The June issue of Look Out! features a section on Conservatories and the Building Regulations that refers to the draft RIA which advises caution when interpreting conservatory statistics. It specifically highlights 185,000 complaints against conservatories during 1999, compared with a reported market of 148,000 domestic conservatories installed in the same year.

Under reporting market size
It is right to advise caution. For various reasons the industry has a history of under reporting the size of the market. Most market research reports use a suspiciously similar figure, for the simple reason that most reports you can buy use secondary sources i.e. they ask around and the same figure is passed around, tweaked and republished. They do not go to the horse's mouth and calculate the market from original research. To my knowledge there are only two companies doing original research on conservatories, and we are one of them.

Quarterly trends report
We have researched the conservatory market in considerable detail for a number of years. We continue to produce a quarterly trends report on the conservatory market that has been running for 7 years and have done several one off studies in between. Our 1999 study was judged by several leading roof companies as the most comprehensive and reliable report on the market to date - named quotes back this up - and it is the only one that is not a by-product of window research. We are currently updating it as we speak.

Steady growth of conservatories
I cannot comment on the enormously high levels of complaint mentioned in the draft RIA document, but your readers may be relieved to know that there were in fact more conservatories installed in 1999 than complaints recorded by the Office of Fair Trading! Furthermore the market has been growing strongly since then and the current market is considerably larger than most published figures acknowledge. Many companies congratulate themselves on their market shares. But using a small market size figure flatters their calculations.

Visitors to Glassex this year will have noted that conservatories are starting to take over from windows as the main ticket. Isn't it time this important industry started to use more reliable figures?