Sheet Metal Shops: Why and How - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Ken McLauchlan from MetalForming, Randy Begger, and Anthony Velez of Coryell Roofing. You can read the interview below, listen to the recording or watch the webinar.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Good morning and welcome to Coffee Conversations from Roofers Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here today to talk about sheet metal shops and how they work. Why or why not? Should you be expanding? If you already have one, should you expand more? And of course we have the experts from MetalForming here who are sponsoring this for us today. But we also have some great guests who have been through the process, who understand and also who understand the technology behind sheet metal shops. So before we get started, let's go through some housekeeping.

First of all, this is being recorded and will be available within 24 hours. Please share it, share it out. And anybody who's looking, thinking about starting a sheet metal shop or expanding, this is the kind of information that everybody loves to get. So please send that out there as you're thinking about it. So let's get started with this great conversation. First of all, I would like to introduce Ken McLaughlin from, McLauchlan, sorry, from MetalForming. Ken, welcome to the show.

Ken McLauchlan: Good morning, Heidi. How are you? We're excited to be here and be part of this and be sponsoring it. And we want to thank everybody for showing up and giving us the opportunity to go through this. So very excited to where this is going.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I'm excited. I love this conversation you and I have been having. We just had one yesterday. This is a fun conversation. So if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about MetalForming.

Ken McLauchlan: My name is Ken McLauchlan. I'm the vice president of architectural sales for MetalForming based in Peachtree City, Georgia. We are manufacturers reps for product lines that we import from Europe for the majority of it. And we have a full service team that is based in Peachtree City, Georgia as well, that travels the country. And we work with contractor bases, fabrication shops, roofing shops, everything under the sun and basically everything to deal with sheet metal or sheet metal shop. Whether it's short folder, long folder, roll former, we can do it all.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Excellent. I am so excited to have you here today. And along with you, we brought some technology in here, Ken, so I'm excited to introduce Randy Baker. Randy, please introduce yourself and tell us about your company.

Randy Begger: Hi Heidi. My name's Randy Baker. I have a small company here that helps with Bendex software out of Austria. Went through and I was part of a company up here in the Northwest that was doing deep metal work and helped them implement Bendex, get some technology into the business, liked the software so much, I moved into supporting it and helping here in the US with bringing that software to various different companies. And been doing that for a number of years now, so can help people with getting some organization into their business with some software to help drive that.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Excellent, welcome. We're so happy to have you here for Coffee Conversations. And last but certainly not least, I am so excited to have Anthony Velez here who has gone through the process, a roofing contractor. Anthony, please introduce yourself and tell us about your company.

Anthony Velez: Yeah, good morning everybody. Thank you for having me here today too as well. Yeah, I'm Anthony with Coryell Roofing. I am a Duralast roofing installer here in Oklahoma and have been blessed to be here with Ken, been building our own metal shop. And this experience with you guys right now is going to be extremely fruitful, not just for everybody who's listening, but for myself too. So really grateful to be here.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I tell you what, thank you. We've had some great conversations leading up to this and I love hearing about your experience, what's happened. I know everybody's going to be like, because it's a big decision. So let's get started with that discussion. We are going to be talking about sheet metal shops, roll forming, getting your shop together, what you need, what you may not need. Do you do it? Do you not do it? But before we jump there, I'd really like to start first with what you gentlemen think about the state of the metal construction industry, because we're hearing great things, but I want to hear what you're all hearing. So let's start there. Ken, maybe you could lead us off with, what are you hearing about, what are we looking at? A little bit of a crystal ball for the future of metal forming, metal construction, roofing, siding, architectural metal?

Ken McLauchlan: Yeah. So metal forming, speaking from our side specifically, we just came off of a 26-year-high for material sales and machinery sales. So the market's growing, people are looking for opportunities, people are trying to figure out better ways to be more efficient. And in that process, the education portion of this business becomes more and more important. But people talk about upturns and downturns in business and we see nothing but going up. It's been a great last year, 2023 was fantastic, 2024 started off a little soft this year, but we still have tons of interest, lots of people involved and we're seeing major moves in the industry, which we were talking about earlier today that I think just solidify that the US market is very strong, it's moving forward and there's lots of opportunity.

And I think a lot of the contractor base, which I started as a contractor way back when, and both of these gentlemen that are on with us today have been on that side of the fence as well. And it's really important to get their side of why they did this, how we did it, where we're going. Again, super excited about the conversation where this is going to lead today, but I think overall, I think the construction schedule in the United States are still going very well. We hear about softening overseas, but I think the US market has been very solid.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, I've been hearing the same thing through the shows, that we're definitely seeing, architects are very busy. There's a lot in the pipeline. And as we're looking at that Randy, you work with a lot of different contractors everywhere. What are you hearing?

Randy Begger: I'm hearing that it's a very strong market right now. Everybody seems to be very busy. There's some labor issues out there and people are looking for ways to organize their business a little better. They're trying to bring in things like software and better machinery to get better throughput just because they have so much work to do. So it's good to see that the businesses are doing well in this environment.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Okay, Anthony, talk to us. What do you see in around metal?

