Want to buy decking online? Another Q-deck Timber decking shop has gone live! You can now buy Garden decking online with Daws Heath Timber. If you’re local to Thundersley, Benfleet, you can now buy decking boards and related decking products online. Just visit your local Q-Deck online partners’ website Daws Heath Timber.
Want to buy decking online? Another Q-deck Timber decking shop has gone live! You can now buy Garden decking online with Gaza Timber. If you’re local to the Hildenborough area of Sevenoaks, Kent, you can now buy decking boards and related decking products online. Just visit your local Q-Deck online partners’ website Gaza Timber.
Want to buy Garden Decking online? Another Q-deck decking shop has gone live! You can now buy decking online with Maplin Timber. If you’re local to the South-end area of
Essex, you can now buy decking boards and related decking products online. Just visit your local Q-Deck online partners’ website Maplin Timber.
Hoppings have launched a brand new and innovative e-commerce solution for their independent timber and builders merchant customers. Our Building products Online Directory known as BOLD is now live. This online facility allows merchants to add and sell their own buildings products through their website alongside Hoppings Q-Deck decking and Q-Line mouldings. It has only been operational for 72hrs and the first two merchants to use it have already added in excess of 500 of their own building products between them. So far six merchants in total have signed up to take advantage of the BOLD facility.
For more information call Epping sales 01992 578877 or Lingfield sales 01342 844408
Supporting website coming soon – www.bold-ecommerce.co.uk
Welcome to the BOLD new era at Hoppings.
Forestrall Timber & Fencing Merchants Sign up for Hoppings new timber and builder merchants eCommerce solution.
Chris From Forestrall had this to say: “Congratulations to the team at Hoppings / Q-Deck for a very professionally delivered presentation and workshop explaining their new online venture B.O.L.D. (Building products On Line Directory) which aims to build on the excellent Q-Deck merchant partner concept that has worked so well for us at Forestrall Timber & Fencing Merchants….all questions were answered satisfactorily and clearly, such that I had decided to sign up even before leaving the presentation room.”
Quality Decking and the Hoppings team have been doing Movember, we are now half way through November and everyone’s moustaches are coming on quite nicely.
If you want to check up on our progress or even donate a couple of quid for a good cause come check us out at The Movember Website
Maintaining a high level of online customer service and meeting purchaser’s expectations is very important to quality decking. Q-Deck products and deck boards are sold online via a network of independent retailer partners and staff here at the manufactures’ Hoppings, audit every online purchase to ensure standards and expectations are being met. Here is some feedback from another happy Q-Deck decking customer.
“I found the online sales helped massively – I do not have much available time to visit retailers due to a heavy workload, so have to work around this. Online availability was a godsend, especially as my nearest stockist (Dunwoody’s) is not really very local. The only thing that was of note, and because of the nature of your business is totally to be expected was that some of the stated lengths were actually different, but a representative rang and spoke to my wife, and with my written calculations to hand the two of them were able to work out what was needed and re spec the order. This I feel was fantastic service and would like to pass on my thanks.
So I am very pleased that I used Hoppings/Dunwoody’s and should I need to, will use again. The service was first rate, the online sales a lot less painful than I was expecting, delivery was prompt, early and efficient and the price was good.
The online video’s also helped – I’m a computer Engineer by trade, so making a deck was a first, but I’ve attached a pic of the almost finished design, which has turned out really well.”
An article, written by Adam Pulfer of Hoppings Softwood Products, featured in the TTJ magazine on the 13th October. Adam explains how Hoppings partner its customers in targeting online sales for decking.
The overall decking market plateaued around 2008 but Hoppings Softwood Products has managed to maintain very similar sales volumes to the previous three years through consistency of quality and supply, product innovation and marketing support for our retail customers. Sales of decking represent 30% of Hoppings’ overall turnover, with the main tranche being in mouldings and PSE sections.
Our Q-Deck range has been established for over 13 years and is available from more than 230 stockists nationwide – predominately timber and builders merchants. Q-Deck products are positioned at the top end of the pre-treated, certified, European redwood sector and decking boards are treated with Tanalised E Extra including a water-repellent additive that provides added protection from the elements both at point of sales and in situ.
The most recent addition to the range is Lyptus decking, a truly sustainable hardwood decking board grown in plantations in South America and harvested within 20 years. Prior to this, Q-Grip Strips and Q-Grip decking were added to the range. Grip Strip is an elegant retrofit insert that can be applied to two styles of decking boards within the Q-Deck range, providing allied sales opportunities for the merchant. Q-Grip decking has built-in slip resistance in the form of resin bound aggregates and is mainly used in the commercial sector.
As Steve Young, director of the Timber Decking & Cladding Association, has reported (see p29), there has been an unsurprising trend for some retailers to try to stimulate sales by offering lower grades of decking but Q-Deck hasn’t been affected to date and won’t follow suit as the brand stands for quality. Plus, there comes a point where a product simply isn’t fit for the intended use, which could damage the market if promoted incorrectly.
Sales of Q-Deck hardwood decking are a fraction of our softwood equivalents but, as the decking market matures, consumers will want more choice and some individuality, which is why we plan to continue to develop the premium end of our range.
