Greg Hlavaty - Are you Building your Business? - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Greg Hlavaty, CEO of Western Colloid. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast. 

Heidi Ellsworth:
Hello, and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips with Heidi Ellsworth. I'm here with RoofersCoffeeShop, and we are road tripping today down South to California, virtually to meet with our friend, I mean, one of the original, original supporters of RoofersCoffeeShop, Greg Hlavaty. Welcome to the show, Greg.

Greg Hlavaty:
Hi, nice to see you Heidi. Thanks for having me on.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Cool. We love you. You have been with us for so long. You have been with Vicky for... I mean, our biggest supporter.

Greg Hlavaty:
When she first started her newspaper, Roofers Exchange, I think I was one of the first five advertisers. So yeah, it's been a long time.

Heidi Ellsworth:
You knew a good thing when you saw it with Vicky, I tell you what. Well, for all of those listening, Greg is the president of Western Colloid. Western Colloid is a leading fluid applied manufacturer out of Southern California. And so today we're going to talk about that a little bit. This is just has exploded on the roofing industry and the importance of coatings and liquid applied membranes, all of that. Greg's going to share his insights and wisdom, I'm really looking forward to it. So Greg, why don't you start out with just telling us a little bit about yourself and your history in roofing?

Greg Hlavaty:
Right. Well, I'm not going to say I was born into it, but at a very early age, when I was seven or eight years old, my dad got out of the Marines and went to work for a Southern California wholesale roofing distributor. And he was in wholesale roofing distribution for 30 years and I was along with him. But along the way, we also found a need back in the '60s and '70s, there was a big boom of roof coatings at the time. And most contractors didn't know how to apply them. That was the first kind of coating boom.
So my dad and some contractor friends of his started a small side company that applied roof coatings for roofing contractors only, not for generals, not for building owners, just an application company to put on. And I started putting on roof coatings in my teens and I probably installed every type of roof coating that was manufactured, because all we did is install, whatever was bid, whatever respect, and that's from our friendly competitors today. Tremco, Garland all of them along the way, we installed it, and as well as running our wholesale distribution.
So I learned about roofing and eventually took over both the distribution and the application. And I've had a Roofing Contractor License since I was 18, and I still hold one today, it's inactive, but I it's one of those things you can't let go off, so you kind of keep it inactive. And then got into manufacturing of the coatings through thermal materials and some other companies and then manufacturing modified bitumen and other roofing products. So I've had kind of a rounded experience along the 50 years.
Western Colloid was one that I handled as a distributor in the early days and as an applicator in our application company and providing it to other people, so I've applied it for many years. It's been around since the early '70s and I've been associated with them either in application or selling their products ever since then. But along the way, I became very active. I was executive director of several roofing contractors associations, Central Valley Roofing Contractors Associations, my dad and I started that up North when it was around and there was an [inaudible 00:04:02] Empire Roofing Contractors Association years ago in Southern California, that my dad was executive director of and then I was.
But in the coatings, I was very active into it. And especially as it emerged from coatings into fluid applied roofing, which is similar, but not the same. And I became president, served a couple of terms as president of the RRCI, Reflective Roofing Coating Institute. And then I just got off as president, but I'm still on the board of directors of the Roof Coating Manufacturers Association. So I believe in being part of the industry and providing value and knowledge and quality to keep the industry safe, and productive, and value to the building owners and contractors in the United States. So I've always been involved from that side of it, as well as the manufacturing and education side.
So I've had, as I say, pretty varied experiences, everything from the application, to the selling, to the manufacturing. And I'm now involved in technical and along with everything else and learn a little bit about, I'm not a chemist, but I've learned quite a bit about chemistry and have good chemists that we work with. And so there's a lot to learn in this industry and it's always moving forward. And as you say, it's becoming really... it's not new to us. We've been doing this for a 45, almost 50 years at Western Colloid, but it's a lot of people that might see this around the country, it's maybe new to them.
Something Western Colloid did from early on is they took just the coating, that the original founder of Western Colloid was a applicator way back in the early days of what some people might be familiar with it, if you've been around a while, if you're young, you probably don't. But one of the first big coating systems, fluid applied systems was the pioneer FlinCoat, [crosstalk 00:06:15] blasting emotion [crosstalk 00:06:16]. And the founder of our company was one of the first applicator's in the Pacific Northwest of that.
And then he started building his own equipment, built his own plants to make the products and ended up with his own glass shield system, which was Western Colloid call it. But the that's been around since the '60s and '70s, so this has been around a long time. Bu he saw the value and I followed his footsteps in that coatings are great. And many people, many contractors, many consultants, many architects look at coatings as a band-aid or as a preservation of something I have and I want to last a little longer, I want to add maybe a cool surface to it or whatever, but coatings go a lot far beyond that.
When they're applied as a system with reinforcements, most likely, or other technology, cross-linking technology, there's a lot of ways of making coatings more than just a surface coating. And we have built systems out of our products and that means it might be anything from three gallons of a coating all the way up to 30 gallons. And we have many specs that are 30 gallons per square, which would blow a lot of contractors, especially on the East Coast away, but it's common place out here.
Our systems were designed from the early days to go over a vacuumed gravel. We have FM 44/70 class one ratings, as well as UL ratings over gravel, EPDM, PVC, TPO, modified [inaudible 00:07:55], both smooth and granulated. So these systems that a lot of times thought of as just a coating are much meatier, have a lot more value than just that surface preservation. They can really build systems out of them. And many of the manufacturers that make coatings are finding that out today.
I always had a little saying, I always told my fellow members at the RCMA, I said, "You're all coating manufacturers, but what you don't know is you're also membrane manufacturers, you just don't know it yet. As soon as you find out what you can do with the products you make." So that's what we do, and we've done it for years. Our owner of our company who bought it from the founder is also a contractor, so he understood the value of the coating systems and how they could be used to put membranes on and that's what we do.
And luckily, because of that track record and personnel that have been doing this for 20 to 30 years, I have a staff of people to help contractors learn how to do this, how to put it on, not just in a proper way, but also in a economical way to where they make money at it. Even though we sell our products to distribution, our relationships with our contractors, we want to work with the contractors, we support them. We know we don't just want to give you a piece of paper that's a spec and send you out into the field and, "Good luck. Call us when you're done." We participate with them.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Because I really want to get into that, I really want to talk about how connected you are with contractors, but before we go there, it really shows that Western Colloid started by a contractor then followed by contractors. I mean, it's in your blood and you also were doing things before anybody else was doing them out there. Really understanding the liquid applied membrane systems. So today Western Colloid, just kind of to finish that started in the '60s and '70s by contractors. And then today, I mean, you were all over. Tell us just a little bit about your footprint.

