ProVia Blog

By Brian Miller

The good times continue to roll in the remodeling industry. We’ve had a great run over multiple years.  We can all agree we hope it continues for years to come. But while we celebrate the good times, are we also focused on finding ways to create lasting value for your customers and your company? Sometimes the greatest obstacle to reaching our fullest potential is our own success.

The Trap of Complacency

When things are going well it's easy to fall into the trap of complacency. We forget to take time to concentrate on the areas we need to improve. But if we don’t keep our eye on improving, when the bad times come again - which they will, eventually - then we’re not prepared for that. If you’ve been paying attention and you’ve really fine-tuned your performance, when a downturn occurs, you can thrive when everybody else is working to survive. The truly great companies always make time to look for and pursue opportunities that others might not be taking advantage of.

Opportunity to Do the Opposite

Since the beginning of 2017 we’ve observed several notable trends involving entry doors, replacement windows, manufactured stone, and vinyl siding. We find these to be excellent indicators of opportunities in the marketplace, so we’ll share these trends with you in a series of blog posts. Today, let’s begin with trends we’re seeing in the sales of entry doors.

Replace and Remodel Continues to Grow

I’d like to begin with a couple comments about the replace and remodel (R&R) market. This market has continued to grow at a nice manageable percentage over the past few decades, and I don’t see that changing over the next couple of years. Homeowners are still remodeling or adding on, and they’re staying in place in their homes. At the same time, the new home construction market has grown nicely over the past couple years as well. Builders have been concentrating on larger, more upscale homes, and that’s left the first-time buyer out of purchasing a new home. This improves the remodeling market because first-time buyers are buying existing homes and fixing them up.

Sales of Fiberglass Entry Doors Growing Faster

With regard to entry doors, fiberglass continues to grow at a faster pace than steel doors. This doesn’t mean that fiberglass has overtaken steel door sales – steel is still our largest sales category here at ProVia.