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Posts Tagged ‘Patio Doors’

Health & Safety Gone Mad?

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

ConservatoryLand OfficeI’d just like to share my experiences with the recent Health & Safety issues at my company premises.

Following a visit by the local fire officer, we were issued with an enforcement notice that basically meant we have had to make many major changes to our offices including the removal of doors, replacement of doors and additional fire exits. Also, illuminated signs, push bars, notices, plastering, bricking up a couple of doors etc etc.

We were ordered to replace a sliding PVCu patio door which acted both as an office door and a show patio. We had to replace this with a door and sidelight, as apparently, it would be difficult for our staff to escape in the case of fire. This same office also has THREE six foot, equal split windows, with full tilt & turn openings to one half.

However, our staff have had no problems getting out at 5pm every day for the past 10 years!

Further we had to get all the electrical appliances re-tested which cost us £800 for the equipment to carry this out ourselves.

I daren’t even think how much it has all cost, however I do agree with some of the changes.

OK, here’s the best one. Another Health & Safety guy came round and suggested that the noise levels in our frame factory were probably too high due to the steel saw but our fabricators already wore ear protection because we were already aware of this.

Despite this, he ordered to get the noise levels monitored to confirm this, at a cost of around £1500. I challenged this as I accepted that the noise levels were high which is why our fabricators already wear ear protection but he just wouldn’t accept it.

So we went ahead and had the test which of course confirmed that our staff needed ear protection and I paid over the £1500. I won’t publish my exact thoughts on here as it may offend someone.

In my opinion, some of it was necessary, some of it not, and I don’t like the smarmy attitude of the Health & Safety guys on a power trip, there’s just no need for it.

Guest post by David Bingham of ConservatoryLand

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Posted in Guest Posts | 11 Comments »

Secured By Design gets teeth!

Monday, October 5th, 2009

The fact that the government is committed to sustainable housing and to the development of millions of affordable homes is a well publicised fact, much used politically and warmly welcomed by the UK construction industry overall.

The strings to which the glazing industry is becoming acclimatised to, in the form of WER’s, are already being forced through for social and political reasons as the government rolls out its commitment to a sustainable future and lower CO2 emissions. There are other strings too which have been developing in the background and have a somewhat more tangible social and political context. Make no mistake, the very significant effect on the window and door industry will soon be apparent.

Secured By Design

An initiative of the Association of Chief Police Officers, SBD has been increasing its influence for several years. Initially a two page reference guide for house builders it has become an all encompassing design brief of some 37 pages which designs crime reducing products into buildings and site layout.

The initiative works. Secured By Design developments are proven to reduce crime and now The Department for Communities and Local Government (Home Office) is firmly backing the initiative. In the words of a senior designer at a major national house builder “Since April 2009 everything has changed – Secured By Design has got teeth!”

As another developer put it “The future for planning permission for social and private new build developments will increasingly be dependant on SBD compliance” – the implications of this should not be underestimated.

This is hardly surprising given the success of the initiative, the credibility of its owners, and the increasing motivation of government. House builders, developers and progressive window and door manufacturers and installers should have nothing to fear from the accelerating change in planning restrictions but should be making plans to manufacture and source properly accredited products as soon and as competitively as possible.

Guest post by Ian Longbottom of Sliders UK

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Posted in uPVC Doors, uPVC Windows | No Comments »

The demise of Advantage

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Sir,

I must write in response to the comments made by “The Glazine” dated 16th June, regarding the demise of Advantage Trade Supplies Limited”.

You reported that ‘the collapse of the company had its roots in the credit crunch’.

Sir, if the roots of Advantage’s demise were in the credit crunch it must have started far earlier that most of us can remember!

What many of us probably can remember is the demise of the similarly named Advantage Windows and Conservatories Limited, in 2008. Those of us with slightly longer memories will also remember the demise of Ian Moran’s previous incarnation; Adelphi Window Systems Limited.

You also reported that “Rehau withdrew its services – effectively removing half of the company’s business”.

I surely cannot stand alone in pointing out that these facts are very much related.

Long suffering Rehau had enjoyed the profits of earlier years when Adelphi was busy undercutting the market to establish itself as a low cost supplier. This was at a time (late 80’s to early 90’s) when there was some scope for some cutting. Despite this the company undersold itself to the extent that in 2002 it had to “restructure” (a term much abused in these situations) for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last time however as when Advantage Windows and Conservatories emerged, free of the obligations to many of Adelphi’s hard working suppliers, it continued the low cost strategy that would ultimately destroy it and its descendants.