Anthony Velez: This is my first kick of the can when it comes to metal forming because I typically do edge-to-edge roofing where I purchase everything directly from my manufacturer and install. But over the past year, because of our growth and the amounts of clients that we have personally, the request for right now in managing the client expectation triggered us to start going down this path. So just through another conference that I met Ken at, we started navigating that, visiting with him, going through designs, what it looked like, what machines we needed because I had zero clue. I just knew that we needed something to produce and we needed a machine to produce it with. So that's how Ken and I started building our relationship. But at the end of the day, it was just a matter of meeting client expectations, the needs of the industry right now and not in two weeks or a month.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, and that's what we're hearing, is that the contractors, roofing contractors are so busy. And obviously metal is such a part of that, whether it's around the drip edges or metal edges, all of that. And not to mention metal roofing, siding, everything else that's going on. So Anthony, I think it would be great. Let's talk a little bit about your story. You told everybody a little bit about your company, but really your story of why you all decided to start your own sheet metal shop and how that... Give us the whole story.

Anthony Velez: Sure, yeah. I'll not hold any punches back on this one.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Okay.

Anthony Velez: So just like any other contractor, when you're starting a business, you fall down a couple times before you figure it out. Roofing is something we're excellent at. We've done very well at it. Last year, we're contractor of the year and we needed to take this step. And it is because when we travel around into six different states that we're in, we find that man, we're short five feet of two-piece cover metal or some drip edge or something like that, or maybe there's a specialty metal that we need that would end up being a month out. Well, that's where Ken and his team came in and started proposing different options for us and going through design phases of where we should put it in our warehouse.

And I will tell you, we were not very receptive at first. Him and his team were saying it needed to be right here and we were like, "No, it does not. It cannot be right there." And anyways, Ken got his way. We followed his guidance and the support of his staff. And honestly, I'm so glad that we did because everything flows perfectly now inside of our new metal shop.

Heidi J Ellsworth: As you're looking at that, talk to us a little bit about how is that incorporated into your business because it's one thing to set up the shop, have it flowing the right way, but then processes, procedures, everything is going to change.

Anthony Velez: There's a ton of different variables that fall into this equation. And honestly, we're still learning it. And maybe we'll do a follow-up later on in the year where we get to say, "Okay, here's 2.0 version of what we discussed back in March and this is what he learned." Because that's what we're doing. Everything right now is a little trial and error. We have to go through purchasing metal, we have to figure out how we can manufacture this, especially when we have school projects that are tax-exempt. How do we organize that? There's a lot of accounting stuff that we have to look at. We're learning right now. But I'll tell you, what we're also learning is how to use the equipment because we're roofers, we're not metal fabricators. So that's where Ken came in again, I had to fly out to Vegas to have this conversation, but it was a well-welcome conversation.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And then getting the right people and the right talent.

Anthony Velez: Yeah. And that's it. And I'll tell you, our team, we have some former federal installation employees that have worked on aircrafts and things like that, so they have some knowledge base. And Ken and his team came out to Oklahoma and did a nice long full day instructional tutorial, step-by-step, broke it down Barney style. And when I came outside at the end of the day, I seen eight guys out there that could all bend and produce gutters, two-piece, fascia, drip edge, base metal. I thought, "Holy cow, we just took a huge leap." So where this is going to go now, I believe it's just going to be amazing for us. Talk to me in about six months.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Okay, we will be, you know that. Ken, follow up on this. A lot of contractors out there who are going through this journey. How does this work? And kind of talk through that.

Ken McLauchlan: This is always one of those challenges that, it is always driven by a need. Nobody just decides that, "Hey, I don't know. I have this extra money. I don't know what to do with," because profits are a hard thing to generate. So it usually gets driven by need. And the need was we couldn't meet our schedules, we couldn't do certain things that were over these little loops. And Anthony missed part of the story. So originally they gave us this phone call and said, "Hey listen, we're going to come see you guys." And four of them show up at our office and they're like, "Okay, let's have this discussion." And we had to sell ourselves as a company. We had to sell the products we had as a company. And then they left and they said, "Okay, we're done. This is going forward." Machinery all got shipped.

It was the perfect storm. It all got shipped just before a major trade show. Got there, we went out, did training. The training wasn't exactly probably what needed to be done. That was our fault. We learned from this. And where Anthony says he's learning, we're learning too, because they were brand new to the business. They had guys that had ran stuff. Everybody said they were comfortable. And then I had this dark cowboy hat and fella sitting in the corner of our booth at a trade show like, I need to talk to you. And I'm like, "Oh, this doesn't look like this is going to go well." And then we talked and then two weeks later we were back out in their facility doing this training. And you sit down and you make the assumption what it's going to take to get this done. And then understanding the customer, the customer need and what we're trying to accomplish was key.

We spent six and a half hours there with myself and one of our regional managers who's very customer-centric, and that are the guys that we have with us. These are the guys that ran machinery, understand the process. Together we worked through some hurdles. And in the end, when I walked back inside, Anthony did a great job of making sure everybody wasn't coming out and we were getting a chance to train people, which is always key. But he walked out and the succession story for me was he asked a question and one of his guys answered it. And that was like at that point you're like, "Okay, I can go home now. Now I'm good."