Greg Hlavaty:
Right. Well, we did, we started actually in the Bay Area. The original owner of our company in his application business built his own plant up in the San Francisco Bay Area to provide himself, because at the time the basis of our systems out here, at least in California, where it was at asphalt emulsion, which is a bentonite clay, asphalt and water product that builds a really tough watertight, ponding water resistant membrane, and had to ship the product in from the East in rail cars, because there was nobody making it out here at the time.
So he built his own plant in the Bay Area, then he expanded and built a plant in Los Angeles, which we still have. And in the last five years, we've also built a plant in Texas, so we've been expanding. But along the way, we also did things a little differently. He did such large volume buildings in the early days for Thrifty's and some of the big chains in the Pacific Northwest and the West coast that he provided product for himself in tankers. Well, to this day we have a fleet of somewhere in the neighborhood of 55,000 gallon tankers that we roll up and down the road on the West Coast, at least servicing job sites for larger jobs, as well as totes and drums and pails like everybody else.
So we ended up with a large or a strong following. I'm not going to say a large following because there was not that many contractors that specialized in this. And for many years we ran under the radar. Like I said, we've been around since the early '70s. A lot of people may not know us, but that was kind of by design. We did a lot of private labeling along the way, private labeled for some of the biggest companies around and with our systems. A lot of Johns Manville people would probably be shocked to know that there was a top shield system back in the '70s and '80s, which was our glass shield system and it was just private label to them.
So we participated with a lot of other good well-known manufacturers. And because of that, we kept ourselves kind of under the radar. But in the last couple of decades the systems have become more dominant. We've done a lot of testing and ratings at which we can go into. But so we've spent the time to train contractors, provide the logistics in the bulk products for them to go out and do, they can do a 50 square job, or they can do a five... we have many 5,000 square jobs going on at any one time, usually through the season of the year. So we can provide product to small as well as large jobs.
And that became our specialty, which led us to meet contractors that wanted to do that kind of work. Nowadays, it's becoming more and more common for the smallest contractor to get involved and we support them. There's you can do this work very nicely out of a pickup with a good quality pump and the right kind of equipment, which is something else we do, is we help contractors design their equipment. Because they can go in to equipment manufacturer and say, "I need a paint coating sprayer." "Okay, well, we've got the Greyco XXX." Well, that might be okay or it might not depends on what you want to do.
Do you want to put down membranes at six gallons per square or 15 gallons per square with [inaudible 00:13:43], we help them wade through the purchasing of the right equipment, because if they purchase the right equipment, they become profitable from week one, as opposed to putting six months or a year into it before they really start making money at it. So that's something we like to do with our contractors and that's kind of what we'd done. And now, like I said, we've expanded as far as Texas, although we do specialty jobs further East, but we're Western regional mostly right now. Do a lot of stuff in Denver, and we just finished over 2000 squares in Birmingham, Alabama. [crosstalk 00:14:27] one of our contractors did. And that we provided in bulk tanks, which is kind of a far reach, but it worked and it worked well for him and he was in and out of that 2200 squares in four weeks.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. Well one of the things, and you're alluding to it and I really want to get into this is, your philosophy on helping contractors more than just helping, but being a partner with the contractors, being your contractor yourself. Can you kind of share, I mean, I know you were very passionate about this, share your thoughts on how important is to really be there for the contractors.

