LIVE from FRSA with MetalVue - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Chris Morris of MetalVue. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Hello, and we are back. Wow. What a day we have had here on the Soundstage. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we are on the Roofers Coffee Shop Live Soundstage, sponsored by Beacon. We've talked to some of the leaders in this industry. So much great information, and I am thrilled right now to welcome Chris Morris to the Soundstage. One of my dear friends, we are working on a lot of projects together.

Chris Morris: That's right.

Heidi Ellsworth: So welcome.

Chris Morris: Hey, happy to be here. Thank you for having us. What a great show and a great event, and so happy to be here.

Heidi Ellsworth: It's buzzing out there.

Chris Morris: It is, it is like an IRE built in Florida.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yes, It is. I'm like, we just did IRE. Oh wait, that was February. This is June.

Chris Morris: Yeah, it's a few months later, but it feels great.

Heidi Ellsworth: It does. It's awesome. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell them a little bit about what you do.

Chris Morris: Yeah, so Chris Morris, heck of a guy. You already know that.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, love him.

Chris Morris: But yeah, we're talking about MetalVue today, talking about how the industry and the residential reroof space has had this really tailwind going towards metal.
Heidi Ellsworth: Yes.

Chris Morris: And talking about how you capture that and through Sherwin Williams and the MetalVue product that you've been able to allow folks to get into metal for the first time, which is the biggest growing portion of the reroof space.

Heidi Ellsworth: It really is. Okay. So today we had our coffee conversations and we had contractors from all over the state in here. And when we talked about what do they see trending, both what has been and what they see going into 2025, metal. Metal, metal, metal, that's all they're talking about. Because the state, in fact, interesting, Chris, you got to listen to that coffee conversations. It was really interesting.

Chris Morris: I normally do.

Heidi Ellsworth: You do, one of our loyal... But it was interesting that they're talking about how insurance companies are pushing people towards metal in Florida also.

Chris Morris: So you have two big movements. So in Florida you have to give what they call a good faith estimate. In Minnesota as of July 1st will also do that. So I think there'll probably be a lot of precedents and folks will follow that. But yeah, they're talking about, or if you look at the storm activity that you've seen this year, it's been super highly active. We also think this is going to be what the biggest hurricane season and insurance companies are sick of replacing the same roofs with the same address, with the same insuries. So you look at metal, just a natural fit for that. You look at supply chain too. So metal has not had that hiccup.

Heidi Ellsworth: Right.

Chris Morris: It's accessible versus maybe some other things like tile and some other things that are a little bit back ordered, where metal is vibrant right now.

Heidi Ellsworth: It's vibrant. And that's what we were hearing too. A lot of material shortages around other products, high-end products and even on shingles. Shingles are and so really metal is making, it's really taking the lead in the state and I think across the country. And that's why you and I both, we have partnered with Sherwin Williams, Metal Coffee Shop, sponsored by Sherwin Williams. That's where that all started. And we have the full metal program-

Chris Morris: They may know Sherwin Williams.

Heidi Ellsworth: They may know-

Chris Morris: They may know, probably not, but they may know that brand.

Heidi Ellsworth: They're some nice folks. Metal Coffee Shops has all the information about MetalVue on it, along with all the partners-

Chris Morris: And what great resource. Heidi, when you look at Metal Coffee Shop, what a great resource in talking about if you're a business owner and you want to put this into your business, what a great way, what a great resource for you to access that and then implement that in your business. It's really a one-stop shop, in my opinion.

Heidi Ellsworth: Thank you. Well, and it's been so great because so many of the folks that you work with, we work with, we all work together and have brought this MetalVue program to the contractors who we just said the demand for metal is here. The traditional contractors who do a lot of metal roofing, not as much and not as-

Chris Morris: Correct, absolutely.

Heidi Ellsworth: ... and not as large. And so this MetalVue program that you've just been instrumental in putting together, and we have it all, like I said, highlighted on the site, is helping contractors get the resources they need in order to sell more metal.

Chris Morris: So it's really a business in a box. And we started with, if you could just simplify it to comfort. So a lot of times we go to comfort, comfort to sell, comfort to products, comfort to distribution, comfort. Well with metal, people aren't very comfortable.

Heidi Ellsworth: That's true.

Chris Morris: So now what we've done in MetalVue is try to alleviate those objections. So with Roofing Passport for example, you can put in an address and you can be comfortable that you're presenting price that night.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yes.

Chris Morris: You can be comfortable that you're procuring metal the right way, in the right cause and so you have that sort of reliability in that. And then we've even gone further to say that you can also install it. So we've really taken those three objections as quote, procure, install and we've really tried to solve for that inside of MetalVue.

Heidi Ellsworth: It's making a difference because contractors who are traditional maybe have not done any metal or just done maybe asphalt, they are now able to get into metal with those three things. And one of the things with Roofing Passport, we have to mention the fact that EagleView is integrated in that.

Chris Morris: Absolutely.

Heidi Ellsworth: Having been with EagleView, I remember when it first started getting exact cuts, exact measurements to do metal. It's not quite at the beginning. Now it is. I look at these reports, it's incredible.

Chris Morris: As a recovering contractor, there's different groups you can join. Don't take the pills. But there are different groups. I was a early onset EagleView guy, with Pictometry actually first and then EagleView second. But yeah, and it's interesting because we really challenged at that point, putting tape measures up. Metal is the same, just 12, 14 years different. It's the exact same as how can I accurately quote this and not worry about human error.

