Hi and welcome to my first Norseal Blog.

Something inside told me it was time to put my thoughts out there and you are my unfortunate audience. Time will tell if this thing inside was right or just a bout of post Christmas wind!

I will mostly be discussing topics from the Passive Fire Protection, Fire Stopping, Ironmongery and Timber Door trades although I may add other subjects which may be topical.

I think it is fitting as my first Blog of the year to reflect on the past year and how it has left me immensely proud of my team.

At the start of 2019 I had lots of plans for Norseal. Some I thought easily achievable, some were verging on the impossible and others downright crazy, however looking back I really believe with the right team nothing is impossible. Let me tell you our achievements this year:

New Catalogue – For anyone who has put themselves through this process it sounds simple, but it is far from it. We wanted to create a simple ‘buying guide’ for our customers with sound technical information, images and correct part numbers. We quickly found that our data wasn’t accurate enough for customer consumption, our images weren’t uniform, and the part numbers made no sense. Nine months later I am happy to report the catalogue is now out and the staff surprisingly intact.

Self Serve – I was also of the opinion that our trade customers would also like to buy door seals and obtain copy invoices etc the same way they do at home from Amazon. After all we were delivering a new buying guide so why not give them a platform to put it to use. Half of the battle of cleansing our data was already in hand so we had to sort the technical sides of linking with our ERP for stock and prices and also provide access to our stored invoices, statements, orders and acknowledgements. We had a head start having already implemented a paperless office, but this was still a huge challenge. We are delighted with the results and looking forward to Phase 2.

Drop Seal cutting – With a mission to not only develop new products but also a new way of delivering them we broached the subject of supplying automatic drop seals cut to bespoke sizes. This surely would free up time in our customers factories and also give them the confidence that the seals delivered would still achieve 1 million cycles and carry a full manufactures guarantee without them squeezing them in a tight vice and cutting with a blunt saw. Also, with such fine tolerances to achieve acoustic ratings how can someone be expected to re-produce the same results as those from the manufacturer.

Now we are not just talking about a new tape measure and chop saw. We needed to replicate factory conditions, so our sparkling new machine checks the seals for correct size, checks the operation before and after cutting as well as relabelling the seal with its new size. We are now able to provide bespoke drop seals next day delivery before 12. This has to be an industry first……Go ahead test us!

I think you’ll agree it has been a busy and productive year for Norseal but we are not finished there, watch out for more upgrades in customer experience to be announced. I’m sure to be focussing on them here sometime soon.



Michael