" To develop a roof window which in every respect is just as good as the best vertical window".
- Villum Kann Rasmussen (1942)
The AA top-hung window was the first result, and the VELUX story had begun. As soon as the first top hinged windows had been installed and the business was beginning to develop in the right directions, KR’s long term development objective – to produce the best roof windows possible – became a quest which was to occupy the company for over two decades, until the VELUX GGL was introduced in 1968, and which remains the prime objective to this day.
There was no shortage of good ideas in the meantime. The PV-45 pivot hinge first appeared in 1945 and was to dominate the market for over twenty years.
Alongside this, tremendous progress was made in more technical areas, for example with the introduction of flashings and the first sunscreen products in the 1950’s, followed by the introduction of roller blinds and Venetian blinds.
Alongside the emphasis on innovation, the company was also developing its quality standards. This can be seen clearly in the evolution of the product range for, lying behind the policy of continuous improvement of every aspect of each product down to the smallest component, there has been a powerful control over the release of new designs. No VELUX product is launched until it has been tested and retested and every detail is optimized.
The VELUX GGL is a good example of this disciplined approach. This ‘new’ product incorporated many different innovations including a new pivot hinge, the PV-68 – a friction hinge which could rotate through 180°, enabling windows to be left open without a peg stay and the T-67 lock, which enabled simple operation and total security.
After all the design work had been completed and each new component fully tested, over a year was spent in final testing "just to be sure". This care and concern has always been a feature of the VELUX development policy.
Another feature of development policy has been our determination to produce unique designs which we could then patent and protect from imitation and unfair competition. The VELUX GGL, and every other VELUX development over the years, has been protected by patents – an expensive and complex process, but one which has given us the opportunity to establish the VELUX brand, build new markets and continue to invest in research and development with a headstart to competition.
That’s the true function of the patent process – to enable innovators to recover D & D costs and establish markets before the imitators are able to move in. We will continue to patent all our new products and, alongside this, the VELUX brand itself will provide us with a powerful competitive platform for the future. In today’s fast-moving markets, being competitive requires us to be consistently first with new products and services and first into the minds of our customer.
This ability to stay in the lead can be seen clearly in our development history and the GGL was followed, in 1977, by the first modern top-hinge window, the VTL – a design for lower roof pitches than the Scandinavian standard.
The VTL opened new market opportunities in countries where roofs were designed differently. The top-hinge window category was supplemented by several different versions from the simplest – the GHL to the GPL, the most sophisticated.
Care and control are the watchwords for VELUX product development so, while the major product launch milestones may be far apart, everyone can be certain that new products are fully tested and fully functional.
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