Cavendish Hardware - IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!

In the words of the great Noddy Holder!!!

Well, another year has almost gone by!
We have had lots of visitors to our little blog, so if you are reading this - Hi! : )

As a bit of festive fun, I thought I would start off with "December", off a calender we produced, some years back - customers still talk about it even now!
CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND

It was sent out to repair contractors - window repair companies, etc - and all of the events are true, from my own experience.
When we had the repair company, we had 27 years of experience to draw on and in reality, I could do loads more - all true!

This one relates to a call out situation, where there had been some sort of accident on a local authority building and a small pane of glass had been broken - and I mean small!
The person on call for that building made a call on Christmas eve, late evening. . . . well, you read the caption, you'll see what I mean!!

I'll do the others as the months roll by.

They were done by a very good friend of mine, who just seems to have a natural talent for this sort of thing.

So, Happy Christmas to all out there - see you in the new year.

Smith Wallis - Basta Parsons Steel Window fittings.

Just a quick post to say that Smith Wallis steel window parts is up and running again, slowly but surely.

If you need any Smith Wallis handles, stays, folding openers etc, drop us a line.

sales@cavendish-hardware.co.uk

If you want to give us a call: 0116 2742195.

If you still have/use a FAX: 01162461545.

I will come back to you on further Smith Wallis developments.

Smith Wallis - Basta Parsons. Steel Window Fittings.

Well, the first series of posts on this blog were all about the history of Cavendish Hardware.

Sadly, this post is about the demise of a long established company, that have been around for almost 100 years and I have been dealing with them for almost 35 of those years, Smith Wallis.

Smith Wallis Steel Window Fittings, produced a whole range of handles, stays, catches hinges, etc, for use on standard steel window sections.
The older sections, Medium Universal/Medium Standard, F Section (SMW Section) and the later W20, W40 sections - all of these were made into casements, pivots and doors, with the aid of Smith Wallis fittings.
This is the cover of one of one of my well used catalogues - almost 40 years old!

I can still clearly recall my trip around the Highgate Works, in the 80's - a hive of industry.

Fast forward to 2016 and as a Smith Wallis Stockist, our shelves are starting to resemble a supermarket, when the truckers have a dispute - without the truckers and their trucks, the shelves are bare.

At the time of writing, I can't say that I am entirely sure as to what is going to happen, only time will tell.

We still have stock of some of the items at the moment and will move forward with other parts that are available for steel window sections but for now, we have to assume that Basta Parsons/Smith Wallis, are with us no more.

These are images of some of their range.

It is sad that yet another one of the established window fittings companies have left us.

If you want to give us a call, we are on 0116 2742195 or Fax: 0116 2461545 or drop us a line on email.
sales@cavendish-hardware.co.uk

Cavendish Hardware - The Catalogue and The Web Site.

So, that pretty much brings us up to date.

Our much needed new web site is almost a reality, a few more bits and pieces to do and it should be up and running.

Our old catalogue, which has served us for 16 years, has served it's purpose and it's time to move on.
Many customers have asked why we have never done revised versions - the plain truth of it is, we spend almost all of out time servicing enquiries and processing orders, so that window repair engineers can hit the road with whatever it is they need for the next job.

We now do so much more than was listed all those years ago but regular customers know that and tend to give us a call, send us an email or a fax and we pin it down from there.

If you have been with us all of those years and more, here is the familiar little green book, containing many of those weird and wonderful window parts you have used over the years.
If you have just arrived on this page, looking for parts for windows, detailed below is our old catalogue, in all it's glory!

My next post will be in September and if all goes to plan, it will have a link to the new web site.

If you want to give us a call, we are on 0116 2742195 or if you prefer to drop us a line, please go here:
sales@cavendish-hardware.co.uk

Cavendish Hardware - More shelves and more stock.

We found that after doing an exhibition, enquiries would come in thick and fast for a week or two and then calm down a little, meaning our poor old fax machine was running at full tilt. Hard to believe now but back then, the fax machine was the way to go and emails came in now and again. No smart phones back then, just lots of phone calls and faxes!

So, to satisfy all of these new found customers, more shelves were constructed and more stock was put onto them. These shots were taken some time ago but illustrates that at that time, no shelf space was wasted!!!

Things have moved around a lots since then and not long after, we added a further 70 square metres of shelving - 96 shelves, in total - I know there are 96, as I have just counted them!!

It didn't stop there - not long after that came over a hundred Tote Tins and the racking to hold them - we were fast running out of space and still the fax machine was churning out more enquiries and orders.

We still have a fax machine! So, if you have one and you want to feel all "nostalgic", you can send us a fax!

The fax machine is on: 0116 2461545 . . . . I'll go and stand by it now!!

More common routes to find us these days are phone: 0116 2742195 or ping us an email at: sales@cavendish-hardware.co.uk

Cavendish Story Part 10

Cavendish Hardware - The Shows and Exhibitions.

At about 15 years ago, we started to do some shows and exhibitions - Architectural shows, that sort of thing.

We then got the opportunity to do Glassex, which was our first really big show, where we first met many of the customers that still use our services to this day.

We found these shows very useful, as we got to meet contractors, architects, people from housing associations, health care, education, universities and many one man/two men companies that went on to grow into bigger companies, over the following years.

The very last one we did was a long time ago but we still get people saying that they remember meeting us at the shows.

This is a shot from that show, where we were promoting the new Jackloc models and colours, as at that time, we were the first trade distributors for Jackloc. Jackloc has come a long way since then and are now selling their products all over the world.

The shows were hard work but a lot of fun and we got to meet a lot of the customers face to face, for the first time and show them all sorts of things that we could do for them.

I would like to say Hi to the readers of this blog - there is a little widget when you sign into Blogger, that tells you how many readers have read pages and today, just as I logged on, it rolled over to 500 page reads.
So, Hi - Thank you for visiting, there is loads more to come.

Cavendish Story Part 9

Cavendish Hardware - Purpose Made Parts.

After getting the ball rolling with standard parts for windows, we branched out into making parts for specific requirements and replicating items that had been dead for years, which we had been doing for a long time but only to supply our repair needs to "get the job done".

The images above show the first two jobs we did, a very long time ago, or so it seems!

After getting our feet under the table with one or two customers, we put the word around that if something was broken and it couldn't be got hold of, send it to us and we'll see what we can do and the jiffy bags started rolling in. On the back of that, many "designed from scratch" items were made, for whatever the requirement of the customer.

In a relatively short time, we were making all sorts of things, in various materials, for many different applications, on many different window types.

The image above shows some of the earlier parts we made, which I think is a good illustration of what can be achieved in Aluminium, Brass, Stainless Steel, Acetal and Nylon. The image is a little grainy, it was taken on our very first digital camera, which I still have and it still works, 18 years later!

Cavendish Story Part8