Installer Editor Joe Dart interviews Mike Riseley, Sales Director at RWC, about why the company is bringing its portfolio together under the John Guest brand.
Q: Could you give us a short overview of RWC as a business?
A: In terms of RWC as a business and as a global group, we are a manufacturer of plumbing, water control, heating and fluid management products. We’re actually one of the world’s largest manufacturers of push-fit pipe and fitting systems, as well as water control valves, and that includes the Speedfit, SharkBite and Reliance ranges.
We’re market leaders in the UK, certainly with the John Guest Speedfit range of pipe and fittings. And that range incorporates not only push-fit pipe and fittings, we have MDPE fittings, we have underfloor heating and flexible hoses that sit within that Speedfit range.
Outside of that, the John Guest Reliance range includes a broad range of water control valves for controlling temperature, pressure and flow. Within that is the UK market leading tenant valve, which we are very proud of.
We’re designing products that ultimately help make installers’ lives easier. The aim is to deliver solutions that help them install efficiently and provide reliable product performance that works safely across various installations in both domestic and commercial settings.
Q: Why have you decided to bring the RWC portfolio together under the John Guest brand?
A: It’s something we’ve really been considering for quite some time actually. We’ve debated it a lot internally. We have engaged with various customers to try and understand their view. That feedback from customers, from both end customers and distributors is invaluable.
The product portfolio has expanded quite significantly over the years, and this links to our current strategy, where one of the key components is to further enhance the domestic and commercial portfolio. We therefore wanted to ensure we’re presenting clarity to our customers, creating something that’s clearer and more appealing; helping customers understand the product range and select products easily, as well as understanding across the John Guest portfolio how they come together, fit together, work together.
Q: What will be the impact of this change on your customers?
A: I touched on simplicity, that’s one of the biggest impacts. There will be no change to SKU codes, product descriptions or product performance, but customers will see some design changes to the packaging and our website over time.
We’re hoping that customers will, because of that ease of navigation around the product portfolio, have a deeper understanding of the connected offer. This will therefore help them make decisions more easily when selecting the correct products for their purpose and installation type ultimately.
Q: The promise for the new branding is ‘Engineered for Confidence’. When we talk about confidence, how does that look to a typical installer?
We have 65 years of trusted engineering and innovation in many industries. When we do talk about confidence, it’s ultimately around customers having complete confidence in the integrity of our joints and the performance of the solutions within our wider portfolio. And also them having the confidence that they’ve selected the absolute right product for their installation.
That kind of flows through to then not only selecting the product, installing the product, and knowing that when they install it, it’s absolutely reliable. This then flows through to performance; the product performs absolutely as they would expect from any product from the John Guest range.
So, to summarise, it’s about confidence in selecting the right product, installation, and performance of that product. And all that comes from that engineering discipline and we are rooted deeply in that engineering background.
Q: Why are you announcing this at InstallerSHOW?
A: For us it just seemed to be the perfect environment. The show is the industry-leading exhibition, so it’s fantastic to be able to exhibit there again. And the timing is absolutely impeccable and we thought we’d use this environment to communicate because the organisers do a great job of attracting our key distribution partners and end customers.
It’s really great to be able to exhibit and communicate this brand architecture to our target market and the footfall the show brings across the three days. We will have new products on the stand that will be exhibiting the new brand architecture quite proudly. There’s no better environment out there for communicating these exciting updates.
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Joe Dart (author)
As an Editor working across Installer, Joe utilises over a decade's worth of journalistic experience to deliver informative content for the trades.