So it was the perfect story of, things didn't go exactly like they should, but the follow-up, the concept and the needs of the partnership are really important. And I think us being open to that and Anthony being open to saying, "Hey listen, we have some concerns." Because everybody gets that new piece of equipment. It's like, "Oh, I've done this for a hundred years." They weren't like that way, but most guys done it for a hundred years and the service after the fact and the support is as important as the machinery partner.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow. That is so cool. So one of the things that I'm thinking about too, starting a brand new, bringing brand new machines in, you haven't done it before. You're training, you're looking for talent, but there's also in today's world, the technology is just advancing so fast. So Randy, as you're working with contractors across the country who are bringing in new machines, talk to about the technology that's required to run those and where it's going because it's moving so fast.

Randy Begger: Well, it is amazing. The technology is, like you said, moving very fast. And the technology that we're bringing into the equation is something to help them keep organized. One of the things that I see, especially in the smaller roofing shops, you get to a point where your owners, the ones that are doing the quoting, doing all the organizing of what's going to happen, they get to a point where they're the bottleneck in the equation. So the technology helps bring in people that don't have to have as much knowledge in the metal industry and helps them quicker learn what they need to do to be able to get quotes done, organize sales, help get newer guys running machinery, able to do the parts that they need to do with fewer mistakes.

So that technology piece, being able to go all the way from an electronic order or even the customers coming in and putting in their own orders via the customer portals and things of that nature, that really has a big effect on how the flow of the business goes. And make sure that things like the pricing and those pieces, that the owners are always a bottleneck in, that those things can happen without them being there so they can focus on their business. So those things are really important from what we see. And once you get a system in place that can help do the pricing, help do the organizing of what jobs are going to happen to what machinery next, those things really smooth out the flow of what goes on in the metal shops.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Anthony, how did you find that? And you know what? Real quick, I want to remind everybody the chat is open. I don't think I said that earlier, but the chat is open, so please any comments, questions, thoughts, pop in the chat. Also feel free to say hi and tell us where you're from and what business you have. So Anthony, the technology side of it, was that part of that learning curve that day?

Anthony Velez: Every bit of it. We were at IRE, our International Roofing Expo, and that's where we first seen MetalForming and that's where we engaged them and started the conversation. And if you've ever been to one of these expos, there's probably a half a dozen metal forming companies manufacturing that are there. How did we settle on metal forming to be honest with you? Just a kick of the can there. Rolled the dice. The guys were super friendly. With Coryell, we're very relationship tight. So if we get a warm and fuzzy with you and you take time to visit with us and talk and just take business out of the equation for a minute and just be human, we're going to engage probably a lot more.

And like Ken said, we had some big bumps in the road at first, but we did. We showed up at their house and we walked in and sat in their living room and had a long day of just discussions and us picking their brains and they welcomed it. So that's how we chose to use MetalForming. Because of that personal touch, that relationship, they truly cared about what we were talking about, even though they knew we had zero knowledge of what this stuff was. And we were probably asking the dumbest questions you could possibly imagine, like, how does this plug in? Does it go hardwired? Does it have an actual plug? We're new to this, we don't know. But Ken and the team were just fantastic with it.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I don't think that's a dumb question personally. Sorry to say. I always wonder those things too.

Anthony Velez: Yeah, some of us are just doing this.

Heidi J Ellsworth: How are we going to set this up? I think I love that about relationships because Anthony, and I have to tell you, we just had from Kyle came in the chat morning all. Ken, I'm still keeping Dane in line over here at Coryell, Hope Paul as well. So just so you know, speaking of relationships.

Ken McLauchlan: [inaudible 00:19:23].

Heidi J Ellsworth: So I want to get more into really what it took to do this, Anthony, to make this decision. But I think before we get there, I want to look back on why. The why of, what you really saw and you mentioned it earlier, but I'd like to dive in just a little bit deeper into that. As a business, you were made a decision, you went to IRE, you're looking, you went ready with questions and trying to figure out. But before that, why did you decide we need to do this, we need to have this? What was really the catalyst for that?

Anthony Velez: So I think after 10 plus years in the industry, we've made a lot of good relationships with other roofing contractors who have been doing this maybe longer than us, who have ventured down this path as well. And just through leadership and professional conversations, our own little coffee shop talk, these guys were doing it already. They had their equipment, they had their MetalForming shop set up. And the reasons why we considered having the discussions was because like I said, if we're down in southern southeast Texas, somewhere that's a long ways away from a manufacturing facility. And we have to place an order on some specialty metal, we have a timeframe. Well, we're looking to close out a project in maybe three to five days. We don't want to wait two weeks to a month to get, like I said, maybe five feet or 10 feet of two piece or drip edge or something like that done.

And it just started making sense, our clients are suffering because we don't have everything we need to give them right away. And we just started navigating down through conversations and we decided, we're just going to look at purchasing the equipment. We had a really good year, like Ken said, sometimes you look at your profits and how can we reinvest those profits? And that's how we navigated that decision. But ultimately it was to meet the needs of our client. And in this state of the industry right now, it's like Burger King, you can have it your own way. And we're there to provide that service right now.

Heidi J Ellsworth: As you're looking at that, do you feel like the material shortage through 2021, 22 influenced your decision making?

