Columbia Roofing & Sheet Metal - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Colubia Roofing and Sheet Metal. You can read the transcript below or listen to the podcast. 

Megan Ellsworth:
Hello, and welcome back to another Roofer of the Month episode. I am so excited to be here with the people, founders, amazing executive committee of Columbia Roofing. Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves. I'm really excited. I haven't met two of you. I know Kendall well. So hello, welcome.

Kendall Ekerson:
I'm Kendall Ekerson. I'm the Director of Marketing here. I've been here a total of about 17 years. I did the math the other day, and so it took a few years off, but I'm back and excited to be here. Thank you.

Mark Carpenter:
I'm Mark Carpenter. I'm the founder and CEO of Columbia Roofing and Sheet Metal. Started at 25 years out of the basement. Through some career moves and industry experience, started Columbia Roofing with a different value proposition, and we've been in the northwest. And about 10 years ago, we bought Long Beach Roofing in Long Beach, California. I had a relationship with them for a long time. So we have an office here in Tualatin, Oregon, in the Portland area, and in the Puget Sound in Kent, Washington.

Megan Ellsworth:
Very cool.

Chris Ekerson:
And my name is Chris Ekerson. I'm our General Manager, and I've been here for the majority of the 25 years. I started in 2002, really not knowing anything about the industry, and kind of worked my way up. I worked in our sheet metal division for a real long time and worked my way up through the ranks, and here I am working alongside these guys.

Megan Ellsworth:
Fabulous. Well, thank you for being here. I so appreciate chatting with you all and getting to know more about your company. So to start out, what type of services do you offer at Columbia? So I know sheet metal, roofing. Want to give us kind of just your elevator pitch?

Chris Ekerson:
Yeah, sure. So we're a commercial roofing contractor. We don't do much in the residential area, unless it's more specialty. But our focus in the area is really on commercial and industrial roofing, and that can be many different kinds, from flat roofing, restorations. We'll tear off and replace roofs. We maintain roofs. We do a lot of work in industrial settings as well. We have a lot of clients in the steel mill industry and things like that. The things that are maybe a little bit tougher to approach, we find a lot of enjoyment in that type of work as well.

Chris Ekerson:
We have a big focus in service. That's something that I think maybe differentiates us a little bit, is we have a very driven service department that can provide 24 hour leak repair service for our clients. We do roof cleanings and maintenance. We have what's called our Columbia Roof Advantage, which is a program that provides those annual or biannual cleaning services that are tailored to a specific customer's property.
We also specialize in seismic work. As we know, especially in the northwest and the Portland area, there's a lot of old historic buildings that are requiring seismic upgrades, so we do a lot of those services as well, in conjunction with our roofing.
We've played around. Mark can probably tell a little bit more on the history. We've done some stuff with green roofing in the past as well. But really, I'd say our core piece is commercial roofing and reroofing and service and maintenance.
As far as products, we do a lot of single plys which are the TPOs, PVCs, EPMs, those kinds of things. We do some modified roofing. We do a lot of shingle and things like that. We work with senior care facilities. We have a whole bunch of different vertical markets that we work with. But yeah, that's just kind of a round about of where we kind of fit in the marketplace. I don't know, Mark, if you could add anything to that.

Megan Ellsworth:
That's awesome.

Mark Carpenter:
Well, we look at different opportunities certainly, and sheet metal has been one of them. The vertical markets have been very good to us, and we're very specific on who we target and how we target them, what is the value proposition. But the service has been our core relationship builder, and we've done it for a very long time, about 25 years actually, and we know what we're doing. It's about the cost of building ownership and interruptions, what's the value of your roof you're taking off.

Megan Ellsworth:
Yeah, yeah. That's great. Yes, all about service. That's so cool that you guys have a 24 hour leak protection. Is that what you said? That's really fabulous. I love that.

Mark Carpenter:
Right. [crosstalk 00:05:11].

Megan Ellsworth:
So this next question is my personal favorite. Oh, go ahead.

Mark Carpenter:
One thing we did do Chris touched on is, we started Columbia Green Technologies. That's been 12 years, 10, 12 years ago, when we developed the AVRS green roof system with trays and the full program. We got three patents on it, and eventually sold it off too. We got distribution, we got installations around the United States. We eventually sold it off, and it's still in business today, I mean Columbia Green Technologies.

