How Outdoor Brands Avoid Seasonal Drops with a CPQ Product Configurator
Seasonal slowdowns aren’t inevitable. A CPQ product configurator helps outdoor brands empower dealers, simplify quoting, and sell pergolas and outdoor structures all year long.
Selling outdoor products like pergolas, louvered roofs, grills, or cabinetry has always followed the same pattern. Strong in spring and summer, slow or silent in winter. Manufacturers build regional dealer networks, run seasonal campaigns. Then, they brace for the annual dip in activity when the weather shifts. But it doesn’t have to be like this.
With a CPQ product configurator, outdoor structure manufacturers can support a larger dealer network and empower internal sales teams. All without increasing overhead. Whether it’s reps handling direct inquiries or dealers quoting independently across regions, both can configure, price, and quote complex outdoor products with ease.
This makes it possible to expand globally and stay active year-round. Read on to learn how smart businesses break the seasonal sales cycle with CPQ for manufacturing companies.
The Real Challenge Behind Outdoor Structures
For most outdoor structure manufacturers, the seasonal slowdown isn’t just about weather. It’s about how their sales model is built. Most manufacturers rely on internal sales teams and external dealers, but both face limitations when the quoting process is manual and complex. Here’s what holds many outdoor brands back from selling year-round:
Sales Depend on Short-Term Installation Availability
Most dealers carry multiple product lines. When demand slows or installation isn’t possible right away, they shift focus to faster-moving, in-season products. If on top of this your quoting process is complex, your product drops to the bottom of their list.
Demand Exists, but Sales Teams Aren’t Structured to Capture it
Many buyers research and budget during the off-season, but manufacturers have no fast way to quote and lock in those early-stage leads.
Dealer Networks Are Limited to One or Two Regions
Without the ability to support quoting and selling remotely, manufacturers stay tied to their core markets. When those regions slow down, the entire pipeline does too.
The result? Your growth is gated by your own process. Even when there’s demand in other regions or seasons, your current model makes it too costly or too risky to go after it.
How CPQ Product Configurators Change the Game
A CPQ product configurator isn’t just a quoting tool. It’s a shift in how outdoor brands sell. By enabling real-time customization, it helps both internal teams and dealers move faster, quote smarter, and capture more opportunities—even during off-peak months.
Dealers Will Still Prioritize Your Product Even in Low Season
If it only takes them a few minutes to configure and generate a quote, they’ll keep pushing it, even off-season. Dealers manage multiple product lines, so they focus their limited time on the ones that are easiest to sell.
Internal Sales Teams Can Proactively Create a Pipeline
During the low season, inbound demand slows. But that’s exactly when reps should be building an early pipeline. With a CPQ product configurator, they can quickly create and send pre-configured quotes to unconverted prospects. Instead of quoting reactively, they fill the sales funnel before peak season starts.
You Can Expand into New Regions Without Scaling Your Team
With quoting fully automated, you can grow your dealer network into other climate zones. You won't have to worry about time differences, language barriers, or your team's capacity. Dealers don’t need your team’s help to quote, so your sales infrastructure becomes truly global.
Camille Felappi
How CPQ For Manufacturing Works
A CPQ product configurator is a 3D product configurator with a built-in CPQ engine (Configure, Price, Quote). It combines real-time visualization, dynamic pricing, and integration with production systems. It can also enforce manufacturing rules, automates quoting, and generates production-ready outputs such as bills of materials (BOMs) and CAD files.
Unlike off-the-shelf configurators, a CPQ configurator for manufacturing is built around the actual logic of how your products are made. It applies rules, constraints, and pricing exactly as your production team would. Which is why it can generate outputs that are reliable, buildable, and ready to use across custom product lines like outdoor structures.
It can be used both by your sales reps and your dealers to quickly generate accurate quotes and configurations. Here’s how a CPQ product configurator works:
- 3D Product Configuration – sales reps or dealers interact with a real-time 3D model, selecting materials, sizes, and other customizable components.
- Real-Time Validation – Ensures that chosen components are compatible, preventing errors like missing parts or invalid configurations.
- Visual CPQ: Automatically calculates accurate pricing based on selected options, dynamic rules, and any conditional modifiers. Then displays it in real-time.
- Automated Output – Generates technical documentation, pricing details, CAD files, cut sheets, and assembly instructions for production and sales.
- System Integration – Connects easily with ERP, PLM, CRM and e-commerce. This keeps data accurate and consistent.
Real Example: How Aluliving Uses CPQ to Sell Smart
Aluliving, a European manufacturer of premium aluminum pergolas, is a strong example of how outdoor brands are using Salsita CPQ configurator to simplify customization and maintain sales momentum year-round.
Before partnering with Salsita, their sales process relied on static brochures and custom renderings, which made it harder for users to explore all available options. Today, their 3D configurator offers a fully interactive experience where users can select materials, features, colors, and layout in real time. As the pergola is configured, the system enforces design rules, updates pricing instantly, and displays a live 3D model.
The result is a smoother, more efficient buying experience that helps Aluliving handle complex requests with less effort while keeping engagement high, even outside peak season.
Stop Thinking Seasonally, Get a CPQ Product Configurator
With the right CPQ for manufacturing in place, you’re not limited by the weather or the calendar. You can quote and sell across time zones, climates, and dealer profiles without scaling your internal team.
Salsita 3D Configurator comes with a built-in visual CPQ engine that lets either your dealers and internal sales reps configure products in real time. All while instantly seeing validated designs, live pricing updates, and detailed order breakdowns.
To make the experience more relevant for each user group, the configurator also includes user management. You can control who has access to what, giving dealers a simplified interface, while internal sales reps get full access to advanced features, margin controls, or technical settings. Each user sees exactly what they need, and nothing they don’t.
If you're still relying on manual quoting and seasonal push campaigns, you're leaving revenue on the table. Now’s the time to modernize your process, empower your dealers, and keep sales moving year-round.