Last year, conservatories had their worst year since 1995, with only roughly 94,500 new conservatories being built. Down from their peak in 2004 with 200,000+ being installed.

I thought it was due for a little look on Google trends to see how the search term ‘conservatories’ was doing. Turns out, not very good. In fact, this is the worst it has been for this time of year since Google started recording search terms! It’s never been lower than it has now for the beginning of a year.

I did search for the term ‘orangeries’ but there hasn’t been enough activity using that word for Google to start to bother to record it accurately yet. And I didn’t bother searching ‘home improvements’ as the term is too generic and doesn’t give an accurate account of the performance of our industry.

Are conservatories now a lost cause? With the internet being an ever more influential tool in our industry and the first place that our customers go to search for products, we have to assume (in my opinion) that this does show an accurate representation of the industry and how it is performing – which is poor.

So far, most of the work we have fitted has been windows and doors, incidentally whole house fulls, rather than new conservatories. In fact we have had more inquiries for orangeries than conservatories this year. I think within a few years the conservatory will be just the bolt on extra product that companies do, rather than a core part of the business.

How is everyone doing so far this year in terms of conservatories?