Great wine in new bottles: brand preconceptions can sometimes be misleading

Flattery will get you everywhere, so the saying goes, and self-flattery is the most seductive. Once we start to believe our own propaganda, the stories we tell others about ourselves to boost our personal status or standing in the market, we’re on a slippery slope that leads to crooked thinking and bad decisions. Do it often, or long enough, and the line blurs between fantasy and reality. If facing up to reality is embarrassing, inconvenient, or disadvantageous, we cling to what we want to believe, despite strong evidence to the contrary. The longer it goes on the wider the gap between make believe and solid ground.

The big squeeze

Once upon a time, in the eyes of fabricators, there was a clear structure in the profile market. At the top, there were established premium brands at very high prices, at the other, young upstarts selling basic product at low prices. In the middle were several undifferentiated, but respectable brands that sold average products at average prices.

According to Reputations Plus, whose annual Benchmark surveys have reported for 10 years on the ups and downs, and the positioning of systems companies in the market, the boundaries between premium, middle and budget have blurred. Premium companies have been forced to price more aggressively, while budget companies have developed and changed, offering the product specification, quality, service and support that were once the domain of premium brands. Those in the middle got squeezed, as product specifications converged between the sectors. They found it hard to project a clear identity in the minds of fabricators. And it’s what fabricators think that counts. It’s their perceptions that make one brand ‘premium’ and another ‘budget’, no matter what a particular company would like to be. And fabricators have found it harder to do this. It hasn’t broken down entirely, and there are some brands which haven’t changed, locked in yesterday’s segmentation. But the very words premium, middle and budget are losing their meaning in window systems.

Preconceptions

Product convergence and blurring of categories is not happening everywhere. The words still mean something in the car market, where most people see BMW as a premium price-quality brand and Proton, for example, as a budget brand. But a wine tasting in Berlin last year made the news when a group of professional wine tasters put two Cabernet Sauvignon-based Chilean reds, the 2000 Viñedo Chadwick and the 2001 Seña costing less than £50 a bottle, ahead of three Bordeaux first growths, and four Super Tuscan reds costing up to and over £300 a bottle.

In the wine tasting world this was earth-shattering. How could two new wines topple the likes of Margaux, Lafite and Latour? Was it a fluke? Were they comparing like with like? It wasn’t the first time these two wines had done well, and the tasters were highly regarded, and mostly European, so the test wasn’t rigged. In fact the tasting was conducted blind, and therefore completely above board, and the two Chileans were up against some of the greatest wines ever. The tasting produced a storm, and a belated recognition that the centre of gravity in the wine world had shifted. The point about conducting the test ‘blind’ was to focus on what people taste in the bottle, rather than being influenced by preconceived ideas of price and provenance. It proved that beautiful wines could be made in places other than France. Perceptions had lagged behind reality, and it took a blind product tasting to get even professional tasters to consider the products on their merits.

the very words premium, middle and budget are losing their meaning in window systems

Setting standards

In the last 15 years, things have moved on in window systems too. Some brands have disappeared, and a few old names are not what they were. Most are good quality, but that isn’t generally the issue. Product specification has progressed dramatically over the years, and some new systems are setting the highest standards and redefining what a system should be in today’s market.

Because conservatories are so important to fabricators now, I believe that window systems that do not take conservatories into account are not truly viable. They are incomplete and cannot properly be supported and completed with another manufacturer’s conservatory system, even if one or two tailored sections are supplied to zip them together. It never looks right.

The first complete system

Synerjy, Synseal’s new window system, is the first complete fourth generation system, and one that has been shaped by a whole new design philosophy. The result is a system that seamlessly integrates windows, doors, patios and conservatories. It’s too soon to tell how fabricators will categorise such new systems. We will probably have to wait until there are other complete systems competing on the same ground before fabricators are able to compare one against another.