Anthony Velez: You see me shaking my head already.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Anthony Velez: Everybody navigated that hurdle. And I will tell you as part of what I do as the national production manager for Coryell is, I look at that forecast. I try to see 10, 12, 16 months out and follow the waves and the patterns of material. And during that 21 year, that was a struggle for everybody. And we were just in a really good place at the time that when manufacturers had excess materials, we were starting to purchase those materials so that way we could keep going. And I think inadvertently that's what helped us to reach that contractor of the year goal because we've seen the forecast, we've seen what was going to come with the supply chain issues and we stocked up enough to be able to help us get through it. And I was surely grateful that we did. But the metal portion of it, we went 30 to 45 days before we would get metal in and it was because of the shipping wasn't coming, materials were in low supply.

And at that point, like I said, personal conversations with some of our other peers said, "Look, you should really consider investing in this equipment. That way you can have your own stockpile there. In the worst case scenario, you can produce it." Well here we are, 2024 and we have a metal shop.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow, that makes sense. That makes sense. Ken, did you see that also? This drive to start sheet metal shops come a little bit, to Anthony's point, out of wanting to have more control?

Ken McLauchlan: Yeah, I think job control is one of the biggest issues we see with most contractor bases that are coming to us. And when you really get into the root of the problem, I need to be able to serve the needs of our customers, manage a project profitably, which is a challenge because Anthony is in a lot of the key moments. Like freight is one thing, getting freight is a different thing. If you can't even get it shipped to you, it's a different discussion altogether. And for them to get paid, they need to have a complete project. So I think you saw more people, I think the 2020, 2021, finish off a 2022 experience that we all went through, gave people a different look on, there isn't just a just in time call. It's not the, "Hey listen, they're sitting with 4,000 feet of this sitting on the shelf somewhere and they can ship it to me today and I can have it tomorrow."

In a lot of cases, I saw people making concessions on colors. To where they're like, yeah, we really want it brown, but they said we can't have it so we're going to put on black. We never would've thought of that. In my 35 years of doing this, never would've thought that somebody would've said, "Oh, I can't get this color at all." So it was a challenge and it was industry-wide. And it was global too, but industry-wide here, it wasn't like one person or one manufacturer owned the market and said, "Oh, we're going to take advantage of this." Everybody was fighting through the same things. It was a challenge for everybody involved. And I think managing it was very difficult. And from their sighting and growing up on that side of the business, trying to figure out what components you're putting together to make what I... My first time to Coryell, I laughed because I thought they were selling screws out of the back. Because they had purchased them when they needed them and they're trying to guess at what they had. And we all laugh about it.

And then they weren't the only people like that. But you're sitting down and you're trying to forecast your business and where you're going based off of what market trends were and what you've had historically. And it was a difficult thing. And I think the people that could take advantage of this and looked at it and said, "Okay, how do I control part of this?" That's what the Anthonys have done. They've come in and Coryell said, "Basically, we need to take a little bit more control back." And that's what it is. It's not to affect a relationship with their partners, it's to control the job. It's a better job control.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Randy?

Randy Begger: One of the things that you'll see is, if you have to order in certain kinds of trim and parts and pieces to be able to finish out jobs, that's a very specific thing that you now have sitting in your yard where if you have a 4,000 pound coil of steel that could be manufactured into any part, you're a lot more flexible in what happens as you have those needs of I need more panel, I need more trim, I need something and I've got a long delay time. Having a coil there with the machinery to process it into what you need, that's a lot more flexible.

Heidi J Ellsworth: To that point, Anthony, as contractor of the year with Duralast, do you see expansion in your future of doing more different types of metal, maybe some metal roofing, siding? Or is this really looking at more the accessories of low slope? And if you don't mind sharing a little bit of-

Anthony Velez: No, I don't mind sharing at all. Obviously, we've invested in this machinery right now. The next thing is getting the supply chain down to a science where we have the capabilities to produce. And yeah, of course, there's no reason why we can't perform our gutters, downspouts and all the edge trim coping and then possibly look at standing seam or different types of R panel, M panel, things like that. You'd be foolish not to ask that question and say, "What does it look like in the future here? Because if this machine that we just purchased, which Ken can tell you it has multitudes of different options that we can do, or excuse me, to facilitate the fabrication that I'm not going to stop at just one. I'm going to figure out we're innovators in this industry."

And you know the deal, if you plan on staying in business for more than a day, you better learn how to innovate really quick. And you need to be looking ahead far enough out that you can say, "Okay, this worked today, but is it going to work tomorrow?" And be, I guess, responsive enough to say, "Yes, we need to make that move. Let's go." Jump off the bridge. Scared money, don't make money.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, I think to that point, and Ken you talk about this all the time, so for all the contractors out there who are listening, on making plans to make this move like Coryell did. You always say you need to be looking five plus years out. Talk a little bit about that.

Ken McLauchlan: Yeah, so everybody has different versions of short-term and long-term planning. And so I try not to define that for anybody, but it's one thing I ask and I asked Anthony to define it for me when we talk, I said, "Give me short-term, give me long-term." And then you define what that short-term and long-term is. Because there's tax incentives. A lot of this equipment, some of it's very specialized, and then sometimes we get the old proverbial cart in front of the horse, not to make a cowboy ploy for Anthony, but people are like, "Well, this is what I want to do."

