In the May issue of Windows Active magazine, editor John Cowie acknowledged what most of us in this industry already know – that small and medium sized installation firms are increasingly winning the battle for hearts and minds in the retail sector.

The demise of two of the big three national companies may have been hastened by the cost of living crisis, but there is no doubt that their business model was already out of date. So many SMEs at the sharp end of our industry now offer such a compelling alternative that’s it hard to see how national and even big regional operators can hope to compete in the long term unless they adapt – and quickly.

It’s no surprise that we’ve also seen a similar decline in national installation companies in the volume commercial and social housing sectors – and a comparable rise in local and regional specialists who match, and in many cases outperform their larger competitors.

Take a look at the some of the big commercial procurement frameworks and you’ll see they’re now dominated by SMEs like The Window Company (Contracts). The big difference here is that business can’t be won or lost because of your brand or the size of your marketing budget, it can only be won on the basis of objective assessments of your performance.

Every tender document we receive sets minimum standards of performance and accreditation on everything from training to deliverables and health and safety to communication, and you won’t even be considered for those contracts unless you can prove that you meet those standards.

In recent years, SMEs have done that so successfully that we have largely squeezed out the national installation companies. Collectively, we have demonstrated that we are more agile and more accountable than many of them, and crucially we have also convinced the social housing sector to place a premium on the kind of personal service which smaller, and particularly family businesses, can offer to them and their residents.

That doesn’t mean though that we don’t sometimes still face the same challenge as retail installers to convince some buyers that lower prices don’t mean lower quality – we’ve come a very long way in addressing that misconception, but I think there’s still work for all of us to do if we are to bury that mindset once and for all.