COMMERCIAL ALUMINIUM SHOPFRONTS

Car showrooms are a vital part of the car-buying experience: nothing can beat being there in person and seeing the gleaming bodywork of rows of shiny new cars. A good showroom makes it easy and exciting for people to browse and choose their dream vehicle. © Johnnie Rik / Shutterstock.com When it comes to the world's best car showrooms, there are some unique and innovative examples that house the classiest cars on the planet! Read on to discover the perfect luxury motor destination...   Alain Class Motors, Dubai The television show, Top Gear, voted Dubai's Alain Class Motors the best car showroom in the world. Famous for attracting customers who live luxurious lifestyles, the 10,000 sq. ft showroom, on Sheikh Zayed Road, is full of the rarest supercars on the market. The Dubai showroom is the main one of five Class Motors' showrooms in the United Arab Emirates. Owner, Abdullah Al Ketbi, pledges he can find buyers any car they can think of. A car enthusiast and collector himself, he started trading luxury cars in 1992. He began by importing Mercedes Benz from Germany and sold them to friends and family members. In 1995, he opened his first showroom in Alain.   James Edition, Holland Amsterdam-based James Edition deals in pre-owned luxury and exotic cars, selling to billionaires and millionaires all over the world. It specialises in supercars, ranging from £2.4 million for a 2019 McLaren Senna, down to £169,000 for a 2020 Aston Martin Vantage. The total value of its cars runs into billions of pounds and they are described as "the most extravagant cars you could dream of". Sadly, dreaming about them is probably all that most of us can do!   The Glass Towers, Autostadt, Wolfsburg Autostadt is Volkswagen's theme park and a visitor attraction in its own right. Two 20-storey glass towers house the showroom and play a key role in the whole experience. Within the spectacular towers are 800 newly-built VW cars awaiting delivery. Each car is transported to the towers from the nearby manufacturing plant by a high-tech underground conveyor belt! A giant robotic arm moves each car into its designated space, making that a spectacular experience in itself.   Ferrari Maserati of Las Vegas Like everything in Las Vegas, its luxury car showroom, Ferrari Maserati of Las Vegas, is big, bold and brash. Dripping in wealth, it displays extra-special supercars on rotating platforms, with other cars sectioned off by luxurious velvet ropes to create an exclusive ambience. The current models include a 2017 Ferrari 488 GTB in Nero Noctis Black with a price tag of $239,968, and a 2016 Ferrari California in Blu Abu Dhabi Metallic at $136,995.   Citroen Showroom, Paris Citroën's flagship showroom in France is only 25 metres wide but makes up for this with its spectacular towering height. Inside, its white walls and floors make it look like a tall, futuristic ice palace. Featuring seven rotating platforms as you ascend the floors, each displays a classic Citroen design throughout the ages. Located on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris, the amazing showroom was renovated and redesigned by architect Manuelle Gautrand into the spectacular interior of today. The current premises opened to the public in 2004, but company founder André Citroën displayed his first automobile, the Type A, there in 1919. One thing all of these spectacular car showrooms have common is the fact they understand how crucial it is to have an eye-catching shopfront - the first impression customers have when they arrive at your premises! Whether you own a luxury high-end showroom or a local motor dealership on the high street, make a lasting impression with an aluminium shopfront. Strong and reliable, aluminium is rust-resistant and corrosion-proof. Durable frames can be created in thin, stylish designs that not only look great; they offer excellent energy efficiency too.    

The use of aluminium in fenestration offers major benefits in every type of building, from single-family residences to monumental commercial constructions and everything in between. The arrangement of the windows in a building, known as the fenestration, is one of the most important parts of the overall design. Well-designed windows enable people to live and work comfortably by allowing natural light indoors and aiding passive solar heating and cooling. Providing natural points of ventilation and air circulation, they increase energy efficiency, improve comfort by reducing draughts and produce better quality indoor air. Why choose aluminium? Aluminium is a popular material for fenestration because of its versatility, strength and "green" characteristics. It offers great design flexibility, allowing architects and designers the opportunity to create many features and styles for each building. It can also be manufactured in many colours - this is a real advantage of aluminium, as it can seamlessly blend into and enhance any design scheme. Despite its slim lines, aluminium provides structural integrity and offers exceptional longevity. Robust and durable, it is ideal for areas where there is particularly heavy traffic, including shopfronts in shopping centres and on the high street. Highly resistant to impact, such as in the event of someone falling into it, it a safer option. Although aluminium is one of the lightest engineering metals, it provides a better strength-to-weight ratio than other metals, such as steel. In tests, the aluminium yield strength was assessed up to 40,000 PSI (pound force per square inch) without steel reinforcement. In the event of a blast, the fenestration material is required to bend and not break to absorb energy. This was easily accomplished in the tests with aluminium.   Recyclable In terms of recyclability and sustainability, aluminium is hard to beat, as it is 100% recyclable. The aluminium recycling industry has tripled in recent years, preventing the disposal of waste to landfills. Extremely eco-friendly, it requires less energy than steel to both manufacture and recycle. In addition, it's expected to last 25 years in the case of polyester powder-coated aluminium and 35 years for anodised aluminium. The thermal performance of aluminium fenestration systems is also exceptional, as they can utilise thermal foam and enhanced thermal break technology to take performance to new levels. Research shows aluminium fenestration can provide annual energy savings of 16%. Between the 1950s and the current day, the thermal performance of aluminium has improved with every new innovation since the early days of basic single-glazed units. The fact is, if aluminium is good enough for airports and skyscrapers such as New York's Empire State Building, then it is surely good enough for a shopfront. The use of aluminium in any design or application is creating a bank of material that looks great and can be recycled in the future. This amazing material can support much larger areas of glass within narrower frames, offering a slim sightline with the maximum benefit of natural light. It enables the creation of bespoke glazing solutions comprising high quality, low-cost, safe and versatile designs. Aluminium fenestration systems are safe and secure, even with a slim profile. Especially effective in the retail sector, shopfront glazing systems will benefit from having slim profiles. Highly-visible window displays are a must to help attract passers-by – and then hopefully turn them into customers who want to come in and see more!