And I'm like, "That's great, but I want you to think full circle that you need this to do that." And that was one of the discussions we had that, "Well, we need to do all this at once." And I'm like, "Okay, in order to do standing seam and roll form, you've got to have trim. So let's get foundation set first. Let's get that going the right direction and let's keep thinking that. And then where do you want to be a year from now, five years from now, what's the next step? What markets are you going to? What are you guys thinking about."

Division seven as a whole, and those are old guy terms for somebody like me, but that thermal and moisture protection specification part, there's only so much of it. You can do a deep part, but there's a lot of parts within it. So you'll watch the natural progression of a contractor that he might start in one medium of roofing and it might be shingles that migrates into membrane that migrates into metal. And next thing you know they're doing below-grade waterproofing and they're doing wall panels and all kinds of fancy different applications. The other thing, I've always learned a long time, it's a lot easier to sell stuff to your existing customer base than it is to go and find a new customer.

So the guy that's looking for you to do the roof on his buildings, probably getting somebody to do below-grade, probably getting somebody to do wall panels, probably getting somebody to do all the flashing around their building and that market's there for you to take and to work with your customer base providing that you have that option. And then you don't want it to sacrifice your other part of the business. And that's where we congratulate people at Coryell with what they've done. Because they've looked at it and said, "Okay, it's not just we can offer it, but we have to do it well." And that was the biggest discussion that we had, is the money is not the issue in spending it, but we want to spend it well to serve our customers well.

And I think that's the challenge with any of this, is how do I do this to move that forward. And then set those goals and then their whole team is on board, which was the fun thing. Because when we got there that day, it's a lot of times I get to be the bad guy and I'm like, "Okay, everybody shut your phones off. Everybody needs to be here, everybody needs to be quiet." The ground rules were laid before I walked in. It was like, everybody came in, they're turning their phones off and they're doing it. I'm like, perfect. So that's great short-term planning for long-term success.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. We just had Kyle mention, "The possibilities with this equipment is unmatched. The massive plus is the production these things can achieve in a short amount of time. And I love how it is. Excited for the next steps and the future of our production." Kyle, thank you. Because that's exactly, it's like you took that step, Anthony, that one step and now you're all like, what's next? Let's go. That's really exciting for a company.

Anthony Velez: It is. And you have people like Kyle and Dane who are in there, they're hungry, they're excited. And I think if you have that in your company, because in our culture, everybody is just wanting to do the very best that we can do. If it's PVC membrane today, is edge to edge metal stuff tomorrow, Ken is going to help guide us into what our future will be based on how well we perform the tasks that we have in front of us now. And eventually, yes, we will go into doing wall panels, we will go into doing full metal standing seams. We are not going to stop. There'll be a Coryell roofing building, Coryell metal fab building and whatever else that we'll just keep leading to.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, and how do you feel like with your customers that this is really changing how you can approach them? How has it helped your business?

Anthony Velez: It's helped tremendously. Already last week for instance, one of our clients here locally, we were short five feet, okay, five feet of two piece cover metal and it was a specialty color, a patina color. You have to order that and then you have to order a minimum amount to be able to get that back to you. Well, guess what? We were able to go right out to the shop, find a bonderized piece of that same metal, take it to the paint guy, color matched it, put it up on the roof within two days, project complete.

Heidi J Ellsworth: You're have happy customers.

Anthony Velez: Happy, they're ecstatic. You can't close out a job until it's a 100% complete, right? Well, we would've been waiting another month for that piece of metal or however many extra pieces we would've had to buy for that minimum because freight is going to kill you. We did it in two days and now it's finished.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Randy, I love seeing you. You're sitting there nodding because you have such a rich history in the industry. Are you seeing this with other contractors across the country too?

Randy Begger: Oh definitely. Yeah. Everybody is, they're committed to try and meet that customer expectation in the best ways possible, even from equipping their project foreman out on the job site to be able to drop which part they need and get that back to the shop as quickly as possible to get that manufacturing done so that the same day or next day they've got the part out to the job sites. We're seeing a lot of that, with these guys that are a little bit more in tune with technology. They're able to even make that two days-

Heidi J Ellsworth: Faster.

Randy Begger: ... even shorter, to get the parts needed out there.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, talk a little bit more about that too. I think people are probably thinking the technology of the machine, the technology, but there's a lot of technology that's going from job site back to the shop, correct? Can you talk about that?

Randy Begger: Yeah. So the Bendex software that I do, it's a central portion of a business where you get that implemented. So being able to put together an entire quote, have a nice formatted deliverable to the end user so that they can see what their job is supposed to look like. Taking that quote, get it turned into an order, into production so that the guys in the shop, they're not carrying around a two by four with drawings of trim on it, they actually get really good drawings that they can sometimes load right into the machinery so that there is no mistakes in that. A lot of those kinds of things are really becoming important, and some customers are to the point where if you're producing for other manufacturer or for other roofing clients, they have the technology and the know-how to put in an order that they need so that they can get those orders to you as fast as they can or get pricing after hours. So customer portal, things like that, they're becoming very, very much things that people are looking for in the industry right now.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, it's making a difference. And I love the fact that it's making a difference with your customers, Anthony, that they're seeing that and they're seeing what you can provide.