Rehau took some pain in 2002 with the fall of Adelphi and again in 2008 as one Advantage was “restructured” into another. The advantage being only to Ian Moran however as yet again the suppliers who had serviced the company were left with debts and in many cases no prospect of making the money back.

It should be no surprise then that Rehau took a firmer line this time around. Indeed as most of the business that Advantage lost was readily taken up by other Rehau manufacturers they may perhaps now be wondering why they hadn’t taken this stance previously.

I am led to understand that Moran is now a “broken man”. Any empathy is short lived as I consider that as the demise of Advantage Trade Supplies was underway and Spectus jumped in where Rehau exited, Moran and his side kick Danny Hague were busy sending out letters to customers offering even lower prices!

Sir, the world wide recession or other macro economic condition is far from the reason for the demise of Advantage, Select or any other low-price oriented business. We can perhaps hope that as these companies fail in such conditions, they are starved of the support that they might have otherwise have engineered from suppliers.

Yours faithfully,

Ian Longbottom
Director
Sliders (UK) Limited

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Posted in Economy, Guest Posts | 19 Comments »

Review of the Sliders UK website

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

A couple of weeks ago Ian Longbottom of Sliders UK reluctantly agreed for me to do a review of his website. In his words:

‘I’ll have to trust you to be fair, its my baby and I’m very proud of it.’

Hopefully, we don’t fall out about this Ian, as here is my review:

Review of Sliders UK website

There’s nothing wrong with the look of the Home Page. It’s easy to navigate to the main sections – company details, news, product range etc – and the design is clean and uncluttered.

Sliders UK website

The Home Page clearly states Sliders UK’s main USPs:

1. They sell high quality patio doors
2. They sell Veka Vertical Sliding sash windows
3. Five day delivery
4. The only BBA and SBD accredited in-line patio door on the market

The BBA and Secured By Design logos confirm that Sliders UK are a company which prides itself on these achievements, and are powerful sales messages for their target customers – architects, specifiers, fabricators and installers.

There’s good content on the Company page outlining briefly how the company has expanded since its inception in 2002. I also like the page showing the main people at Sliders UK. Potential customers like to know who they’re dealing with:

Sliders UK

My favourite part of the website is an animated showreel showing the security benefits of a Sliders UK SBD in-line sliding patio door. The problem is it’s hidden away in the Products section, and I would personally suggest this should be visible from the Home Page. It clearly cost a few bob to produce so feel it should be featured more.

Links – A links page is useful for search engine optimisation (seo) purposes, as reciprocal links help Google find and rank web pages. Unfortunately, the Sliders UK website has no link to the Renegade Conservatory Guy website – probably the best double glazing blog in the world.

It’s a good trade website on the whole. I do feel that Sliders UK are missing out on the opportunity to put across their USPs to consumers. Considering Sliders UK are ‘the UK’s leading patio door manufacturer’ there’s little sign of the website for the main search terms on Google. For example, if you type in ‘patio doors’ into Google then the site does not appear in the first 10 pages.

Patio Doors Google

I’ve tried numerous keywords and the site isn’t ranking very well. To understand how Google places some sites higher than others is a complex question but in simple terms, Sliders need to invest in search engine optimisation. At the moment, Google doesn’t believe that the site is important as it only has a Page Rank of 1 out of 10, and has few other websites linking to it. The following screenshot shows that compared to the Conservatory Outlet website and a leading competitor in the patio door market, there are far fewer websites linking to the Sliders website:

Marketleap screenshot

I would assume that the website gets little traffic other than click-throughs from online press releases or direct traffic from people responding to trade advertising, or trade customers looking for technical information or contact details. For this type of traffic, the Sliders UK website is very good. In fact, other than a few picky individuals in the industry (well, just me really), the vast majority of people will find that the website gives all the relevant information about the company, patio doors and vertical sliding sash windows.

However, I feel that considering Sliders UK is the ‘UK’s leading patio door manufacturer’ then I would recommend that there should be some effort put into driving more traffic to the website. I’m sure trade customers of Sliders UK would appreciate enquiries generated from the site being passed on to them. A quick fix for this would be a Google Adwords campaign.

One last thing – I visited the Sliders UK factory a few weeks ago and was extremely impressed with the company and the overall set up. If you’re not already aware they have achieved BBA and Secured By Design on their patio door, which is the only one in the UK. If you don’t currently buy patio doors from me, then I would whole heartedly recommend Sliders UK

PS. If you want me to pick holes in your website please get in touch.

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Posted in Renegade Conservatory Guy | 3 Comments »

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