INDUSTRYNEWS
PROUD SPONSOR OF INDUSTRY NEWS
Blind Date: 20 years of Morley Glass & Glazing
In 1998, Morley Glass & Glazing‘ set up shop’ in West Yorkshire in a 500 sq ft premises with four members of staff. Today, the business is housed in a 53,000 sq ft unit just off the M62 with a team of over 70( including three of the original four).
»»
TO CELEBRATE ITS 20-YEAR anniversary, MD Ian Short invited Clearview to look back on the last two decades and the‘ ups and downs’ on how a small business in Leeds has become the UK’ s leading manufacturer of integral blinds within specialist glazing( at over 80 % of the market share)…
Morley Glass & Glazing is best known within the industry for its core product; Uniblinds. For a homeowner, the integral blind is a high end residential product that provides a chic, sleek solution to keeping the light( and heat) out of their homes; especially with the bi-fold door and curtain wall extension trend going off the charts in recent years. From Ian’ s own anecdotes of fittings going into homes that see the Henley Royal Regatta race past the bottom of their garden and have photographs of princes and princesses on their mantelpiece, you could be forgiven for thinking the integral blind market is somewhat‘ niche’. Yet, on the other end of the scale, in the commercial sector, integral blinds are well, integral, to mental health facilities’ design and decor, with a recent project in Belfast requiring £ 850,000 worth.
While the evidence is clear that integral blinds offer a straightforward – and stylish – solution to markets that are at polar opposite ends of the spectrum, it would seem that the product sells itself, this however was not always the case as Ian was keen to point out.
In fact, when Morley Glass & Glazing began selling Pellini Industries’ Screenline integral blinds in 2004( branded as Uniblinds in the UK), there were already around 20 other customers of the Italian brand up and down the country, but nobody seemed to know. According to Ian, a combination of long lead times and fear of fitting the product, offered a dual aspect to integral blinds that just put installers off. These were the jobs
that, in his own words,“ if they go well, you make a quite a lot of money; if it goes badly, you can lose a ¬ lot of money.” In short, it wasn’ t worth the hassle of offering a product that would take ages to arrive, only to potentially go wrong during installation, no matter how much value it could add to the sale for all involved.
Ian saw this hurdle and immediately set out to overcome it. When it came to lead times, he put forward a plan to Pellini Industries to gradually decrease the six-week(“ if you were lucky”) delivery. Through this initiative, every week that was shaved off the lead time triggered more growth on sales. Better sales translated into better marketing campaigns. A factory move to the Czech Republic further slashed lead times for some models to four days; meaning for fitters, they could be measuring a house on day one, ordering on day two, then installing on day seven. Italian integral blinds, in your house, in a week.
For the logistics of adding the blinds to a window, and installing them into a property – residential or commercial – Ian and the team invested in staff training at all levels. From designing transparent instruction stickers that are added to every pane of glass, to making sure admin staff are all experts in
product specification, installation instructions that are available written or in video format; this streamlined approach ensures that a fitter will never turn up to a job unable to wire a blind, and salespeople will never shy away from adding one to an order.
“ Our staff are our biggest asset”, adds Ian,“ but we’ re not training them up for the competition. At Morley Glass & Glazing, we are selling a premium product, one that is aspirational for many. We pride ourselves on that quality, and the after sales, service, and support that goes with it.”
When a 24-hour haulage strike hit Italy the week before Christmas not so long ago, Ian sent his own drivers to collect the year’ s last delivery from just outside of Milan, to make sure all orders that had been made before Christmas were fulfilled. It is this passion for his product, and his team, that has kept Ian pushing forward for the past 20 years, and will no doubt, keep Morley Glass & Glazing going for many more.
Happy birthday from all at Clearview.
16 » JUL 2018 » CLEARVIEW-UK. COM