It was good news for the retail sector when the government announced non-essential businesses in England could reopen again on 15th June. After three months of COVID-19 lockdown, when only shops deemed essential such as food stores and pharmacies could trade, the news couldn't have come too soon. Now the challenge for the high streets is determining how to bring in a new form of normality to help people continue with their shopping, while remaining safe from the coronavirus. Explaining the new shopping rules to customers is something every retailer should be doing. © Michele Ursi / Adobe Stock   Eye-catching shopfronts With limited numbers being allowed in each shop, businesses must make arrangements for the queues which are inevitably forming outside. Queuing should always be done outside the shop, or in a car park - never inside the premises. The retailer must manage the queues to minimise the risks and ensure social distancing is maintained. This enables traders to use their shopfront to the best advantage, while people are waiting to come inside: as well as displaying the safety rules, promotions and new products can also be advertised in an eye-catching way. After all, you have a captive audience in the queue - a group of people who aren't simply passing-by - there's no better time to wow them with your great deals! Before customers enter the premises, the retailer must publicise the new rules and safety measures using signs, posters and visual aids, such as diagrams and graphics, on their shop windows and doors. This gives customers plenty of advance warning before they go into the store, so they know how to behave.   One-way systems One-way systems and barriers will help avoid customers clustering together – in a similar way that supermarkets and other essential retailers have been operating over the past three months, since the lockdown began. Shoppers should be encouraged to pay using cashless methods when possible.   Sanitising thoroughly Many retailers are providing sanitising stations for people as they enter, asking customers to cleanse their hands on entering the store. Staff must wash their hands more frequently and the shop's surfaces must be cleaned more often throughout the day with a detergent. Particular attention should be paid to areas that are touched more often such as handrails, lift buttons, doorknobs, employees' hand-held scanning devices, trolleys, baskets and facilities in staff areas, such as coffee machines. Shops should install screens and barriers to protect staff and customers wherever necessary. Notices must be put in place advising customers to touch only items that they intend to buy, rather than browsing and picking things up, before putting them back on the shelf.   Automatic door solution To control the number of people that enter the building at any one time, the FlowControl system automatically integrates with an automatic door to effectively enable social distancing - no one need touch anything! This new product was introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and has been highly effective in Europe for some time.   Shopping alone Many stores operate a policy whereby only one person per household is permitted to enter at any one time, unless they're a parent with young children or a carer who is escorting the person they are looking after. Staff should be deployed outside to look for groups of people in the queue and ask if it's necessary for them to all enter the store together. This policy has been operated by supermarkets and must be adopted by other retailers. Shopping centres will also have to regulate the number of shoppers allowed in, as well as managing queuing at individual stores. Any shop which has five employees or more must complete a written risk assessment, with details of its plans to keep customers and staff safe.   Returning goods In the case of clothes shops, they must close the fitting rooms, so customers won't be able to try on clothes. A number of stores have amended their returns policy accordingly, giving people a longer period of time to return unwanted goods. Although returned goods can be accepted, the retailer must store them away from sale for 72 hours before they can be put out on the shop floor again. The store should provide a designated area where employees can speak to customers requiring assistance, while maintaining social distancing measures. With all the new safety measures put in place, signage to advise customers is increasingly important, as is having well-trained employees who know the rules and how to operate them. Any business that doesn't provide enough information for customers, or who breaks the rules, can be hit with a hefty fine, or even be closed down by the local authority if they persistently flout the law.   A warm and informed welcome Make sure your customers are well-informed by having a high-quality shopfront entrance, which displays the relevant signage of the regulations. Commercial Aluminium Shopfronts provides quality entrances including glass shopfronts, aluminium doors, glazed shopfronts, curtain walling systems and more. Want to hit the ground running? Contact us today!