Greg Hlavaty:
Well, these systems you're really building a membrane in place on a roof. So one of the advantages single plys, modified bitumens others have, admittedly, is that they can dial in their product in a factory. And they'll tell you this, they'll use it as a sales tool against what we do. But they have that ability to, if we're making this 60 mils, it's coming out 60 mils. Well, when you're doing a fluid applied system on the roof, you need to have contractors that know what they're doing. You can't just go up and roll it on, squad it on, [inaudible 00:15:46] on, and assume you're doing it right.
So it's key for them to understand it. Both key for the product to be done right and key for them to do it in a timely manner to where production is where they make their money. They don't make their money on reselling my materials, because our materials aren't that expensive. They make their money on, if it takes two weeks to do a job that another contractor can do a week, you do the math. That's a crew for a week is a lot of money and that's your profit. So we want to help them do it right, but we also want to help them do it with the best production.
And in order to do that, we have, well, some of our field salespeople are trained this way, but we also have specialty guys that have fluid applied systems for anywhere between 20 and 30 years. And they go out and work with crews, not just go out point at it, say, "Do this," but I mean, get their hands dirty work with the crews. Or we also have brought crews from other areas, we have a couple of crews out of Colorado. We have some guys in Texas that had flown out to Southern California and we have friendly contractors out here that don't mind us putting a few guys up with them when they're... and when they come out and see how they do it here in the production, it kind of blows them away.
Because the further East you get, they get used to putting on 60, 70, 30, 50, 70 squares a day fluid applied and our guys do 150, 250, 500 squares a day. And it's a whole different dynamic, but all that comes with training systems and we like to do that. If we can make a contractor profitable, it doesn't matter what price I sell them product at and we're very competitive. But if it makes them profitable, they become your partner. They work with you because you helped them make profitable and there's not many guys that will shop that because they can't shop that. They can always shop at price, but they have a hard time shopping support and training. And we do it both in the field at their jobs or here as it is appropriate.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Talk a little bit about that too, Greg, because I know your training is just off the charts. It's so important and you're doing it all the time, but what's the difference in your training that allows contractors to just make such a huge leap in the amount that they can install, and how they can become so profitable?

