Cornwall Glass Manufacturing has said retailers could add in excess of 40% to their margins on each and every bi-fold door sale, simply by upselling IGUs.
Specialising in the production of large and oversized IGUs, in addition to standard units, the trade manufacturer says on an ‘average’ three-leaf bi-fold, this could equate to as much as £200 per unit, or £600 on each door sold, simply by upselling to a solar control or security specification.
Angus Herdman, technical director at Cornwall Glass Manufacturing, said that upselling to a higher performance glass also delivered a better deal to the end-user by increasing levels of comfort and security.
He said: “Retail businesses have a tendency to sell on price, because their competitors do. That doesn’t help anyone.
“The end user may get an install that falls short of their expectations, or which makes a room more or less unusable in the summer because of solar gain.
“And installers miss out on an opportunity to build in more margin by upselling to a higher performance glass.
“When you’re talking a missed opportunity to add £200 a unit on each and every bi-fold or inline sliding door your selling, that’s a lot of margin lost to your bottom line.”
Cornwall Glass Manufacturing supplies a wide range of solar control options. This includes Saint Gobain SKN176. It delivers a ‘G’ value of 0.37 combined with a ‘U’ value of 1W/m2K on a 16mm cavity doing so while still achieving light transmittance of 70%.
“Compared to a standard IGU unit, you can reduce solar gain by 70%. That’s something you’re going to feel – and if it’s explained to homeowners in the right way, it’s something that many will be prepared to pay a little more for,” added Angus.
He argues that opportunities to upsell to acoustic or security units are also being missed. Cornwall Glass Manufacturing’s offer is built around Stadip Silence from Saint Gobain.
This uses an interlayer specially developed by the float glass manufacturer to suppress noise at the specific resonant frequency of glass, achieving an airborne sound insulation index value of 54dB.
“Solar control, acoustic glass – these are some big opportunities to upsell to a better product and add margin,” Angus continued. “It also seems crazy to me that as an industry we’ll also supply a security laminate into new build because legislation tells us we have to, when we don’t promote it in the replacement market.”
To this end, Cornwall Glass Manufacturing is offering free training sessions on how to sell glass effectively into retail. This includes attending pitches with customers, to support the training of sales teams.
“We’ve developed a short training programme, which highlights how to approach end-user sales and how to sell them a better specified product and through that – to increase your own margins. I’m also personally happy to come on customer visits and work with them to support the upskilling of their sales teams,” he concluded.
At the cutting edge of glass manufacturing technology, Cornwall Glass Manufacturing is geared to high volume IGU fabrication, with three manufacturing facilities in St Austell, Highbridge and Plymouth.
This includes its Plymouth operation is geared towards the manufacture of over-sized IGUs with its Bystronic line capable of handling units of up to 2.7m X 5m.
