Project 02 of 36

DRX Kits

Company: C.R. Laurence
Role: Product manager, stage-gate lead
Year: 2025
Discipline: Door hardware
Status: Launched, April 2025
Images: 9

DRX is CRL's patented modular door rail. Glass temperers and glaziers stock the components and cut rails to length in their own shop instead of waiting on a factory-built custom rail. But it was only sold in packs of ten, which made the first purchase hard to justify. DRX Kits put everything for one rail in a single box, so an installer can try the system on one door.

We repurposed existing DRX inventory into 16 kit SKUs (square and tapered profiles, four finishes, with and without locks), positioned pricing against the custom rails buyers already ordered, and took the kits through five gates in six months with engineering, marketing, sales, planning and production.

Kit SKUs built from existing inventory: 16
Minimum order, in door rails: 10 → 1
Gate 0 to launch: 6 mo.
Glass office market CAGR through 2028: 7–8%

Overview

Problem: DRX had been on the market for two and a half years, but buyers had to purchase at least ten of every component to finish a single door.
Customers: Glass temperers, large and small glazing contractors and door repair shops, working on commercial offices, government buildings, retail and hospitality.
Solution: A complete single-rail kit: two rail bodies, a slide block, two 48" side covers, gasket and end caps. The covers are cut from existing 110" stock, so kits ship immediately with no manufacturing lead time.
Value: Installers get a modular, adjustable system that installs faster. Temperers stop waiting on factory fabrication. Owners can change finishes after installation.
Market: Glass office market of $500–600M (2021), forecast to grow 7–8% a year through 2028.
Competition: FHC, Assa Abloy, dormakaba.
The system: DRX (patent US 10,871,026 B1) deconstructs a standard door rail into independent parts. Rail bodies are stocked and secured to the glass as soon as it's cut, the lead-end body slides along the glass to fit a standard 36" or larger 48" door, and side covers and end caps go on during or after installation, so custom rails have no lead time.

My role

I co-led DRX Kits with the senior product manager and ran it through all five gates in six months. I built the business case from custom-rail sales, defined the 16 SKUs and their pricing and discount rules, wrote the inventory plan, and coordinated manufacturing to repackage existing stock into kits instead of tooling anything new.

Stakeholders I coordinated

Manufacturing: Los Angeles plant: kit assembly from existing stock
Customers: Glass temperers, glaziers and door repair shops
Internal teams: New product development · Product testing · Marketing · Sales and service centers · Sourcing and purchasing · Demand planning · Master data
Gate committee: VP Engineering · VP Product Design & Development · VP Sales · VP Marketing · Head of Product & Innovation

Stage-gate progress

G0 Concept Oct 2024
G1 Define Nov 2024
G2 Develop Dec 2024
G3 Validate Feb 2025
G4 Launch Apr 2025
G5 Post-launch Planned

Plan to win back DRX sales

DRX launched to a strong forecast, but first-year sales reached about a third of plan and the second year fell further behind. Buyers liked the system; the ten-pack minimum stopped them from trying it.

01
Remove the minimum
Sell everything for one door rail in a single box, so the first purchase is one door, not ten.
02
Use what's on the shelf
Kits were built from existing DRX inventory at the service centers and plant, turning slow stock into sellable product with no new tooling.
03
Price against the real alternative
Kits were priced against the custom factory rails buyers were already ordering, with a target of converting 10% of custom-rail demand in the first year.
04
Build the habit, then the stock
Glaziers try DRX on one door; as demand builds, temperers have a reason to stock full packs again.

Research

Fig. R01

DRX sales against the original plan

Indexed to the first-year plan = 100. Actual sales ran at roughly a third of plan, then fell further behind; the kits were the response.

Original plan
Actual
Forecast with kits

10036

Year 1

21239

Year 2

30083

Year 3

Fig. R02

What a buyer had to purchase to build one rail

Before kits, DRX components were sold only in multi-packs. Gasket also dropped from a 100 ft roll to the 8 ft a single rail needs.

Before: pack minimums
DRX Kit

102

Rail bodies

101

Slide blocks

Side covers

102

End caps

Fig. R03

Who buys custom door rails

Share of custom door-rail revenue by account size, January to September 2022. Eighteen high-volume temperers drive half the category. The other half is spread across hundreds of smaller shops that could never justify stocking ten of everything.

48%18 largest accounts (200+ rails a year)
15%20 mid-size accounts (100–200)
37%439 smaller accounts (under 100)

Source: CRL sales research. Percent of revenue; account counts rounded to the source data.

Fig. R04

DRS vs DRX

How the modular DRX rail differs from the solid DRS rail it builds on.

	DRS	DRX
Construction	One solid extrusion	Rail body with removable covers
Glass clamping	Wedge Lock	Enhanced Wedge Lock
Lead time on custom sizes	Factory-built to order	None: stocked parts, cut and assembled locally

Challenges and resolutions

01
Challenge
Early part numbering reused one number for blank, lock-prepared and panic-prepared rails, which would have broken ordering and costing.

Resolution
We dropped the panic option for launch, gave every variant a unique number following CRL's existing lock-suffix logic, and launched with nut strips customers can swap for other glass thicknesses instead of multiplying SKUs.
02
Challenge
The kits had to be cheaper to build than the custom rail they replaced, using parts that were already made.

Resolution
Engineering ran a cost comparison of DRX against the equivalent custom rail before we committed; the kit came in lower, which set our pricing floor.