Member Article

First timber windows and doors company to accept cryptocurrency in the UK

SashLine, a London-based joinery firm, is breaking the mould to be the UK’s first timber windows and doors company to accept cryptocurrency payments.

The two-generation family business of craftsmen and women manufacturing products from materials hundreds of years in the making have become the first UK manufacturing firm of its type to adopt a next gen currency platform offering for its clients.

Associate Director Daniel Ciupac comments: “SashLine has always been a bit of an outlier in its sector, a business which has grown from the dream of two brothers dutifully following their father around his carpentry workshop to a thriving manufacturer with three decades of heritage, its own factory and an obsession with quality, affordability and sustainability.

“The business has grown through its willingness to adapt to the market without ever compromising on its standards, so when founders Mihai and Vasile recognised that their own passion for cryptocurrency was mirrored by many of their customers, the idea for a new way to pay for their timber windows and doors was born.”

Today, SashLine manufactures thousands of bespoke wooden traditional sliding sash windows, casement windows and external doors including French doors, Bifolds and front doors, among others, to the highest quality CE standards and in a multitude of finishes, which are supplied and installed each year across the UK or fitted by a FENSA regulated installation team.

There are over 7,000 different cryptocurrencies in existence today. Average reported cryptocurrency trading volumes globally are at around £90 billion a day, with the market growing by double figure percentages each year.

With increasing confidence in these currencies, more and more businesses are accepting them, with current estimates at around 500 businesses across the UK willing to take crypto payments.

SashLine chose to work with digital payment blockchain platform Utrust to help it achieve faster, safer and more structured national and international payments in any of the primary cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Elrond (EGLD), USDC, Tether or Dash alongside Utrust’s own currency, Utrust Token.

Ciupac adds: “We wanted to make it nice and simple for customers to pay in this way. An early challenge was the lag-time between payment and access to funds, so we approached Utrust to request a more cashflow friendly settlement term specifically to support manufacturers.”

At last estimate, around 10 to 15% of all sales by SashLine are paid for by its customers in one cryptocurrency or another and its popularity has supported the expansion of the business – which, in 2022 is intending to launch a whole new product line to add to their portfolio.

Ciupac concludes: “Cryptocurrency is far more than the ‘fad’ people considered it to be a few years ago, it is a financial necessity for some, a profitable trading medium for others, but for SashLine, it has become another way for the business to ensure the furtherment of its central tenets of quality, affordability and sustainability in the windows and doors market.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sara Wheater .