I’ve just had a chat with a friend of mine who “ran” a glazing company in Hereford, he’s just unfortunately shut the doors on his company which had been trading for many years, it was his fathers company and it was passed down to him about two years ago.
Whilst I was chatting he kept coming back to the same thing “the customers just wouldn’t pay the money for his service and he kept coming up against the same companies, undercutting him all the time and the customers just wanted the cheaper price.”
After a little longer i asked him what he was charging and what he had to offer that other companies didn’t, he didn’t really have anything to say. I feel sorry for the guy, of course I do, but sometimes it’s just a case of if you don’t evolve and move with the times you are going to have a battle on your hands nowadays.
The worst thing he did was undersell his company, he thought the customer was just interested in price, I feel price is a big factor in the market place, but he put no value on a long established company, the customers just simply wanted a deal, they didn’t necessarily want the cheapest, but that’s what he thought would get him the deal, and so consequently he kept reducing his prices, in the end he was selling windows and not making any money.
I think I’ve learnt a bit from this: I’ve got a company which is profitable and will remain profitable because I refuse to undersell the worth of my company. Sure sometimes we have to negotiate a bit on some deals but everyone should be a winner . The customers get what they want for a good price and I get to make money which at the end of the day the customer would want, because what is the point of a customer buying cheap but having nowhere to turn in times of trouble.
If everyone in our industry stuck to our guns on pricing possibly we could all have a rosy future, but you all know as I do ther’ll be one or two out there, who think lets slash it and drag the market price down, they wont make any money doing it and will be busy fools.
Commets would be welcome but if not it’s my opinion anyway.
Andrew