Greg Hlavaty:
Well, it's because our guys that train them were production guys. They were field applicators and then foreman and then supervisors, their bosses, their contractor bosses needed to get stuff on in a timely manner. So our people will go out and not only just show them how to broom this or roll this fabric out, or how much product to put down, but where to stage your tank or your totes. "If you put this at this end of the building, instead of this end of the building, you're going to have to move once. If you put it over here, you got to move three times. If when you get up on the roof, you do 40 squares, right where your ladder is and when you come back over the week and that's all done, now you've got a spot when they get the rest of the roof done to put your hoses and your equipment."
Staging becomes part of it and this is something that other manufacturers wouldn't even think to do, staging. "You know what, if you use instead of a half inch hose, if you use a three-quarter inch hose on this product the first hundred feet, you'll double the volume of your spray gun." Because people don't know what the friction factor is on the size of a hose and the kind of tips everybody wants to put coatings on with a spray tip, a fan tip the sprays and some kind of a fan. Well, most of our products, not our acrylic top coatings, but our emotions and that go on with no spray tips.
We have special pipe fittings from Home Depot, quarter inch pipe fittings that are put in 90 degree configurations that make special application that they can put out volume of material in front of fabrics that as fast as the crew can walk. And not only that, but the other thing that's very key is that that job I just talked about in an Alabama, the contractor from Southern California that went out and did that, that got it done in a month. The owner and the consultant said, "Where's your crew?" They had four guys, four man crew. And part of that was done because we provided a bulk tank so they didn't need people on the roof.
But to do that kind of volume and this thing was multi-ply, reinforced fluid applied system, not just one ply, but multiply. So this was not just a light coating, this was a heavy gallonage. But that's because the guys that know how to do it and the guys we helped train, they don't need a 10 man crew, they don't need a 15 man crew. Four or five guys, maybe an extra guy out in front doing prep work and that kind of stuff. But all that what helps make a contractor profitable as well as get his production down, and put it on the system the right way. So we win and they win, and if they win, then they're our customer, that's kind of the way it we found at works. So some of our most loyal customers have been that for 25 years and more.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's amazing. Well, and when you talk about going from a 10 man crew to a four man crew, being able to do all that, just because of really thinking through using a tanker, all of the things that you're talking about, how the equipment, that's huge right now in the industry, when you're talking about the labor shortages that are going on. And that can be a differentiator for contractors.

Greg Hlavaty:
Right, it helps a lot. The other thing that I just lightly skipped over, but has been very important to us is that when we emerged from just supporting other manufacturers and local contractors, building their own systems for many years and got into the real world of specifications, consultants, architects, and that we learned early on back in the late '90s, that we needed to have systems verified. And so we stepped up back in the early days, it was under writers laboratories, which we still use today, got UL ratings. And we have UL ratings of many of our systems over a cap sheet, modified bitumen, some single applies and the other things.
But, some years ago we went to also Factory Mutual. And so this is key to, especially when you work with specifiers and architects, as well as building owners, because they have to be responsible. An architect or consultant has to be responsible to a building owner. And just his word that, "Well, I've used this stuff before and I think it works pretty good and it's done a good job," is not something to hang your head on when you're dealing with a building owner that wants you to have responsibility, you need to give him some credentials. So we've spent a lot of money and a lot of time on getting Factory Mutual systems, FM 44/70 class one rated systems of our over a dozen systems over modified detriments, smooth and granulated, excuse me.

Heidi Ellsworth:
No problem.

Greg Hlavaty:
BUR, smooth granulated and gravel, TPO, PVC, EPDM, hyperlon. All those, we have 44/70 class one rated systems. Some of them up to very large hail, moderate to very large hail, and rated over all those systems. So now consultants and specifiers have a credentials they need when they tell that building on, "Yes. I have a system, we're not going to have to tear off." Because today in the high-tech world, we do a lot in narrow space and a lot of high-tech, why? Because they don't like to tear off their roofs. And even in California. Yeah, it may not rain that often, but I can guarantee you when the roofs turn off, that's the day it rains.
Or the dust and dirt that can go into these high-tech facilities, they want clean air, and that's hard to do sometimes when you're tearing rifts off as well as the expense. So our systems can go directly over those systems with minimal weight, but maximum longevity and toughness without affecting their need for clean or dry highly sensitive interior. So that's become very popular in the Bay Area. And because of that, we also expanded us into a lot of big property management companies, because property managers have the same problem.
They have tenants that don't want to be disturbed. And if we're doing a job locally with being served with bulk or even totes, we've got a tanker parked out back on a 16 horse motor idling and a hose on the roof with four guys, instead of lift bed trucks, dump trucks, 15 men tearing off roofs and all that. So it has become a favorite of some of the pretty large property management companies, because they know it's just doesn't affect their tenants. And if you don't affect their tenants, then you take one big headache away from them.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Right. They're happy. And it also is fitting in perfect into the ongoing movement and especially as we look at, like you said, high tech, tenants, this new generation coming up, that they don't want to see all these old roofs going into landfills, The ability to cover them with such a strong product, sustainability-wise, that's a huge benefit too. And something that contractors can talk about.

