Most homeowners start in the same place. Something is wrong with a window, they go looking for a part number, and they hit a wall.
There is no sticker. There is no model plate. There is no catalog page that matches what’s sitting in the opening.
So they call and ask us to send a catalog. We tried that once. It was a book full of rectangles.
Why the Catalog Never Worked
Picture it. One photo of a window at the top of the page. Nineteen different SKUs listed underneath it. Now you get to decide which one you own.
That is not a shortcut. That is a test nobody signed up for.
The details that separate one sash from another are specific and technical. A casement is a casement, and at least it announces itself. Double hungs are worse. Double hung windows carry almost no identifying markings at all.
If your house was built between 1980 and 2005, you may be looking at a Caradco, a Norco, a Pozzi, or a JELD-WEN unit that stopped being supported by its own manufacturer years ago. Every one of those companies quit making replacement parts. We didn’t.
That’s the part worth sitting with. We build aftermarket wood replacement sashes for legacy brands that walked away from them. Windows is all we do.
The Reframe: We Do the Identifying, Not You
Here is the whole idea behind how Fenster orders work.
You do not need to know your brand. You do not need to know your series. You do not need to decode a SKU.
Just show us what you have.
When a customer tells us they have XYZ windows, that’s a starting point, not an answer. We make eighteen versions of that. The photos tell us which one is yours. The measurements tell us the rest.
The average homeowner has no idea how wide the window industry actually got over forty or fifty years of home construction. That’s fine. That’s our job. We wiped the slate clean so you don’t have to figure any of it out.
Square peg in a square hole. Just tell us how big the peg is.
Four Things That Make an Order Go Right
1. Photos do what part numbers can’t. A clear picture of the sash, the frame, the hardware, and any visible markings gives us more than a model number would. This is a visual product. We have to see it.
2. Measure the rectangle, not the window. Stop thinking about the window as a system. You are ordering the moving part. Measure the opening the sash sits in, follow the prompts, and let us handle the rest.
3. Uploading the photos is the hard part, and it isn’t hard. The most technically challenging step in the whole process is getting pictures from your phone onto the order form. If that’s not your thing, there is a tutorial for iPhone and Android on the site. There is also a grandkid.
4. Gather first, order second. The order form takes five or ten minutes. Collecting the information takes longer. Do that part first and the form goes fast.
How Long This Actually Takes
Set aside fifteen minutes.
Not fifteen minutes of clicking. Fifteen minutes of gathering. Measurements, photos, and a few answers about what’s failing.
Compare that to the alternative. Three hours at your kitchen table with a salesman working you toward a full window replacement you didn’t need. Fifteen minutes on our website is not a lot to ask.
Where Homeowners Get Tripped Up
Expecting an Amazon checkout. Amazon trained all of us to expect instant. Type three letters, click, done. That’s a great experience for a paperback. It is not how a custom wood sash gets built for a 1994 casement.
We fully admit and embrace that this is not a quick, easy purchase. Knowing that going in is what keeps people from getting frustrated halfway through.
Trying to become a window expert first. You don’t need to. That’s backwards. Let us be the experts.
Assuming the whole window has to go. It doesn’t. Just replace the part that’s broken.
What To Do Next
Work the checklist before you open the order form. Take the photos. Measure the rectangle. Answer the simple questions with simple answers.
Then send it to us and let us do what we’ve been doing for 25 years.
Your home is worth saving. Start your order at fensterusa.com.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Ryan: One of the biggest hurdles we’re trying to touch on is identifying the correct window. We tried to do catalogs. Some of the old school folks want to know, can you send me a catalog? It’s a book full of rectangles.
Jason: Right.
Ryan: There’s a picture of a window, and then 19 different SKUs beneath it that you’d have to figure out. I hate to trivialize it, but that’s literally what it is. The catalog would just be a bunch of pictures of rectangles, because the details are so specific and technical.
A casement window is a casement window. Double hungs are worse. They’re almost impossible to identify. Double hung windows have very little identifying marking on them at all.
So we take that whole part, that whole guesswork, out of it. Just show us what you have.
I know I keep harping on the phone call people, but my whole thing is I enjoy those conversations, particularly with customers who have bought something. We can’t help you unless we can see what you need help with.
Jason: Help me help you, Rod.
Ryan: Help me help you. I need the Quan.
Jason: You are my ambassador of Quan.
Ryan: I am. I always have been.