Megan Ellsworth:
Wow. That's amazing. You said that was around 10 or 12 years ago?

Mark Carpenter:
Yeah, we sold it maybe five or six years ago, seven years ago.

Kendall Ekerson:
More like 10. It's been 10.

Mark Carpenter:
Yeah, it's been a while.

Kendall Ekerson:
Yeah.

Megan Ellsworth:
That's awesome.

Mark Carpenter:
It's seven.

Megan Ellsworth:
Wow.

Mark Carpenter:
That's kind of cool, so I gather when I talk to you.

Megan Ellsworth:
Well, that actually is a really great segue. So what is something that your company celebrates? That could be green technology or recycling, or maybe you actually celebrate a certain holiday, like go all out for it for your employees, or you celebrate. What do you guys celebrate? Do you celebrate your employees? What do you find joy in with work?

Kendall Ekerson:
I kind of made a few notes about them. It's an association actually that we're pretty big in, and you guys actually helped write a story about, is we support the Alzheimer's Association. A piece of our story is, Mark is my father, Chris is my husband. We all work here, we all work together. A family business, yay and nay some days, but it's in our family. Mark's dad, my grandfather, passed with Alzheimer's. Chris's grandmother, Nancy, she had a form of dementia when she passed a few years ago, and so it impacts us.
And then I had mentioned I took a few years off, and I actually went and I worked for them, and I saw a different side, and one thing that we have all realized is that, not only does it affect our family, but it can affect any of our employees' families at any time and they might need resources or they might need support, and so it's something that we've just continued. About 8 years, maybe even 10 years, we have supported the Alzheimer's Association. And so, that's something that we do here.
When it comes to walk day in Portland, we turn purple and do that. This year should be fun because it's actually going to be at the Oregon Zoo.

Megan Ellsworth:
Fun.

Kendall Ekerson:
And then trying to get all the employees together and all the kids. So, that's something we try to celebrate here actually, is working with that organization.
Well, there's many organizations too that we do work with. We like to give back to our community. And then something else this year that we've put a big emphasis on is celebrating safety, and actually this was Mark's brainchild, is we've created a safety program called, "I Have Your Back," and we're doing a big push on social media this month, calling it, "Safety September."
And yeah, we created this program called, "I Have Your Back," and we've always been real safe. We have people show up to our job sites and our ladders are tied off, our guys are tied off, or just different things. All the check boxes are done, but we kept having these little things pop up and we couldn't figure out why. So we tried to take it a step further of like, "Well, we need to have each other's backs. Maybe there's something that we don't always see ourselves. So how can we do this?"
And so if anybody's on our social media, you'll see there's like seven steps that we put in and just little things that people can do for themselves and do for others to just help each other have each other's backs. So that's a big thing that we're celebrating around here.

Megan Ellsworth:
I love that. That's amazing. That's great. And I love the slogans. That's fabulous.

Kendall Ekerson:
We're going to have some fun swag that comes out, and again, a piece of it giving back to the employees, that's a familiar thing. With school going back, we just did backpacks for employees' kids. We've done that for a while.

Kendall Ekerson:
We really try to give back where we can.

Mark Carpenter:
We try to fill them up with their school supplies and hand them to the families, whatever, how many kids they have. We do a lot of shopping. We didn't this year, but we gave a gift certificate plus the backpack.

Megan Ellsworth:
That's awesome. That's great. Wow. You guys are just hitting it out of the ballpark.

Mark Carpenter:
Yeah. We've worked at it too.

Megan Ellsworth:
Yeah. So you kind of talked about your service program before. I'm interested to know, how do you define superior customer service?

Mark Carpenter:
There's a lot of aspects to it. It's certainly showing up, doing what you're supposed to do, but it's also setting expectations and trying to work with the client and saying what we can and can't do and being truthful with people. The Columbia Roof Advantage is a trademarked process what we have, and we look at it. It's a value proposition. It's about money, how much risk do you want, how much do risk do you want us to take on your building.
If it's an empty building that has no value, there's a different proposition than if they're still operating from underneath or a high-tech clean room, and there's different levels and costs involved. And we work with the owners or the responsible parties to understand what we can do and what their expectations are.

Megan Ellsworth:
Well, that's great.