Greg Hlavaty:
Exactly. Yep. Even though it seems like a system that's been around a long time, for us, it's just really come into its own. We've always had aluminum surface roofs out here. Now, white is the way we go, but we've had white surface roof since 72. We've been servicing them with our white coatings, of course, the coatings have improved and being part of the RCMA, we know the quality of coatings that can be made as surfacing or as part of the membrane has improved. It's been a challenge because the government, the EPA, South Coast Air Quality, AQMD down here in Southern, they try to be a friend to the people.
But sometimes they can diminish the qualities of products trying to improve the air quality. And in doing that, they shorten the lives of the products, which means the products have to be put on more often. So what they gained up front, they lose at the back end, and that's been an ongoing battle for us at the RCMA is trying to balance some of the, we want the best, most sustainable and healthy products out there. But with the balance that we can make a good product that lasts a long time, because the longer it lasts the fewer times you have to do it, which means you have to only have to manufacture it once, only have to install it once.
All that adds up, but they don't add those cradle to grave energy usage and VOCs and all the other things that go into a safe environmentally friendly company. We've been water-based for 40 years, our systems have been water-based and you can make very tough, very strong, very waterproof products from water-based systems. So it's not new to us, but it is an ever changing game with, like you say, today, with sustainability and health impacts from products.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah, it's changing rapidly, but I find it fascinating and I just love the fact that you were doing all of this in the '70s and the '80s, and it's been there and now it's kind of, everyone's catching up to the sustainability, the durability, all of these things, and the ability to not disrupt the building. Those are huge, huge benefits.

Greg Hlavaty:
Yep. So it's been a lot of fun, I've been doing it a long time and I'm still energized by it and I enjoy what we do. So I keep getting asked when I'm going to retire and I say, "I don't know, I guess when I get bored." So far I'm-

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's a long ways away.

Greg Hlavaty:
I'm not bored yet.

Heidi Ellsworth:
No. Well, you know what, I think I'd really love to kind of finish up our podcast talking about in your advice to contractors who want to add this to their business, or even change over totally to make this their business with fluid applied roofing membranes, and also the coatings, as in service and maintenance, kind of just the whole thing. How do they get there?

