A new poll by door specialist, Sliders UK, has found that composite door call backs are among the key challenges facing installers.
The study, completed at the end of last year, asked retailers what they saw as the biggest challenges facing their businesses going into 2019.
It found that retention of skilled labour, cited by 86% of respondents and reliability of supply (81%), were listed as threats to their business in the coming year.
A further 67% said that they believed consumer confidence had been eroded by continuing confusion and the lack of clarity surrounding the UK’s exit from the EU.
This aside, those polled said that they believed increased sales of aluminium products would continue, with all of those responding saying that they supplied at least one aluminium bi-folding door system.
A further 40% said that they had added an aluminium sliding door to their offer in the last year.
While composite door sales were seen universally as a growth area, 78% of respondents said that they had encountered issues in reliability of supply in the last year, with composite door bowing, cited as a problem by the same figure.
Steve Mines, sales director at Sliders UK, said: “When we spoke to installers we found that everyone saw composite doors as a growth area but there was a real frustration with reliability of supply and bowing.
“We were told that this had been a particular problem with the higher temperatures seen last summer, which had generated a large number of call-backs on composite door installations.
“Going forward, while there remained a level of concern about the continuing impact of Brexit on consumer confidence, there was a general level of optimism about growing demand for aluminium products, with bi-folding doors continuing to perform strongly in the last year.”
