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• Market leader in windscreen replacement National Windscreens is launching a 24hour door glass replacement service for most popular carderived vans, estates and saloon cars.
The new service is announced in the wake of figures from the Home Office showing robbery and theft from cars to be the fastest growing crimes in England and Wales.
At the same time the company is moving ahead on other fronts. It has adopted a distinctive new livery for all its vehicles and red uniforms and overalls for all mobile and workshop personnel. A new branch has just been opened in Belfast.
"Apart from the fact that a broken window lets in rain or snow," says chief executive Gwyn Lloyd, who announced the service, "it also leaves the vehicle vulnerable to further theft."
The company has 103 branches on the UK mainland. Under special arrangements with insurance companies including Guardian Royal Exchange, Norwich Union, Provincial, Allstate and Halifax, National Windscreens is specified as supplier of replacement screens for all policy holders with screen cover on fully comprehensive policies.
The national control centre at Tamworth, Staffordshire, operates call-response 24 hours a day.
The firm's 30% share of the windscreen replacement market contributes an annual turnover of .n5 million from 225,000 replacement screens a year.
The company was formed five years ago with 57 branches. "The success of National Windscreens," says Lloyd, "is really the success of 20 regional windscreen fitting companies who had the foresight five years ago to form National Windscreens, a consortium offering nationwide coverage."
The groups of branches around the country are still under control of their respective owners. "Five years ago the cynics said that this kind of management structure would not work . . the hard-bitten individuals concerned would never agree. We've now proved them wrong," he says.