LIVE From IRE 2023 With MFM Building Products Corp!

Karen Edwards sits down with MFM Building Products' David Delcoma to talk about self-adhered products and how you can get a free sample!

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with David Delcome of MFM Building Products. You can read the interview below or watch the YouTube video. 

Karen Edwards: Hello, and welcome back everyone. I'm Karen Edwards and we are live on the Roofers Coffee Shop sound stage in Dallas at the 2023 IRE Expo. I am really excited to welcome David Delcoma from MFM Building Products.

David Delcoma: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good show.

Karen Edwards: Yes. Oh, my gosh, it's been busy.

David Delcoma: Yeah.

Karen Edwards: Has your booth been busy?

David Delcoma: Yeah. We've been really busy. I was at the Builders Show a couple weeks ago and the traffic was heavy, and it is just as heavy here, so very excited.

Karen Edwards: Yeah. People are excited to be here.

David Delcoma: I think they want to get out. After three years of COVID, being cooped up, I think a lot of people like to get out and build those relationships again.

Karen Edwards: Yeah. So we're seeing lots of contractors here. I'm sure you are in your booth as well.

David Delcoma: Yep.

Karen Edwards: What's your booth number?

David Delcoma: Our booth number is 5312. MFM is a... We're a manufacturer of all self-adhered roofing products, underlayments, specialty tapes, low slope roofing membranes. We pretty much cover the gamut, especially in underlayments. We go everything from granulated ice and water up to high temps, so that's our niche in the market. Everything is sticky. Everything comes with a split release liner, and that's our forte.

Karen Edwards: Convenient.

David Delcoma: Yeah.

Karen Edwards: And you guys have been around for a long time.

David Delcoma: Yeah. We were founded in 1961, so we just celebrated our 60th anniversary a couple years ago. So, yeah, things are going great. We're located in Coshocton, Ohio, which I'm sure nobody knows where that's at.

Karen Edwards: Where is that?

David Delcoma: That is... If you take Columbus and Cleveland and go an hour each way you come down and that's where Coshocton is.

Karen Edwards: So all your products are made in the USA?

David Delcoma: Yeah. All our products are made in the USA. In 2017 we became an employee ESOP owned company, which is fantastic. Our employees love it. They get to take some pride in their workmanship and they get to see some financial benefits to doing a quality job, so it's worked out very, very well.

Karen Edwards: That's amazing. I love supporting American made. It's great when employees are owners, because those purchases then help the employees benefit from them.

David Delcoma: Right. Right.

Karen Edwards: So what do you do there?

David Delcoma: I'm the operations manager. I've been there 12 years, so I started as the marketing manager, just kind of worked my way up the ladder, so now I kind of have my hand in everything. We wear many hats.

Karen Edwards: You keep doing more and more.

David Delcoma: Right. Right. Right. We're not the big guys out there. We're not some of the large shingle manufacturing size companies, but we do very, very well.

Karen Edwards: That's fantastic. So a contractor doesn't have to have a certification or like they can just decide to purchase and install your product?

David Delcoma: That's right. Correct. We sell all of or products through distribution, so we do not sell directly to the contractor. We work with one step, two step, depending on what part of the country it is. We do sell coast-to-coast and Canada. We have a network of 60-some independent sales reps that cover each territory for us, so they have a local person on-site to help them with anything they need, which we think is very beneficial to the customer.

The other thing we do at MFM, if you're a distributor and you want to order one carton, that's our minimum order, is one carton, which is not true for everybody. So we don't force people to buy a full pallet. Whatever MFM can do to help you meet your contractors' needs, that's what we're here to do.

Karen Edwards: What do the contractors like about it? You said everything is sticky. Tell me a little bit about the benefits of using self-adhereds.

David Delcoma: There's a lot of benefits to self-adhered products. Primarily they're very easy to work with. All you need is a sharp utility knife, basically a hand roller, a tape measure, and you can pretty much install our products. So there is no secondary coatings that are needed or glues or other adhesives. They're very easy to use. They're primarily pretty lightweight. They're very flexible. They form over odd shapes. Then once it's stuck to the surface, that's your waterproofing barrier.

So on a roof, for example, you cover that entire roof with a self-adhered membrane, that roof is protected. It's dried in already, and it might be... It could be a month, two months, three months before like a metal roof might be delivered to the job site. So that membrane is up there protecting the structure that entire time, before, during and after the final roofing system is installed. That's probably the biggest benefit.

Naturally self-adhered costs a little bit more than a synthetic underlayment, but you do get that protection.

Karen Edwards: So. It sounds like it's very easy for someone to get started?

David Delcoma: Yep.

Karen Edwards: Then tell me a little bit about the warranty.

David Delcoma: All of our products have warranties. Our ice and water guards are warrantied for five years. Our high temps are warrantied for 10 years. We have a low slope roofing membrane that's warrantied for 10 years as well. We stand behind our products. No problems with the warranty. That's kind of how we believe. That's kind of how we roll.

Karen Edwards: So you've been in the booth, your own booth. You've talked to the contractors. What kind of questions are they asking? What do they want to know?

David Delcoma: Well, mostly metal. Metal seems to be the hot topic. Before it used to be just the southern or coastal type roofing option, but we're located in Ohio and we see metal roofing going up all over the place.

So our underlayments, we have two... Actually three different underlayments that are high temp rated, depending on what the job is, how big it is, so we can provide even three options even for high temp, so depending on price point, how big the project is and all of that.

Karen Edwards: So the difference in the three options?

David Delcoma: It's almost like a good, better, best type of situation.

Karen Edwards: Got it.

David Delcoma: Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Edwards: We're hearing a lot of talk about metal too from a lot a contractors, and Roofers Coffee Shop also has a Metal Coffee Shop sister site.

David Delcoma: Right. Exactly.

Karen Edwards: So it's definitely growing. The interest is there.

David Delcoma: Yeah.

Karen Edwards: Okay. If you are coming out to the IRE, because we still have all day tomorrow, we have part of the day on Thursday, be sure to visit booth number 5312.

David Delcoma: 5312. Exactly. Stop by and say hello. We'd be glad to see you.

Karen Edwards: Yeah. We are going to be broadcasting live until the show closes today, and all day tomorrow, and Thursday. So we appreciate you guys watching. Our goal is to bring a little bit of the taste of the show to you if you can't make it, so if you're not able to come and visit David, then check out the Roofers Coffee Shop directory. It has all this information on there, the contact information. If they have questions they'll know how to get ahold of you.

David Delcoma: Absolutely.

Karen Edwards: If you are a contractor ask your distributors about the product.

David Delcoma: Absolutely. Or you could visit our website and request a free sample of any of our products anytime you want to.

Karen Edwards: There you go.

David Delcoma: So there you go. Touch and feel is the way we like to do it.

Karen Edwards: Awesome. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, ring that bell so you get notified when we go live, and I'll see you soon.