Letters

YOUR LETTERS

WHAT’S YOUR OPINION?

Feel free to get in touch with your views on the industry, legislation, government, or even the newspaper.

Contact Chris:

chris@glassnews.co.uk

COULD YOUR BUSINESS GET THROUGH ‘ANOTHER 2021’ IN 2022?

Dear Chris,

We knew the road back from COVID and Lockdown would be bumpy but the challenges we and the window and door industry have contended with in the past year, have far exceeded our expectations.

It’s been incredibly tough, everyone’s expended a massive amount of energy, and people are tired, if not exhausted. Trying to manage suppliers, customers, and exponential growth in demand has been challenging in the extreme. We’re now in the tail-end of this year and are no doubt looking forward to a better year ahead. It is, however, worth noting that some of the challenges that we have seen in the last year are likely to be with us for some time to come.

Resin and glass supplies remain under pressure, steel prices remain high. The cost of shipping containers continues to escalate - up $6,000 since April this year - disrupting supply of anything delivered in them, from hardware to composites. That’s before you build a shortage of labour, particularly lorry drivers, and the impact of COVID into the equation. The fix to those problems isn’t going to be delivered over night. If you have encountered issues with your supply chain this year (and let’s face it, everyone has), the odds are that the start of 2022 is probably not going to feel so very different, however much we hope it will.

I’m not going to pretend to have the answers. We are subject to the same forces for good or bad as everyone else. What I would go as far as saying is that I believe that we have manged those challenges as well as anyone, if not better than most.

It’s been no walk in the park, but we have maintained our OTIF at 90%. That’s down 7% on where we were pre-COVID, and 10% on where in an ideal world we would want to be - but it’s not bad going, given the challenges we have seen. We’ve seen our foils offer continue to grow. We hold 30 colourways in stock with 20 additional colours available in just 15 working days. Deceuninck fabricators sell twice as much colour as their competitors, while this year foil sales have made up 60% of our turnover.

We’ll also hit £50million turnover this year. That includes new customer wins. More importantly, it reflects the gains in market share seen by our pre-existing customer base in the last year. I can’t guarantee that we will be able to improve, or deliver the same service levels again, next year. That would be pure speculation given the continuing COVIDgenerated flux and uncertainty. I can only point to what we have delivered and say that going into the new year we are more adapted to the challenges that we have seen. We have made a multi-million investment in our UK plant, in our foiling capacity, and in our recycling capability as a group. We are in short stronger than we have ever been. We would encourage fabricators to take time out now to reflect on the last 12-months and the service levels that they have seen from their systems and wider supply chain. As I’ve said, no one’s been perfect, but if they’re not going to get better, could you survive another quarter, six-months, a year, of the same?

We can’t control the impact of COVID or labour shortages, but it is in our gift to change supplier if we believe we’re not getting the service that we need. Recognising that in time is going to be very important. For more information call 01249 816 969, email deceuninck.ltd@deceuninck.com or visit www.deceuninck.co.uk

HAVE HOMEOWNERS FIXED EVERYTHING YET?

Dear Chris,

I’m going to start by saying that things still look pretty good. Our customers are busy (probably if we’re honest, still a little too busy), and the housing market remains strong, with house price growth, according to the Nationwide, up 2.1% and 11% annually.

That’s important because we know confidence and activity in the housing market drives investment in home improvement. There’s a growing consensus that the Stamp Duty holiday, other than costing the taxpayer £4.7bn in lost tax revenues, didn’t artificially inflate the housing market after all. That, according to the Resolution Foundation, was happening regardless of tax breaks, and was something singularly attributable to the fact that we’ve spent a stack more time at home/ Locked in them, since COVID first rolled in onto our shores.

Order books look good, people have work into the new year. The only – and continuing challenge – is the supply chain - ours, yours, and us as part of it (again, we’re sorry that our service levels aren’t where we would expect them to be, but we are doing our best). We believe things may get a little better. Glass supply may start to ease in the months ahead as float lines, down since May for cold repair, come back online.

As for everything else, steel, hardware, composite doors, polyamide thermal breaks? Well, we hope it’s going to get better soon, but I’d suggest we’re in for more of the same through to the end of Q1 at the earliest.

That, as I’ve said, makes margin protection important in the short term. Costing and pricing jobs to give yourself room to accommodate delays and price increases. I want, however, to focus on what happens next? The demand in home improvements has been driven above all by the fact that our lives, for much of the past two-years, have revolved almost entirely around the home. Freedom Day (19th July) didn’t deliver a radical shift overnight in our behaviour, but it did start the ball rolling. People started to turn their attention from home decking and patio projects to the gym, with memberships significantly up in the first few months since the easing of restrictions. up 77% last August, on the same time in 2021. People are eating out in restaurants, going back to pubs and sporting events. The end of September is also the time that thousands of companies, are expected to lead the push to get workers back into the office, or at the very least some hybrid form of working. So if we aren’t in our homes as much going forward, can we be expected to be willing to spend at the same levels as we have for the best part of two-years, when we’ve had nothing else to do?

I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should be panicking but reminding ourselves how we generate leads and what homeowners are going to want from us going forward, is sensible. For me that’s about two things. Professionalism and product. Homeowners will have had some great, but also not so great, experiences in the last 18-months. As we come out of the boom and return to more normal levels of demand, professionalism and customer experience, will win – and lose – retailers, business.

We continue to invest in tools which support our customers in establishing a professional approach from the fist touch point with the consumer.

We’re launching a new Proposal Builder, which literally does ‘what it says on the tin’. Our customers can upload images, their own branding, terms and conditions, and create professional proposals in minutes. As soon as the homeowner comes back with confirmation and a deposit is paid, the order is instantly transferred to our customer CRM, EasyAdmin, where it can be sent directly to production. What it means is that process is simplified and managed right from the very first point of contact. Mike Parczuk, Managing Director, Sternfenster