Anthony Velez: Yeah, it's exciting. I think, like I told you before, relationships are everything for us. So when we sit down with our client for the first time, we're investing in them before they invest in us. So it's very apparent in our industry that that's the road that will continue to go down and these investments such as this is what strengthens our relationships with the clients because then they know right away, Coryell is going to do exactly what needs to be done to ensure that we start a roof system and we complete it in the fastest time available. And I just think it just makes the industry stronger too, to be honest with you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I do too. And it makes so much sense. So I want to flip here for a minute, and I'm going to go to all of you experts, but as roofing companies are looking at either one, to help their current production, bringing on real forming machines. Two, to maybe start new, like you're talking about new types of production, Anthony, down the road. And I've even heard of some roofing contractors who have decided, hey, they've done a lot of metal roofing, they love it. They started their own sheet metal shop and they're actually not doing so much roofing, they are producing for everybody else. So there's a lot of decisions there of as you're looking at this and putting together your business plan around that. I want to talk about, sometimes it's not a good idea or the time is not right yet. So Ken, talk about that. Understanding the timing, understanding what you need to do to prepare to make it the right time so that it's a success and not something that you're like, "What did we do?"

Ken McLauchlan: Yeah, I think the word that resonates with me over my years of doing this, I'm waiting for that one big job. I get that one big job, I'm going to do this. Usually that one big job comes along and there's a time schedule that ties to it, and that's usually not the time to try to horsepower it through. I think a lot of people that are doing a very proactive approach towards this are going to look at equipment, get the education, understand what you're trying to do, understand your market and what you're getting into because it's always easy to say, "This is what I want." But do I have the people and can I repurpose people in a lot of cases to do this? It's the people that Anthony had in the back that weren't sitting around with nothing to do, they're getting repurposed at this point and it's a multitude.

It's allowing for their growth, but it's also allowing for their company's growth. So it's a challenge that way. And then a lot of people start looking at equipment, make sure whoever your partner is. Somebody who's listing what your needs are, because that's the challenge. And I'll say this over and over again, we had a lot of people that walk in the door and like, "I want this." And we're like, "Okay, that's good. However, is this an open discussion?" And then you'll usually get somebody like Anthony or Chris or the guys that were here. Dane looking at me like, "Okay, so what are you going to tell me now? I'm telling you I'm the customer. I control this." We want to make sure that it's an educational environment, that you can learn from the years of experience that are there, make sure you're getting that.

Just don't buy the next thing. Buy the right thing. And I keep saying that over and over again, but it's so many people think this is what I want. And we have it at trade shows too. They walk up and they think, I want to buy the newest, fanciest, double vendor. And we're like, "What are you doing?" And they tell us what they're doing and we're like, "It's the wrong machine." "That isn't what I asked you." And I'm like, "No, I understand. I heard your question, but it's not the right machine for the application you're doing."

And some people really are challenged with that and it's a hard thing. But I think the educational part of this industry is key because everyone wants to be successful. Heidi's heard me say this a hundred times before. We belong to a very noble trade and so many people forget that. Everybody needs a roof, I've yet to find somebody that doesn't live under one, everybody's living under one somewhere. We need to do it well. We need to be professional at it. And educated and make great decisions and move the industry forward, and that's the challenge. Shortages of labor, that's the bigger challenge. And all these guys are fighting it. Randy lived it as a contractor. Anthony lives it every day. We live it trying to find the right people.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, and Anthony, you're sitting there nodding.

Anthony Velez: Yeah, I have so much to just add to that. I would tell anybody who is considering even just going down the path of education, you got to look at, if you're going to go get a bachelor's degree that's going to take you four years. You got to look at this similarly and say that, "First, I'm going to do the research. I'm going to understand what it takes. I'm going to look at the needs of our company and our clients and what we have to have to manage that need." And then like Ken said, I've literally re-orchestrated the manpower that I've even hired. So now I have site superintendents who have years of PBC flat top roofing, some metal roofing, but now I have staff that have over 15 and 20 plus years of actual metal fabrication, metal install, specialty gutters, specially collector heads, you name it.

So I've started adding to my arsenal that is more versatile, not just on metal, but for our standard single ply membrane roofing, but then now they can do this too. So I'm building a workforce inside doing a lot of continued education like with Ken and his team, but that still is happening right now. We will perfect this before we implement this. So I would just say, don't go out there thinking you're going to start it up tomorrow, that's not how this works. And if you take a minute to drive down and see Ken and the team, invest that time, go in there with an open mind, questions are going to come up, but just be receptive to what they're going to tell you because chances are what you verbalize to them, they're going to pick apart and they're going to understand more about your actual needs versus your wants. Because the needs are what's going to help you pay the bills and justify the purchase of that equipment, not the wants of what you're going to try to think you're going to do in the future.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Well, and there's ways to start smaller. We were talking yesterday, Ken about manual versus powered. How do you get started? So Randy, as you're talking to some of these contractors too on who maybe [inaudible 00:42:51] I want to start tomorrow and I want it all happening tomorrow and that's just not going to happen. What are some of the smaller ways to get into this to start going down this path along with education, but also just, what are some of the startups, smaller machines or even manual machines that may contracts should be looking at?

