Page 28 - HW March 2021

security, doors & windows
RESEARCHING THIS TOPIC in February last year, the word was connectivity and COVID-19 was barely a blip on the horizon.
Now, in 2021, as I write, the industry is still all about connections – but disconnection has also been top of mind for many in recent months.
Taking the temperature of the marketplace, it’s no surprise that the players in security, doors & windows have been working hard at both supply and demand.
Bryce Carter, National Sales Manager – Residential at Allegion (New Zealand) says “the appetite to spend in New Zealand is still really strong” and as a result Allegion for one is “very busy at the moment”.
“Things are extremely positive. If you look at consents alone, they tell a very positive story for the industry as a whole, despite varied economic forecasts.
Adding a retail perspective, Sean Crowley, GM Sales at
KnK Architectural Hardware, agrees the market is strong at the moment, plus homeowners are happy to go to higher level product.
“Price doesn’t seem to be an issue,” he says. “Money seems to be secondary at the moment, and certainly homeowners are spending like there’s no tomorrow on their homes.”
On top of which, “a great bonus” is that group home builders seem to have settled on “a decent level of quality product that is going to last”.
Having said this, Sean qualifies: “There are builders out there who are getting real cheap stuff – thankfully they’re not buying from us, so it’ll be someone else’s problem in five years’ time!”
Nick Rutter of GD Rutter is another to characterise the last 12 months as “surprisingly good” and that he’s looking at more good growth moving forward.
It’s not all guns and roses out there though. Citing recent news of well-known building companies failing, Nick Rutter says: “I think we’re lucky that the building industry is still going along quite well.
“The banks are definitely tightening down and that might have some effect on new builds moving forward. I think they’re starting to get a bit jumpy, a bit worried that there’s a lot of people overextending themselves.
“The next 12 months are possibly going to be interesting moving forward.”
STOCK IS KING – SUPPLY CHAIN WOES
10 years ago, the annual drop in production during Chinese New Year was still a nightmare for many involved in the hardware channel. Now it’s just part of a new normal.
Also part of this new normal is the deleterious effect COVID- 19 has had on the supply chain.
Cheri McGregor, Marketing Manager at Supreme Lock & Hardware, is certainly not alone when she says the company is “focusing on supply chain and service levels at present to ensure the best outcomes for our customers.”
Last March, Nick Rutter and GD Rutter, like everyone else, worked on three different scenarios faced with global disruption, but the scenario that eventuated was different again, the upside being that it turned out to be more positive.
“We were looking at the worst case, and it actually got a lot better than that. But it just proved how naive we all were going into the first lockdown.”
Still, says Nick, supply has been “a bit of a challenge”: “The factories can get the product through. It’s just you’ve got to somehow miraculously get it to New Zealand. And that’s been the biggest issue.”
Alongside the price of containers, the cost of air freight has also soared.
The new normal these days, says Nick Rutter, is that you can’t “just ring up and expect the product to be there”. Planning is key, and there’s no magic wand.
“It’s not like next week this is all going to sort itself out. Potentially it could be until the end of the year and maybe even later – who knows? It really depends on how many people get
One smart home platform to
bind them all?
Allegion has acquired US-based smart home ecosystem developer Yonomi, which will continue operating as an independent business unit within the Allegion family,.
Founded in 2013, Yonomi was early in creating an agnostic (i.e. open) smart-home ecosystem that automatically discovers and coordinates devices.
Today, Yonomi solutions are used in more than 150 countries, and millions of IoT devices are connected to its platforms.
The purchase of Yonomi, says Allegion NZ’s Bryce Carter, is “extremely exciting”.
Until now, he says,“the biggest challenge has been how do we take these great smart products, in particular Wi-Fi-enabled devices, and integrate them into a cohesive ecosystem, with products working together seamlessly under one platform?
“That’s been one of the biggest challenges but now solutions like Yonomi’s take care of a lot of that pain.”
Yonomi brings to the party a no-cost platform that already works with a range of leading smart home product providers like Philips Hue, Logitech, Sonos and Schlage and promises to make seamless the integration of a broad range of Wi-Fi-enabled smart products into one smart home solution.
www.yonomi.co www.allegion.co.nz
26 NZHJ | MARCH 2021
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