Greg Hlavaty:
Well, there's multiple stages and levels. Because we have contractors that, they'll bid or find one of these jobs twice a year and do it, and we support them. What I love is that a very small... what a guy in years past, if you were going to be a good applicator of built-up roofing or modified bitumen, you weren't going to do it with just to pick up. I mean, you might go to your distributor and he'd rough load your products and you'd get out there, but you need needed, you needed trucks, you needed some equipment. A guy with a pickup, and a small trailer, and a good pump, and 500 feet of hose can put on the same system that the big company with a fleet of trucks and 10 spray rigs and all that does.
So it's a little bit of an equalizer. You can be a small guy and do some very distinctive, you don't have to do big work if you don't want to, but you can. And we have some smaller contractors that specialize in 25 to a hundred squares. And we have guys that don't do work under a thousand squares. So it just depends on where you want to be. The biggest thing is training your crew and we often retrain crews because some of the bigger companies that we work with, we'll have a crew, we'll train them and get them dialed in, but then they don't do another job for six months. And by that time Bill's working on the job over here and John's working on another job over here. Those are the guys from the original crew, and now they have somebody that hasn't been trained.
So we'll go back out and retrain them, but decide if you'd like to learn about it, you can. Our local reps, we have a couple of great guys in the Arizona region, we have two great guys in the Texas Midwest region, we have three people out here in California. Our reps are very good at the starting of training. And when it gets more serious, we have our field guys, Tim Ford, Chris Ford, who have been installing this stuff for years and years, and really get hands-on in with their guys and train them how to do it right, and good production, and how to handle the equipment. So you don't have to have a very big job for us to want to help you, there's levels of help. But some people just want to put it as one of, "I can do this, this, and this."
What we find a specialty and it seems to be guys that want to specialize in it. A lot of them will do single ply and coating, those two go together. First of all, they're very aesthetically pleasing roofs, they're a little bit lighter. And maybe you might have a little less... today, a big challenge in business is the HR, all the things that go into having a lot of employees, while you can have fewer employees putting on single ply and coating than you in maybe some of the other aspects. But some of our biggest contractors now started out doing a little bit of everything and now only do this. Because it becomes very profitable. You don't have to sell something at a thousand dollars a square to make a good profit, it can be very economic and for the building owner.
I like it as a win-win because it can be very economical for the building owner, but a high level of margin of profit in it for the contractor. So they both love it. There are many systems out there that have a high margin of profit for the contractor, but the building owner pays through the nose for it. And this is one that they both win at. So you decide what level you want, we'll help you on the local level. We just finished three training in place. We did one in El Paso, Albuquerque and Denver yesterday in distributors yards, where we go out and do a little bit on the ground where they lay out 20 squares of a base sheet and do some coating application in that. That's enough to wet your whistle a little bit and see what we do, but it's on the roof that it'll count.
So I'm not saying we'd run out to Denver for 10 squares to help you, but if we have a rep they can help you. And so we have guys that traveled to come and see us, and we'll let them get up on roofs if they want to come out and see where we have jobs going on. So you can be at any level just to... me too I'll do it as one of my five things I do. You can specialize in it and one or two things, or you can, if you find that you really like it, you can really take it on as your main stay.
There is some downsides to it in that is water-based product. You can't put it on in Denver, in January, I guarantee it, or maybe Seattle or Houston. But it's funny. Some of our biggest contractors are from those areas. One of the biggest contracts we've ever had is in the Pacific Northwest. And people say, "Well, how could they be doing water-based systems?" That's because they sell maintenance during the middle wet part of the year. They go up and they get the roof ready, they sign a contract, they make the roof tight and dry with repairs and maintenance. And when the weather breaks, they blow and go all summer putting those membranes on. So it can be, you can learn how to adapt to a weather regions that seem like they wouldn't be appropriate for a water-based system.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Well, and you also, I mean, from what you said at the very beginning of this podcast, you're connecting contractors too. The contractors are kind of learning from each other.

Greg Hlavaty:
Right. Absolutely. We have a contractor in the Denver area that is a good friends with one of our biggest contractors here in Southern California. First, one of my guys did, and now they call each other for help, but they're not stepping on each other's toes, they might not be next door neighbors. But if it goes on better, we've been through many spurts of coating being sold. Back when the cool roof systems went on in California, I called it the second gold rush, 1849. And then our second gold rush was, I think 2005, when they passed the cool roof laws and what have you.
And then everybody from around the country was selling buckets of coating out here. And a lot of building owners got burned because they were selling a bucket of white coating with material and labor guarantee for some years, no membrane, no waterproofing, just a coating, but that's okay because we're in North Carolina, or South Carolina, or Florida, or Ohio, whatever. But what happens from that is, building owners get burnt, and if they get burnt, they paint with a broad brush. Oh, coatings don't work. We did that and it ruined it.
So for us and for our local contractors that are supporting contractors, they would rather see it go on right even if they don't do it themselves, because they know that black eye is going to be their black eye also, it's going to be painted. I mean, we just did a job walk the other day and we had a non-coating manufacturer out there and he was wanting to sell their system in place of what was being spent. But it's funny, he said, "I've seen these reinforced coating systems and they're a total failure." And I said, "Yeah, I saw the first steel built radios were a total failure too. It's funny, we still use them."
I've seen guys mop on a 30 pound failed, and throw gravel on it and have it fail, but they still did built up roofing for a hundred years. You can find a failure and you just don't paint it with that broad brush. So anyway, the answer to that question is, yeah, even our contractors like to help other contractors in many cases, because a better job, paints a better picture of the systems for the industry and makes the building owners and consultants specifiers have a better feeling towards it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Right. No, that's it. We uplift everybody and the reputation of the industry. And I think that's the last question I'd like to ask, or kind of talk about Greg, a little bit, is that importance between... in talking to all the roofing contractors who are listening to this, the importance of working hand in hand with your manufacturer, really give building that relationship and getting to know them and really taking advantage of all the great things they have to offer. Maybe finish this with that.