Randy Begger: Well, as far as if you're looking to start up and get going with this, probably one of the best resources that somebody like MetalForming who has a full line of products that they can show you and help you grow from the smaller manual machines to get started into the automated machines and then up into double folders and all the high-end stuff that may be needed at some point. But I think also one of the other parts to this is finding another contractor, manufacturer that's doing this and become somebody, a partner with them, learn from other people that are in this business. There's a company here in Montana and they're a great bunch of guys. They have people coming in all the time, going through their manufacturing, learning what they're doing and they make those partnerships and those friendships and training environments so that they can give back to other people who are just getting started.

That's key to it. I've got another company here in Montana that they're looking at how do you find those guys that are going to come in and be that next generation of guys running machinery and that kind of thing. They're even going to a point where they're going into the high schools and partnering with shop classes in the high schools to teach what they know about putting together metal roofing, metal siding, those kinds of things and giving back at that level. So looking five, 10 years down the road, those people that are in those classes may become part of that workforce and can help move the industry forward. But giving back with training people that haven't been there, great way to move the industry forward.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, I like the idea about too, that peer group or going and talking to other manufacturers who are role-forming to understand what they went through. Like getting in touch with Anthony and talking to his team. Because Anthony, did you talk to other contractors? Did you talk to other folks along that journey of education?

Anthony Velez: We did, just like I said, some of our peers in the industry to understand why they got into the metal side of it and why they purchased the equipment. And I visited with both Randy and Ken about this too, is finding education to get you spooled up is going to be difficult. You got to look at your typical plumbers, HVAC guys. They start in as an apprentice somewhere. It means they have to just start at the lowest end of the deal, figure it out from A to B to C and D. That's how we're doing it. We just have a great resource through Ken, and a couple of our other peers. But again, we're hiring people that also have 15 to 20 plus years of metal fabrication experience too, which is going to help excel us because again, if you're going to invest the money in the machine, you need to be ready to invest the money in the people.

And that's what's going to help you speed that process along. Because inadvertently, if I have the 20-year veteran here like Dustin, he's going to be able to feed that down to the rest of the team. So we have in-house training. So that's where I love what Randy's saying, where some of these other businesses are going into the school and working with the technology centers and the trade centers, things like that. That is fruitful because this is a trade that young people need to know about. And it's definitely, like Ken said, everybody's under a roof. You're always going to need a roof unless you just decide to be that one anomaly that's just living out in the woods. But these things right here, we just continue to invest in. But for us, back to your question, yes, visited with our peer group, discussed a little bit more about that and we've just hired people and done our own research and now we have a great partner with Ken that's helped train us.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, that was one of our questions that we had come up was, is there a place to go through training, get certifications? And really, Ken, when we talked about that-

Ken McLauchlan: So Anthony and I had that discussion in his facility too, and this is where you talk about partnerships. And I want to commend Randy on his note too because I think that's something we've all missed. There's a lot of different places to go. Trade associations are one of the, most states have roofing contractors associations of some sort. They have sheet metal trade schools of some sort. You have to research it. It's just like a customer to do stuff like that as well. But when we had the discussion originally, and this is the part that where Anthony says he's asking them questions, he asked a great question that I didn't even think about it. He goes, "So how do I get certified on my machine?" And the certification on the machine, the training comes from us on the machine. The certification comes from the manufacturer of the material.

So for him, for his edge-to-edge warranties, there's got to be a cohesive partnership in this. You have to be talking this through with everybody in this process. We were integral in that discussion as well with the gentleman that heads up that part of Duralast saying, "Okay, this is what they're doing. This is what they're putting in." He was along the whole journey with us, making sure that we were doing what he needed. We understood what their criteria was that he had to have. Grant and these guys have basically a certified system going in, which was key. So you'll hear a lot of people talk about, well, they use the word certified and authorized too openly. It makes me nervous when I hear those words because realistically, it's another partnership. It's whoever's product you're putting down, you want to make sure they're aware of what you're doing. They might not entirely support it if they're not thinking big picture, but the opportunity for growth is key. And letting them know before rather than after is always a key thing too. We have a lot of those partnerships as well.

Anthony Velez: I want to add to that real quick, specifically with our manufacturer. We visited with them even leading up to our purchase with MetalForming. we needed to know, number one, that we were going to be able to purchase our metal directly from our manufacturer and how we were going to get that metal and how they were going to allow us to incorporate that into our system. Because again, with our manufacturer, Duralast, it's an edge-to-edge roof system that's warrantied from edge-to-edge. So when we take that component away, that is being manufactured directly by them, how does it still maintain the warranty when we do it? So we've done a lot, and that's a partnership. We have a very well trusted partnership with them and they have a lot of education. We do a lot of education with them, with our team, our installers, everybody from top-down. So again, get with your manufacturers on both sides of who you do business with, engage the conversation and let them tell you. Because every conversation's fruitful and it's going to set you up for success later. I promise you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is great. I love that. And we have just a little bit more time here, so everyone, if you have questions, if you have thoughts, now's the time, get them in the chat. But my sales and marketing mind, that's where I live and breathe in my world. So I'm curious, Anthony, and everybody chime in on this. So you have the machines, it's going well, you're in thing. How does your business plan change? How does your sales and marketing program change? Has it made a lot of changes for you or is that something you're looking for in the future to incorporate? So the other contractors out there, they're thinking, "Well, how's this going to change everything?"

