Dear Tony
12th June 2012

The truth is out!

Finally! After years of warm edge technology suppliers battling it out in the press, the industry can sort the spin from the facts with the publication of the British Fenestration Council’s list of approved conductivity values. The market has been subjected to misleading statements and outright lies for a long time, but now the facts are there for all to see and I would like to be the first to thank the BFRC for providing this clarity.

Have you been misled?

Interestingly, the Advertising Standards Authority this week in celebration of its 50th anniversary published the fact that 80% of all complaints are about misleading advertising – something we’ve been subjected to prior to the BFRC publication. One warm edge supplier has spent the last few years basing its marketing on false claims of being the highest performing warm edge spacer, in a bid to win market share from the actual highest performing product. But as readers can see from the table, these underhand tactics can no longer hold any sway. Sealed unit manufacturers can see for themselves that these claims are simply not true. I’m glad that I’m not one of the customers who have been misled by these lies and built marketing campaigns and indeed their business case around such false claims.  

Another supplier has cleverly stated for some time that it is the highest performing warm edge spacer tube. The publication of these figures demonstrates how this statement could be perceived to be somewhat misleading as it conveniently leaves out any mention of competitive products that aren’t tubular and demonstrate even higher performance.

The published table confirms that Edgetech’s Super Spacer is the highest performing spacer product available. This also means that if you’re using Super Spacer in your units, your customers aren’t able to easily switch to one of your competitors, without having to resubmit figures for their Window Energy Ratings. If you’re courting a prospect that is using units with another spacer however, they can easily switch to you as their supplier using the BFRC’s substitution rule.

Hopefully now these figures have been released for public consumption by the BFRC, we can return to good old fashioned fair competition, without suppliers relying on mistruths to gain ground.

Yours sincerely

Andy Jones
Managing Director, Edgetech