Helping homeowners to make the most of their outdoor living space we look at where we have come from and where this so very popular UK patio roof market all began.
Ten years ago, at Elegant we were promoting glass verandas (back then a new product concept) with only a few customers opting for the full glass room. Trends change and while verandas have continued to grow in popularity we’ve seen the garden glass room market growing fast, catching up. As outdoor living continues to evolve I’d like to share a few highlights from my observations over time. But first, our credentials, that I can speak with at least some authority…
Elegant have been around from the beginning. Any firm can easily ‘claim’ experience or history with a product, within a market, but the Internet Archive (the “WayBack Machine”) will readily spill the beans! Paste our address www.glass-verandas.co.uk into the search box at https://web.archive.org and you’ll see our old website from March 2009. We started on the veranda concept back in 2008 and launched our site by the following spring. Back then we were on http: not https:, but typing the www. of any company will quickly pull their web history for all to see – albeit not perfectly working as it did. Simply select a year, and click the coloured dots, to view any website at that date – instantly proving length of service and showing what products were offered at that time. It even stores old sites which no longer exist.
Looking at our website from a decade ago I see that our glass verandas aplenty but I see that glass rooms didn’t feature much in those very early days. The built-in sun awning option, and spotlights, were the only two accessories that we offered (or promoted), and while side-screens get a small mention, it appears that any side glazing or sliding glass doors feature only in two small photos – very bottom of the Gallery. How things have changed! Gradually, some customers asked for a side glass wall, to block the breeze, or to help further enclose their space. Over time such requests grew, followed by customers wanting to add front doors, and hence our Glass Rooms market took shape! We added a page “glass rooms” to our website in 2010, helping to spearhead the modern movement, and today I can say that Glass Rooms equal our Veranda enquiries.
Uncertain of how to label this room product, at first I wanted to call it a “Patio Solarium”. This looked good to me until (once again) a genius named Greg showed the way, the term “Glass Rooms” sticking. Delightfully, the only still-existing original rival I can think of, a firm whom along with us at Elegant helped the Glass Verandas to market in those early days (a long standing company covering nationwide) I note that for a year prior to 2009 they were marketing glass veranda products as Smoking Shelters!
I say that not to mock, not in any way. Fact is in those early days we few pioneers didn’t know what to call any of it… and we knew nothing of how popular it would all become!
