Evolving product offering drives meteoric growth
The success of Unique Window Systems has been nothing short of meteoric and especially so over recent years. Far from seeing this as a cause for complacency however, the fabricator of aluminium systems continues to enhance and evolve its offer
As success stories go, they don’t come much more impressive than Unique’s. In the last four years, the fabricator of windows, doors and curtain walling has seen its turnover more than double, surging from £20.8m to over £45m. During that same timeframe, the company’s headcount has also grown by 50%, increasing from 200 to 300 people.
Unique puts these remarkable achievements down to a combination of factors including its commitment to offering high quality products backed by equally high levels of service, the levels of responsiveness it can offer as a business that remains proudly family owned, and its genuinely entrepreneurial and can-do approach.
This entrepreneurialism and can-do attitude also mean the fabricator is far from ready to rest on its laurels. Instead, it is already eyeing the next milestones in its phenomenal journey and putting in place the infrastructure and initiatives to achieve them. “To maintain our exceptional growth trajectory, Unique has a highly active programme of inward investment” comments Sunil Patel, joint MD at the business. “This enables us to keep building on our successes and to deliver continued commercial advantages for our loyal and growing customer base.”
Investing for the future
In line with this philosophy, Unique has recently made the biggest ever investment in its nearly 20 year history, creating a new and state-of-the-art 65,000 ft² fabrication facility for its PVC-U products. Due to the highly coordinated nature of Unique’s operations, this major capital expenditure has had knock-on benefits for the aluminium side of the fabricator’s business too. It has enabled access to additional technology, production capacity and space that is being used to deliver dividends universally and regardless of a customer’s material choice.
“The investment into our new PVC-U facility has opened up new and exciting possibilities across the board’ comments Sunil. “For instance, it has allowed us to enhance how we fabricate aluminium products. Our aluminium division now operates out of a newly renovated 45,000 ft². facility that is fully equipped and resourced to manage orders with a value of £5m or more. As part of this facility’s renovation, we also took the opportunity to evaluate our existing aluminium set up and to identify where improvements could be made to benefit both our business and the customers we serve. In effect, the renovation gave us a blank canvas so we could reorganise our fabrication lines and place machinery in the best arrangement to increase efficiency.”
This redevelopment was combined with the implementation of new systems and with steps to ensure even greater integration between all areas of Unique’s fabrication infrastructure. The results have been notable. It has led to a more efficient way of working that has helped Unique to increase output, drive out cost and reduce lead times – and all whilst maintaining or improving product quality.
Unique’s enhanced aluminium fabrication operation is also enabling the business to provide greater product choice.The fabricator already offers solutions that cater for the widest range of requirements, tastes and price points. This includes windows and doors from well-known brands such as AluK and WarmCore as well as its own signature Unifold bifold doors. More recently, it has added products from globally respected Spanish manufacturer, Cortizo, including Cortizo 4700 sliding doors, bifold plus doors and casement windows.
All three of these systems offer beautiful aesthetics along with some equally attractive functional benefits. This includes excellent acoustic performance, unlimited colour choices, impressive weathertightness, high levels of security and remarkable thermal efficiency.
Plus, there’s more to come from Unique. “Our progressive nature as a business means our aluminium offer is ever evolving” says Sunil. “We’ve a number of further and equally exciting new developments and product introductions planned for the immediate future. This includes the addition of the stunning Cortizo Cor Vision sliding door system but that’s another story for another time in order to do it full justice.As ever with Unique, it is definitely worth watching this space.”
Tel: 0116 236 4656
E: sales@uws.co.uk