On October 15, the hard-working team at Corinthian Doors announced that due to changes in its ‘channel to market strategy’, that it will be closing its direct to market operations in Cairns from November 29, 2019.
Corinthian Doors General Manager Steve Gregson also announced Cairns Hardware will take up the tenancy of the Cairns facility. The reason for this blog article is to remind the building industry is that Plaster / Metal / Cladding Cairns and Townsville is already a distributor of Corinthian Doors. Just to clarify though, we currently do not have a partnership with Hume Doors, for this particular product please see the teams at either Cairns Hardware or Bunnings.
The total value of Cairns residential projects (on contracts over $3,000) has been falling annually for many years now. With a reduction of as much as 50% over a 5 year time span, we know only too well how ultra competitive our regional markets have become. ($400,000,000 in 2014-15 all the way down to $200,000,000 in 2018-19).
This data has been collated from the QBCC residential data.
From our perspective we are currently witnessing an interesting dichotomy. On one side we are seeing a number of national businesses withdraw branches out of regional areas, as the margins are being squeezed and internal structures shift towards finding efficiencies via reducing their physical footprint. On the other side, some local traditional family businesses are selling out to bigger state, national or even international conglomerates (as attempting to become a monopoly is becoming a norm).
Cairns Hardware , Tonkin Steel, Big Hammer and MBS (to name a few) are no longer completely locally owned, this is not a criticism, just an increasing trend that we are witnessing in the marketplace. For us at PMC, being a locally owned family business keeps our feet on the ground as management decisions, reactions to the local marketplace and interactions with our customer base is still being done over the counter.
Our primary focus and concern has always been on what is strategically best for the local far north Queensland marketplace. Our move away from a franchise agreement of being a sole Knauf distributor, into our independent operation has opened up so many doors to work with a variety of leading brands across the construction industry.
Our goal is to work with our customers on trying to find the best range of products to meet their needs or specific project requirements. Alongside the vast array of building products that we have on offer, the requests for Corinthian Doors from our customers has been steadily increasing.
Our independent status allows us to offer a wide array of complementary products with Corinthian Doors orders, including door hardware, door locks, door jambs, skirting boards, architraves, door frames and accessories from leading brands such as Lockwood, Gainsborough, N2Lok and Innovative Timber Ideas. At PMC we will happily order, advise, source and deliver on the specific brands and products that you require. Alternatively, if you would like assistance on meeting certain requirements, constraints or budgets and don’t have a need to purchase from a specific brand, our team can provide you a with variety of solutions based upon your request.
Understandably price is always a driving factor when choosing building materials, ‘more for less’ is always a motivating factor, we get that. However, from our unique position across the entire local market we can see that inefficiencies within the industry are also a costly factor that can eat away at profit margins. Whilst we don’t believe we will ever be truly ‘cheaper’ than the large corporates on a given product, we do feel we offer a better value service.
So for all your door related needs in your upcoming projects, the PMC team will happily help you go through the Corinthian Doors’ extensive range, where you will find doors to meet every budget requirement from low-cost doors to products for the luxury home market.
Corinthian Doors
Plaster / Metal / Cladding
Cairns: (07) 4031 1277
Townsville: (07) 4725 6872
