David Thornton of The Window Company (Contracts), has said that he will be visiting next year’s FIT Show with a view to identifying additional new supply partners, because the event will “highlight the leaner, fitter and better funded companies in our industry.”
David, who has previously shown his support for the event, which will take place once again at the NEC in May, was asked for his views on the relevance of the FIT Show at a time when the industry is facing enormous challenges due to Covid-19. He said: “Although we all have an extremely difficult road ahead, assuming that we are able to return to some sort of normality in the coming months, the next FIT Show will be immensely important for the industry.”
Having previously visited the FIT Show with a specially prepared prospectus on his firm, to allow exhibitors to understand his company’s requirements more thoroughly, David says that the 2021 event will be even more important in his choice of future additional trading partners to work alongside existing suppliers: “With the total cancellation of Fensterbau until 2022, FIT Show 2021 will be even more important. Certainly, I will regard any exhibitors at next year’s FIT Show as companies that I am more likely to do business with, simply as they have not only survived but they can afford to be there both financially and logistically. By then they are likely to have rationalised their products and services and, like all of us, will have taken a lot of hard decisions during the lockdown that will make them leaner, fitter and simply better to do business with.”
As one of the South East’s leading commercial window, door and curtain walling installers, working for some of the region’s biggest contractors and social housing providers, David has steered The Window Company (Contracts) to three G-Award ‘Installer of the Year’ titles. A committed industry man, David has also served as a director of the Glass & Glazing Federation. He added: “You meet people face-to-face at an exhibition like the FIT Show and, as sophisticated as digital communications are, there is no substitute for looking people in the eye to discuss your needs and their ability to supply you. We do a lot of business at FIT.”
Next year’s event will be even more important in this process, he says: “It’s a fact that many of the more fragile companies will have gone. I want to see who is left, to see the shape of their businesses and how they intend to develop going forward; the May ’21 FIT Show will be a filter, in effect.
“But just as importantly,” added David, “many of the challenges posed by the lockdown came from the basic human need to interact….the FIT Show will be so very important, as we come out of this period.”