For many years we have wanted to see our products being sold online but not via the mass online hubs some of our competitors have adopted. Decking isn’t actually that easy to sell over the web unless you are targeting sales at the cheap end of the market. Thus, way back in 2008, we started formulating plans of how we could sell Q-Deck products online without skirting around our loyal retail customer base.
Retail partners
We adopted a simple strategy of entering the online sales channel with the services of our retail customers as partners. We take the hassle away from our customers wanting to sell online by providing all the support and information they need. Essentially, we support them by packaging our Q-Deck range into a satellite website with shopping cart and this gets embedded into their own website. If they don’t have a website then we can build one for them.
However, all shops need customers and the strategy fails without the ability to generate online customers. When a merchant becomes a Q-Deck online partner they get dynamically listed on www.qualitydecking.co.uk and www.decking.co.uk, Hoppings’ virtual salesmen whose goal is to attract over 180,000 unique visitors in 2013.
Retail outlets carefully design and lay out their shops to encourage people to buy goods and website design should be seen as no different. Before launching the online partnering strategy we had to give www.qualitydeclcing.co.uk a facelift and spent months redesigning many pages to be more appealing, more intuitive and easy to use. This redesign tracked through to our partners Q-Deck online shops.
Bringing the skill and service of our retail partners to the online channel in the way we have hasn’t affected any buying structures already in place between us and has had minimal operational impact on Hoppings. It truly is a win-win for all parties because we’ve provided the consumer with awareness and convenience by enabling them to buy Q-Deck online while maintaining the reassurance of dealing with a local supplier.
Devising and formulating this award- winning strategy [Hoppings won 2012 TTJ Awards for Excellence in Marketing and for Website of the Year] stemmed from setting long-term aims from which the team start to assess how to go about achieving them using marketing analysis techniques. Ultimately it is wise to decide what will be best for your company in the long term and to do this effectively takes a lot of thought and discussion both internally and externally. Hoppings is very aware that some sections of the industry and even other industries will follow our essentially simple strategy but not without a huge amount of thought, effort, work and, most importantly, co-operation.
At Timber Expo we showed our online partners how our e-commerce strategy is being developed still further to allow them to add their other building products to the facility. If you are a merchant interested in attending a Hoppings e-commerce open day in November please e-mail info@hoppings.co.uk and we will provide further details.
Source: TTJ Magazine.
Latham’s makes it a hat-trick at TTJ Awards
James Latham pic has won the TTJ Timber Trader of the Year Award for the third consecutive year – and for the seventh time since the Awards started in 1997. Director Nick Latham was presented with the trophy at the TTJ Awards lunch at London’s Savoy Hotel on September 14. Around 330 guests attended and the host speaker was TV presenter and Lord Sugar’s right- hand man on The Apprentice, Nick Hewer, who revealed a timber trade link when he showed a video clip of him transporting a Wadkin woodworking machine to a carpentry shop in Africa. “James Latham is delighted to have won the TTJ Timber Trader of the Year Award for the third consecutive year,” said Peter Latham, Latham’s chairman. “I am exceptionally proud of this accomplishment, which is testament to the continuing hard work and dedication of the entire workforce.”
Hoppings Softwood Products also had a successful day, winning two categories in the judged awards – Excellence in Marketing and Website of the Year (for its decking website www.qualitydecking.co.uk). This represented the first time in the TTJ Awards history that a company had won two judged awards in the same year.
Hoppings’ marketing and technical director Adam Pulfer said the double win showed a small, independent timber importer “punching above its weight”.
“We always knew we were onto something special with our e-commerce merchant partnering strategy but to be recognised as the best by an independent panel of judges for both Excellence in Marketing and Website of the Year tops it all.
“It is really satisfying to have ‘done the double’ but it doesn’t come without a load of hard work by many people.”
Other winners were Arbor Forest Products for Softwood Trader of the Year; Timbmet for Hardwood Trader of the Year; Meyer Timber for Panels Trader of the Year; and International Plywood (Importers) for Plywood Trader of the Year. Horndon Timber Products scooped the Small Timber Business of the Year Award.
The two winners of the Career Development Award were W Howard’s John Critchley in the under-25 trainee category and Howarth Timber Group’s Peter Kelly in the over-25 category.
Timber Innovation was won by Sherpa Connection Systems; Soil Association Woodmark won the Environmental Achievement Award; and Stora Enso was rewarded with the Achievement in Engineered Timber Award.
TTJ Awards sponsors included Lonza Wood Protection; Progressive Solutions; Coillte Panel Products; W Howard; Combilift; SCA Timber Supply; TRADA Technology and Timber Expo; Osmose; Daltons Wadkin; Metsa Wood; Snows Timber; and English Woodlands Timber.
Hoppings are exhibiting at TimberExpo at the Richo Arena in Coventry on the 25th & 26th September. Merchants will be interested to know that we are soft launching the next phase of our e-commerce strategy that allows our Q-Deck Online partners to add and sell their other buildings products online through the facility that Hoppings has already established for them. We welcome all visitors to our stand G8 that will be promoting our involvement with the supply of timber to the Olympic Park, our key product areas including Q-Grip slip resistant decking and thermowood modified wood products new for 2013. Our new website www.decking.co.uk will be presented to both our Q-Deck Stockists and Q-Deck Online Partners as the next phase of attracting a whole load of new business for them.
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