Greg Hlavaty:
Right. One thing I've learned being as president of the RCI and the Roof Coating Manufacturer's Association is that there's some great coating manufacturer all around the country. People will call me up and I will say, "You're closer to Florida and here's three manufacturers that have the similar products back there, you're probably be better off talking with them." But I tell the contractors the same thing. Make sure you know that there are new coating manufacturers popping up like weeds, unfortunately, and we're going to go through that period, just like when the single-plys first came around, there was every other booth in the IRE was single-ply.
Today, I was kidding somebody at the last IRE we had, I said, "If you tripped and fell in an aisle, most likely you fell into a coating booth because every other one was a coating booth." So it makes it tough for contractors, "Who do I look at?" But look at the ones that belong to the RCMA, look at the ones that invest in the industry, and have been around, have a track record and there are some plenty of good ones, all the way from the biggest companies on roofing companies in the United States down to some very quality small ones.
We're going through a little bit of a buy-up right now, just like distributors did. When I was a distributor, there was independent distributors all over the country, and now there's three big ones that bought up everybody else, hopefully that will change and we'll just like banks did and we'll go back to some local ones, because I'm not sure that's the healthiest way for contractors. But it's the same thing here, if you have a comfort level with your big ones, work with your manufacturer, most of them have good support and if they don't have good support, then maybe they're not the manufacturer for you. But there are great ones out there and they'll support the industry.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And there's lots of choices, but really taking your time to do the research and to look the history, when you talk about a company that's been leading the way since the 1970s, like Western Colloid, those are the kinds of things contractors really need to be looking at and understanding because there's people like Greg who are helping you all the time. So, well, Greg, thank you so much for being here today, your wisdom and your history and just everything, I just love this. This was awesome.

Greg Hlavaty:
Very good. Yep. My camera went out again. It would go out on this, I've been using Zoom in meetings for 10 months now and today's the first time my cameras keep going off.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Well, we have some very talented young people who will fix all this, so it's all good.

Greg Hlavaty:
Great.

Heidi Ellsworth:
So and just to kind of finish up and to end it again, thank you so much for being here today. We so appreciate it. For all of you listening, you can find Greg and Western Colloid, of course, on RoofersCoffeeShop, full directory, articles, videos, awesome training videos, and ways to sign up for training and get to know them, so is anything you need.

Greg Hlavaty:
And our training videos they're not professionally done. They're done at the time when our guys are out on jobs working with contractors in that. So they're kind of like home videos, but they're real. They're not staged, so they don't have the production value. We've talked about doing some better production value videos, but most of ours are home videos of systems or instances of flashes and details and like that going on. So they don't have the fit and finish that some do, but for some reason I kind of liked that. I think it makes them... contractors know, they see through frosting.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. And all the [crosstalk 00:41:47]

Greg Hlavaty:
They're smart people.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Your videos are authentic and they're real. And you can really learn something by watching them and being a part of that.

Greg Hlavaty:
Tell them just be prepared when they see some of our gravel systems going on, because that's what always blows people away. Is that, "How do you do a coating system over gravel?" Well, most of our gravel systems has 24 gallons of asphalt emulsion on it. Isn't like three gallons or two gallons, and then plus top coat. But they can be done. So you can do gravel, but that always, I get calls from people. I just looked at it and I can't believe you're putting this over a vacuum gravel. I say, "Well, they're very successfully and we have FM for it. " But yeah, it always shocks them but anyway.

Heidi Ellsworth:
No, but that's great. And those are all available on your website, on YouTube and on RoofersCoffeeShop. So we're in fact we're pushing those out there right now because we think they're pretty cool, so we want people to watch them. But so for all of you listening, thank you so much for listening to our podcast today. Be sure to catch all of our podcasts on under read list and watch, under our partner podcast with all the Roofing Road Trips, this Roofing Road Trip today with Greg Hlavaty has been very, very special. Thank you, Greg. And we'll look forward to doing this again soon.

Greg Hlavaty:
Great. Thank you.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Thank you. Everybody have a great day and we'll see you on RoofersCoffeeShop. Thanks.

Greg Hlavaty:
Take care.