone for hints as to where we might be headed as an industry.

Strong confidence

I am running a poll at the moment where I am asking fabricators and installers to vote between five options which best describes the January they have just had. The early votes point to a confident sector, and you can have your say in that poll and place your own votes here.

There are no official monthly stats that I can find to gleam such feedback from, hence I decided to run a poll to try and get a rough gauge of how the industry feels it performed in the first month of the year. But I must say that the early positive voting does back up how we feel at our installations business.

January saw an unusually strong start for us, coming off the back of an unusually strong December. This has resulted in a backlog of fitting where we are now having to find extra installation teams to help reduce the lead time and speed up the cash flow coming in from balance payments. Not a bad problem to have, except the severe lack of talent in the talent pool to draw upon.

As our January plugged away, things plateaued from frantic to energetically busy. We’re right where we want to be in terms of revenues and fitting in comparison to this time last year. So as long as things stay the way they are, I’ll be happy to report that our business has grown again in 2017. Whether we hit our own ambitious targets, which were raised a whopping 50% in comparison to 2016’s figures, remains to be seen of course.

Confidence seems strong in our industry right now, although it is still very early on in the year. I suggest installers and fabricators make the very most of high consumer confidence as much as they can as the lay of the land may change as we get deeper into the year.

DGB Features

All quiet on the M&A front

Given the splurge at the end of last year you might be forgiven for thinking that the start of 2017 might carry on where 2016 left on. It’s not been the case so far as no major industry mergers and acquisitions were announced through January.

That being said, I know there are deals waiting in the wings, and rumours persist of a rather major one still on the table. So as we travel deeper into the year, we may well see a significant speeding up of the M&A market in UK fenestration.

How did DGB do?

As always I provide a funky infographic putting stats into pictures how DGB performed each month. Here is how it did in January:

Clearly a big jump from December to January, as there always is. And with all three major metrics in five figures, that’s good news too. Still, there has been a dip in this January compared to last January. Perhaps a sign to be concerned? At this moment in time I’m not worried. I have set myself these targets for 2017:

  • 170,000 visitors

  • 120,000 unique visitors

  • 225,000 page views

If you work out the daily average of from January’s figures and then apply them to the rest of the year then I am bang on for hitting those targets, which would represent big growth versus 2016. Also, I am trying to avoid big swings in traffic. Last year saw quite a slide in traffic as the year went on. I would be more happy to see these sorts of figures every month, rather than big swings up and down. If I do, then the summer months this year would see growth compared to the summer months of 2016 anyway.

Looking forward to February

All signs point to another strong month for installers and fabricators. With installers reporting full fitting schedules cash flow should be good for them and fabricators further up the supply chain.

The key now though is to make sure we all build on this positive start. It would be damaging to take a rest during February knowing that a lot of work was done in January. Now is very much the time to step things up another gear and make the most of favourable trading conditions so that we all continue to build a solid footing for later on in the year.

In terms of industry issues I’ll be starting to ramp up my FIT Show build up as well as all things National Fenestration Awards. Also, keep an eye out for mergers and acquisitions during February, things might kick off in this part of the sector in the coming weeks.

All in all, February should be another manic month on all fronts.

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