30 | APRIL 2017

Read online at www. proinstaller. co. uk

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

It’ s the latest marketing buzzword sweeping the tech world, and it’ s starting to make inroads into the wider economy too. It’ s gamification – and unlike a lot of airy marketing concepts, it’ s got real potential to help you get more leads, make more sales and grow your business.

Gamification is a simple idea. Taking inspiration from the multibillion-pound video gaming industry, it essentially involves taking aspects of games and incorporating them into your sales and marketing efforts – engaging your potential customer with more fun, satisfying, interactive ways of getting them to do things you want them to do, whether that is to register their details, submit an enquiry or complete an order form.

One of the easiest and most powerful ways you can make use of gamification in glass and glazing is with a bifold builder – a quick and relatively inexpensive way to let customers enter their hardware, size and colour preferences before sending it through for a quote.

At Warwick North West, our own bifold builder has proved incredibly successful. Specifically designed to significantly speed up the quoting and purchasing process and maximise convenience for trade clients, the builder offers installers a quick and easy way to input their preferred specification, including size, colour and hardware, before sending it through to us for pricing.

Our client base has been incredibly receptive. Installers are busy – they don’ t work a standard nine-to-five shift, and days often start early and finish late. As such, the bifold builder has been a resounding success on two fronts – firstly, by providing installers with a much more engaging, satisfying and intuitive alternative to the conventional quoting process, but also by allowing them to do it whenever they like, including outside office hours. We’ ve boosted our conversion rates, and we’ ve made our customers’ lives significantly easier.

The builder isn’ t just useful for streamlining the relationship between fabricators and installers, though. We’ ve also seen some of our trade customers using the builder as a sales aid when it comes to working with end users, too. Consumers are much more enthused and excited about a purchase when they’ ve played an active part in designing it, and transactions involving the bifold builder are much more likely to result in a sale.

We’ d thoroughly recommend investing in an online sales tool like a bifold, door or window builder to any fabricator – and strongly encourage any of our customers who aren’ t already using ours to head to our website and try it out today.

Yours sincerely, Greg Johnson, Director Warwick North West

In his recent report on the window, door and conservatory markets in the Housing report, Palmer identifies significant growth and opportunities in bi-folding doors, and highlights growth in patio doors. Strong forecasts of sales growth mean greater demand for larger sealed units in bi-folds and sliding patio doors. But, some have asked, what sort of spacer is best suited to these large units, soft and flexible or a rigid spacer bar? Do heavy window and door frames put more pressure on sealed units, so they deflect, making a flexible spacer bar better at dealing with the deflection?

But it’ s not a question of soft or rigid. It’ s not the job of the window or door to support the weight of the building above, nor the job of the sealed units to support the weight of the window or door; still less the job of the spacer bar to support the sealed unit, door, window or masonry above. If we built like that we’ d all be living in piles of rubble from collapsed buildings!

Appropriately sized lintels are fitted above door or window openings to support the weight of the masonry and building above. They don’ t rely on the windows or doors to support the building. Structural engineers calculate the load above precisely and, with a good safety margin, specify the strength and size of the lintel required to support the frame. If they didn’ t, the building would fail regulatory requirements, and probably fail itself. Property owners would rightly be concerned!

A window or door frame is strengthened with reinforcement to support its functioning and its own weight. Correctly constructed, the sealed unit withstands

lateral movement in production, transit and handling during installation so it performs as designed for its lifetime.

A warm edge spacer bar is designed to keep the panes of glass apart, provide structure and surface for the primary and secondary sealants, and hold the desiccant. They are also a crucial insulating barrier for energy efficiency. It’ s the secondary sealant’ s job to keep the unit’ s structure together and bear the load in production, transit and installation, and withstand the wind loading once installed.

an aesthetically pleasing finish

Rigid warm edge spacer bars like SWISSPACER are designed for large IGUs. They give precise edges and clean, crisp parallel lines for an aesthetically pleasing finish. They’ re strong enough to cope with the weight of the extra glass without modification. You can see warm edge rigid spacer bars in action worldwide in large sealed units in very exposed conditions e. g. New York’ s iconic Museum of Modern Art( MOMA), London’ s 30 St. Mary Axe( The Gherkin), The Prada building in Tokyo, Madrid’ s Torre de Cristal and The Turning Torso in Sweden all have SWISSPACER inside. Rigid warm edge spacer bars work well in these buildings, so I don’ t think Mrs Brown will have a problem with her bi-folds!

Yours, Karl-Theo Roes Head of Market Development, Europe, SWISSPACER