We have to see what you have. There’s such a visual component to this. Somebody says, I’ve got XYZ windows. That’s great. We make 18 of those. Which one do you have?
The average customer, the typical homeowner, has no idea the scope of the window industry. Forty or fifty years of home construction, and we have products that work with all of it. It would blow people’s minds.
So we wiped the slate clean. You don’t have to know any of that. You don’t have to figure any of that out.
The most technically challenging thing is uploading the pictures into the order form. We have some old school folks who are challenged by that. I understand. But they’ve got young people in their lives. Someone can come over and help. They can ask a neighbor, a friend, a grandkid.
Jason: You know what would be helpful?
Ryan: What’s that?
Jason: If we had a video that showed how to load pictures onto the order form.
Ryan: That video is there.
Jason: Oh, it is. Maybe it’s more of a tutorial.
Ryan: For iPhone and Android, both.
Jason: What about flip phones?
Ryan: Well, you got me on flip phones. Back to your Ball State days. That’s all you had, remember?
Jason: I miss my StarTAC. I loved it.
Ryan: Good old Motorola.
Jason: I briefly had a BlackBerry, but not for very long.
Ryan: Not me. I had one of those Androids where the cover slid and you had a big keyboard underneath. That one was pretty fancy.
Jason: In our youth.
I’m not sure if there’s anything else you want to bring in, but we’ve hit on the customers and the ordering. We recapped the common mistakes, how windows fail, why they break, why they need to be replaced. I’ll let you take it home from here.
Ryan: One more thing I want to touch on is the questions that are difficult. The pieces of the puzzle customers may have trouble with.
We’ve put the information in there. We’ve added the support structure. Somebody says, I don’t know what they’re talking about. Okay, here’s a tutorial for that. Here’s a video we shot.
I’d even use this as a plug to follow us on socials and follow us on YouTube, because there’s so much more information in the videos I shoot in the shop with the guys. All those little tidbits. There’s a whole other level of information, confidence building, security that we can give a potential customer. These guys are legit. They know what they’re doing. They know what they’re talking about.
Where that confidence still lacks for the customer is not making those connections.
Jason: We’re really hacking on Amazon in this video.
Ryan: Where Amazon kind of ruined it is that everything is instant gratification. I type in A-M-A and Amazon pops up. They put so much into simplifying their platform, and it’s instantaneous.
Jeff Bezos didn’t even like books when he started. He said, okay, books are easy to store, it’s an easy place to start, and then I can understand the logistics network I need to build.
So we understand that what we’re trying to do is complicated. It’s not an easy purchase. It can be a confusing purchase, particularly if you have no window knowledge and you’re on the outside looking in.
I think we’ve hit all the bases of just let us do what we know how to do. But we fully admit and embrace that it’s not a quick, easy purchase. It’s going to take some time.
That’s something we’re constantly working on. How do we connect the customer to that information and build in the confidence?
Our biggest takeaway from this episode is don’t overthink it. I use this analogy all the time. Square peg in a square hole. Just tell us how big the peg is. You don’t need to know what type of peg it is. You kind of need to know when the peg was made, but even that, you don’t have to. Everybody gets that analogy.
Rectangles. Stop thinking about windows. Just measure the rectangle and let us do the rest.
We’ve already done the legwork, making sure our customers order the right thing and get the right product that fixes the repair issue. Let us be the experts. Just show us what you’ve got. Give us the information we’re asking for. Simple answers to simple questions. That’s all we’re asking.
Jason: So somebody’s going to sit down and order a window for the first time and they’ve never done it. They know very little about what they’re doing. How long do I need to order a window and do it properly? Should I set aside 15 minutes? Give me that expectation of how much time I need to dedicate to your ordering process.
Ryan: Great question. The time frame is really how long it takes you to gather the information we’re looking for. I think we do a good job of saying, here’s what you need before you start.
Jason: Checklists.
Ryan: We have checklists. Here’s the information we’re going to ask for before you jump into the order.
Filling out the order form can take five minutes, ten minutes. It’s collecting the information that can be time consuming.
But you trade that for all the hassle. Three hours at your kitchen table with the guy strong-arming you into $120,000 worth of window. Fifteen minutes on our website is not a lot to ask.
Jason: That makes sense. As long as you set that expectation up front. Don’t come into this thinking it’s an Amazon click, click, checkout, because you’re going to be unsatisfied. You’re going to be frustrated. It’s not going to work out.
This is a checklist. Go through the checklist. Make sure you have the information before you start the order, and everybody’s going to be happier.
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