RC: How do you define the Window World customer?
BI: It’s someone who has identified an opportunity to improve the value and beauty of their home ? and, most importantly, the energy efficiency of their home. They’re 25 to 55 in age.
RC: When the stimulus bill was passed, few would have thought that Window World could bring a qualifying product to market, let alone so soon. Can you tell us about how that happened?
BI: As a price-point marketer, we had to have a product that qualified and still fit into our price-point approach. So as soon as the ARRA and tax credit came out, we were working hand-in-hand with our manufacturers. Associated Materials handled the engineering and testing and we reviewed the results, along with NFRC [National Fenestration Rating Council] and AAMA [American Architectural Manufacturers Association]. Of course, we also wanted to make sure that we could educate the consumer and our owners as well.
RC: How did you do that?
BI: Through conference calls, and question and answer sessions with owners and our window manufacturing team. Also by using regional teams to talk to our owners. We do regional meetings in the winter, so when the ARRA law came out, we were in front of owners to explain it.
RC: What roll has the stimulus bill played in your sales growth this year?
BI: There’s one more year to go with the tax credit, so it’s hard to tell what the ultimate effect will be. I will say it shored up what would’ve been a down year and turned it into a slightly positive year. And looking at other companies, it turned what would have been a double-digit decline into a single-digit decline. For us it held us just about flat. But we’ve got two big months ahead in the window season.
RC: Window World management has acknowledged that for the company to grow further, your dealers have to be able to sell substantial quantities of other products, such as siding. What sort of progress have you made on that front? Is Window World still essentially a window company? Do you want it to be?
BI: We are knowledgeable and professional sellers of siding, entry doors, garage doors, and, in some markets, gutter products. But at our core we are a window company, and 90% of our sales are still windows.
RC: Window World has a roughly 1.5% to 2% share of the total window replacement market. Where do you see that in five years time?
BI: By our calculations, we have a 5% share of the market for vinyl replacement windows. I think we’d like to double our market share to 10% of the vinyl window market and 3% of the total window replacement market. We see the opportunity. To do that we’ll continue to build our brand nationally through brand-building campaigns such as those around motor sports. We’ll also continue to build our dealer base. Right now we’re in 46 states but none of those markets are saturated.