Mark Carpenter:
Then you can show up and do what you tell them you'll do. But it's all in the technical piece of really understanding what they've got there in the assembly and knowing how it performs.

Megan Ellsworth:
Right, right. Great answer. Thank you. So last, or second to last question, why should building owners work with Columbia Roofing and Sheet Metal?

Chris Ekerson:
Well, I'll start by kind of echoing what Mark said. You've got to do what you say you're going to do, and it really is about that value proposition. We don't sell out of the box roofing. We don't try to sell everybody the same thing. We really start by understanding what their needs are.
When we develop a relationship with a client and we initiate that work, our process is, I think, a little bit different and little bit more robust than what some other people are doing, and a lot of that is just based around communication. We want to have a true partnership with that client, not just sort of what we'd call a one and done. We don't want to just do the job and get paid and move on to the next one. We really want there to be an ongoing relationship and partnership toward them to where that customer knows that we have their back and we're going to take care of them.
When we start a project with a customer, we always let them know what the expectations are. We let them know, "Here's all the things that you can expect. Here's all the things that we should discuss." One of the things we do on our job walks is, we look inside their facility. We understand what's going on with their process, with their manufacturing, and how our process might affect theirs, and we really try to kind of think outside the box.
The other thing that we do is, when we start a project, we communicate daily with the customer. We'll set a schedule, we'll send them out daily updates with photos, all this stuff, and communicate, or communicate with the customer, almost to the point of not trying to annoy people, but we really want them to be informed on what's going on, and that just goes back to doing what you say you're going to do.
And then if there are problems, there's always issues that come up. There's never a perfect job, if you will.

Mark Carpenter:
It's roofing.

Megan Ellsworth:
Yeah.

Chris Ekerson:
It's a chaotic industry. And we work a lot in the reroofing, so we're working on existing buildings that could have problems. So when a problem arises, it's how you navigate these problems, how you communicate on them, and how you work to solve those problems. And that's, I think, something that really sets us apart, is we really work hard. We focus everything around that relationship and that partnership with our client. It is about protecting their building and their asset, but we want to take care of the customer just as much and have a lasting relationship with them.
And then we will also follow up with, "Okay. We've installed our product," for example, "How can we continue to maintain it? How can we continue to make your life easy and make this a lasting product for the relationship?"

Megan Ellsworth:
Brilliant. Yeah.

Chris Ekerson:
Going back to setting expectations, one thing I always ask the client when I first meet them, "Well, what are you going to do with your building?" And they look at me like, "You're the roofing contractor. What's it to you?"
Well, we try and set expectations. If you're going to demo this building in two years versus put a chip manufacturing plant in it, there's a different technology and a different price point and different levels of risk that we try and ascertain from the company, from the ownership, or the controlling partner, and make sure that we match what their real needs are.
A lot of people don't think about that. They just think, "Well, I don't want it to leak. I don't want to pay any money," to, "It can't leak," or, "We're going to shrink the building next year."

Megan Ellsworth:
Right. Brilliant. Yeah, over-communication, expectations. Yeah.

Mark Carpenter:
Chris looked at a building last year and they didn't want to roof it last year. This year, they sent us a note, said, "Can you go look at it?" And oh, by the way, half the roof collapsed it was so rotted last year.

Megan Ellsworth:
Oh my gosh.

Mark Carpenter:
So they lost the roof. Should have done it last year.

Megan Ellsworth:
Wow. Geez.

Mark Carpenter:
Whoops. Didn't even think about leaving it. Whoops.

Megan Ellsworth:
Oh yeah. Oopsies. Oh well, better luck the next time, I suppose. Well, we here at Roofers Coffee Shop are very delighted to have Columbia Roofing and Sheet Metal as the September Roofer of the Month. So thank you so much for chatting with me today. I just wanted to open the floor for any last words. And a really big congratulations. We love you guys. You're doing a great job, and we appreciate all your hard work.

Mark Carpenter:
Yeah.

Kendall Ekerson:
Well, I have to say that the statement echos back to you guys because we've appreciated the partnership with Roofers Coffee Shop, and the support, and I mean, you guys have just been great supporters of the industry, in general, so thank you.

Megan Ellsworth:
Thank you.

Mark Carpenter:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having us on and letting us be a part of this.