Moulding Better Sales
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Moulding Better Sales
Make the most of winter’s indoor opportunities
Moving with the times: opportunities knock for mouldings
The shorter days at this time of year often see builders working on interior projects for householders. It’s an ideal time to make the most of decorative mouldings, which normally see an upturn in sales through the winter months.
Formerly primarily a softwood market, trade is changing. Softwood sections still sell strongly, but sustainably-grown machined hardwood mouldings are also available, and in species relatively new to the market such as Red Grandis.
Meanwhile MDF mouldings are becoming ever-more sophisticated, and are in greater demand.
Aspiration and inspiration
Instead of selling a length of moulding, see it as an aspirational product. You’re helping householders to achieve a certain look: they may have taken inspiration from interior design or home decorating journals or TV programmes like Downton Abbey.
Offering a range of different products – softwood, hardwood and MDF – enables you to service a wider breadth of customers, from the jobbing
builder to contractors working on rented properties, and householders retrofitting their homes.
Make sure your stock is displayed to its best advantage: a dusty mouldings rack isn’t going to attract a premium spend.
Quality counts in softwood
In softwood mouldings, producers have been concentrating on improving quality over a number of years now. Make quality your mantra too.
Enable your staff to understand that, when looking at the end grain of a softwood moulding, the tighter the growth rings, the greater the quality of the wood they’re selling. If you’re selling budget softwood mouldings then don’t forget the add-on sales of knotting solution, paints, stains, adhesives, tools and ironmongery.
Multiplicity of Mouldings
MDF mouldings are now available in many different types. Primed or twice-primed is now the entry-level product; ‘wrapped’ ranges, special extra-hard or RALcolour-matched coatings are available. MDF covered in various wood veneers is also becoming popular.
Some products are even available for exterior joinery use, if made from the exterior grade Tricoya Extreme substrate.
In hardwoods, Oak mouldings are a perernnial favourite, but other timbers, from Meranti and Red Grandis to species such as American White Ash, are also available from suppliers. Explore the multiplicity of mouldings with your TTF member supplier.
Find a supplier at: ttf.co.uk/find-a-member-product/