There are many reasons people choose a particular company’s window shades in their projects. It may be long-term preference based on familiarity; product quality; price; breadth of product offering; or any one of a dozen other factors.
One factor that may not always be considered is a company’s impact on a customer’s bottom line. We’re talking about more than the having least expensive product, here. We’re talking about small things that add up to time savings over a project, thus adding to the general contractor’s profit margin.
One way Draper can help with the bottom line is how we pack our shades. When we pack our shades for shipping to the job site, we include the mounting hardware with the shades, instead of sending it in a separate box or skid. This saves the onsite installers time because when they grab a shade out of a box the mounting brackets are right there—they don’t have to take time distributing or going back and forth when they run out of brackets.
Another time saver is in the way we work with freight companies on product delivery. Draper will coordinate the delivery of shades to the floor of the building where they are to be installed, instead of having them all dropped if in one place. This is a big saver, since there’s no time lost in coordinating placement of shades on their respective floors, or in going back and forth between the product location and the installation area.
We place a card inside with each shade with details about the shade, including any room markings the dealer may have provided to us. Before a skid or box of shades leaves the Draper factory, we stick what we call a “license plate” on it. This contains much of the same information, so it can be quickly and easily routed once onsite.
We also ship motorized shades with quick connectors. These make it possible for electricians to run wire up to where the shades are going to be installed, with one end of the connector ready for the shade to arrive. Wired to the motor is the other end of the connector. Instead of having to take time to connect wiring, the installers just “plug in” the shade. In the past we used so-called “Anderson plugs” for this. Now we use smaller M12 connectors, which are easier to handle and fit through standard cable exit holes without needing to modify them.
Think about these three small items for a moment. Even if they only mean a time savings of three minutes per shade, over a multi-story building these little arrangements can add up to big labor savings. Let’s take a seven story building as an example. Let’s further say forty shades per floor, for a total of 280 shades. Those three minutes per shade add up to 840 minutes. If you have two people working on the install, that’s 1680 minutes, or 28 hours, total. If you’re paying $100 an hour, the math is simple—you’ve just added $2800 back to your bottom line. And that’s just on one small part of one building.
Interested in finding out how else we can work with you to make your bottom line healthier? Contact the Draper shade representative today by clicking here and finding your region’s shade contact.