Heidi Ellsworth: Right.

Chris Morris: So that I can give a price to a consumer at point of purchase. And we've really, with Sherwin, have really solved that issue.

Heidi Ellsworth: And working with major metal manufacturers who are using Roofing Passport, using the EagleView, using all of these, providing all these services for their contractors like Drexel, McElroy, Sheffield. I mean we just have a lot of companies out there that are getting involved at some stage with the MetalVue program. And so that for contractors, let's talk about how they can get involved. How can they really start getting ahold of this MetalVue because I think sometimes they aren't sure that it's for them?

Chris Morris: For sure. No, that's a great question. And I would say this is that, it creates a two-prong approach. One is that the roofing contractor can go in and articulate the value of the substrate that they're producing, the coil coating, right? The Sherwin Williams and the value that you have with metal. The second prong is that you're working with an OEM or a manufacturer, that can give you realistic times of delivery, service level appropriation. So you have all that going together, which I would suggest that most home improvement roofing contractors haven't had in the past. And I think this in a good way, a sticky situation that this is your provider and their prices are in there. So when you populate that address, they're able to see and you know your cost of goods at that point in time. So you can go articulate that in the home knowing that your margins are secure, your price, your whole entire procedure is in place so that you can articulate that to the homeowner.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, and it makes it, I think the fact that MetalVue offers training through John Sheridan, which is so important because your crews may not have, you may only have one metal crew, but when you start doing this MetalVue and you start doing this with the homeowners, you're going to need more. And so there is a lot of training that goes on. So it takes you really through the whole nine yards, but to really understand it, besides of course going to Metal Coffee Shop and reading up on all of this, you have a new website coming out that you're working on with Sherwin Williams?

Chris Morris: Correct.

Heidi Ellsworth: And I'm excited for this.

Chris Morris: Yeah, so no different than anything else is we've created a portal, publicly facing and then there's some other parts to it, but it shows just the value of selling a brand name, selling a substrate and then it gives you all of the peripheral support that you need in terms of marketing collateral, sales collateral sales, all that-

Heidi Ellsworth: Sales training.

Chris Morris: Yes, absolutely-

Heidi Ellsworth: Talked about that.

Chris Morris: And then you mentioned John Sheridan, but just install. So we know that a lot of the OEMs that are participating have...

Heidi Ellsworth: Training.

Chris Morris: Installed, yeah. So they have that for folks, which is super big just to know that you're supported. And we think of it as a business in a box. So we think about it from marketing, to sales, to estimation, to procurement, to labor. And then we also talk about with Watts removal products, we talk about how you warranty, what do you need? Are we underneath the maple tree and it has sap that comes out? How do we-

Heidi Ellsworth: Clean that?

Chris Morris: Well, and how do we give the value proposition of a 40, 50 year product? And we're not talking about, and I would say this about metal. We're not talking about 40 years of, it's okay, we're talking about 40 years of performance.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yes.

Chris Morris: That looks great. Not only does it not leak because you have metal, it looks good.

Heidi Ellsworth: It's beautiful. And extreme weather, it holds up against the extreme weather, which is so-

Chris Morris: You look at DFW. Heidi, right, for example. Right. It's been decimated once again this year. So metal out of the gate is class four.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yes.

Chris Morris: Miami-Dade, all the wind, all the things that you would...

Heidi Ellsworth: Fire.

Chris Morris: You would want. And now you would wonder, why would an insurer give a discount on a substrate? It's because they don't have to revisit it again.

Heidi Ellsworth: Right, exactly.

Chris Morris: Right, so I would follow that insurance company. Why would you give a discount? Well, it's because you don't think you're going to have the same problems that you had yesterday.

Heidi Ellsworth: It's so true. And it's so changing. Finally, I'm surprised it took the insurance companies this long to kind of figure this stuff out.

Chris Morris: Well, they went to class four first, right? They went to all these other stuff-

Heidi Ellsworth: Nothing personal.

Chris Morris: I know.

Heidi Ellsworth: I know.

Chris Morris: Gotta love them. I have them. You have them, I have them.

Heidi Ellsworth: We need them. So, okay, I just love this. And so when the website does come out, there's going to be an opportunity to get all that information for the contractors to use-

Chris Morris: And go to Metal Coffee Shop.

Heidi Ellsworth: Go to Metal Coffee Shop. That's where you're going to find all of this. It is the site. We are the networking hub for MetalVue and on Metal Coffee Shop. So it's pretty exciting.

Chris Morris: Yeah, super excited. And we also too, know that there's a lot of people looking to differentiate themselves. What a great way in a commoditized environment to go differentiate yourself with metal.

Heidi Ellsworth: With metal and the tools to be able to sell it and install it and really add it to your business.

Chris Morris: Yeah, absolutely.

Heidi Ellsworth: Chris, thank you.

Chris Morris: Thank you, Heidi.

Heidi Ellsworth: Wow. I love working with you. And this is the kind of stuff, be sure to check out the Metal Coffee Shop, the MetalVue program, first thing in the directory, easy to find, plus all of the directories, for all of the partners and the manufacturers who are involved in that. And you'll also find Chris there in many of those companies. He works with a lot of people helping him out. So Chris, thank you again.

Chris Morris: Thank you. Heidi and team, there's a lot of team they don't see. Thank you team.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yes, we bring them on later on at some point.

Chris Morris: That's right.

Outro: Yeah. And thank you all. We will be back. We've got a couple more interviews coming your way.