Anthony Velez: I think at first marketing, that's probably not going to be at the forefront of your mind. Right now, it's just about using the machines to meet the needs. And I think it will organically evolve as you start getting better and better at what you're using the machines for. And like Ken was saying earlier, today we're doing two piece edge metal or coping well, next year we might be making wall panels. And I think that organic step is just what's going to dictate where the marketing and the social media and how we go to market, start to grow. Because you have to get really good at what you're doing first before you can even come close to investing in marketing to say, "Hey, guess what? Today we're building full-blown metal roof systems. Come on." That's not going to happen. Just take your time, get good at what you're doing. We do have an exceptional marketing team here that produces lots of literature and videos and content. We have drones flying all over the place, so-

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it.

Anthony Velez: ... I promise you, when we get to that point, there'll be some little drones circling our metal fabrication shop and it'll be right on top of a roof that we just completed. And that'll probably be the time you say, "Huh? I guess Anthony's doing [inaudible 00:52:32] now."

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, I can't wait to see it. I'm going to be watching.

Anthony Velez: ... the metal industry together.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, I love it. That is so cool. Well, and on that line, we just had a question from Jason. Thank you, Jason. What is the number one trending metal application that you are seeing currently? Roofing, siding or framing, et cetera? Ken, let's start with you.

Ken McLauchlan: Wow. So I'm going to take the framing part out because I can't speak eloquently to that. But I will say we've saw a very large progression towards wall applications because the others have been present and a lot of people who have been doing it, I don't want to say the final frontier. The other funny thing with that is that, a roof might be a hundred by a hundred, but the walls are four times that typically. And so it's a larger dollar amount too, and it's a larger square footage and a different application. So we're seeing a lot of people looking at fabrication for that as well now. So I would say that's probably one of the bigger areas of growth we're seeing as a market. And then all of the industry's changing, and this isn't something we get involved in, but all the different print rollers, that they have stuff that looks like wood and looks like rusty material that has a warranty that people can do, and it gives them architectural control. And I think that's a very visual, vertical application in a wall. So that would be my 2 cents worth.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And we have a lot of information on that on Metal Coffee Shop because that is a hot right now on the print. Randy, what are you seeing for that question?

Randy Begger: I tend to agree with Ken in that. And the insulated panel market, things like that are really growing. I've got customers down in South America that are building insulated panels. We're seeing more of that coming in. And being able to build the trims in the panels and everything involved with that, it's something that I see quite a bit of right now.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, it's a growth. Anthony, what's your, well, right now, accessories, right?

Anthony Velez: I'm looking at this. Okay. I don't have any formal quotes for this wall panel machine that he's saying that it's so hot on the market right now. Where are we at on there?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Let's go.

Anthony Velez: But to every contractor out there in the industry, what Ken just said to me was fruitful, because I know who we are as a contractor, I want to visit about that now. How long does it take to get to that portion? Because what we started with, I'm comfortable with for right now. But that doesn't mean I can't have a secondary piece already starting to get spooled up and ready for training. So Ken, call me.

Ken McLauchlan: Okay.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Call me. I love it. If there are any other questions, please let us know, but I do want to show this. So here you go, Anthony. Here's at least a little picture, a little glimpse of those beautiful machines that are out there, for everybody out there. So Ken, just summarize up on this, just your advice for contractors out there. I know we've said it a lot of times, but let's just sum it up on making these decisions onto start a sheet metal shop or not.

Ken McLauchlan: Yeah, I think starting it or not, there's talking to your peers like Anthony was talking about, there's peer groups within that steel sharpened steel. That's always important. Hang out with the people that you want to imitate and most of those people are going to be there to support you. Invest in your education, invest in your team, come to the trade shows, see us at the trade shows, become part of the organizations that are there that drive professional applications, both local and national. And then invest the time to look at where you think going with your business plan and then really plan about what do your purchases look like down the road? Because some lead times on some of this equipment we talk to people about, they go from, "You can pick it up this afternoon," to, "We're going to build it and you can have it in 16 months from now."

It's an entirely custom application. And it's that long-term picture and it's the guy that just wants to start today, it's the guy that their family owned business, they've done it forever. And I think you and I had a great story the other day, that we're moving out of the application and we really love the fabrication, and that's where we want to go to. And they understand the customer base, which I think is key. It's one of the strengths that we have as a company. Most of our guys were roofers. And so they understand the pain points and they understand what it looks like and they understand what it goes bad, what bad looks like and they understand what it's going okay, what it looks like.

So I think that's the summary I would give people. I'd welcome anybody to come down and come through our demo room. We've got a little over $3 million worth of equipment sitting on the floor. We'd love to show you everything from the manual machine to the $2 million plus piece that is fully automated that you can sit back and watch it bend 11 gauge. It's a pretty exciting thing. And again, anybody's welcome at any time, stop by, see us at a trade show, talk to our partners. Always excited to be around people.

Heidi J Ellsworth: All right, well I have to tell you, Megan Ellsworth and I are going to be coming to visit MetalForming this summer and we're bringing the cameras to go through your demo area. So thank you Ken. We're excited for that. And we'll be showing everyone, but it's a true open invitation to be able to go and see. And Anthony, you did that and congratulations on your journey.

Anthony Velez: Thank you. And thank you guys for having us on with you today. It was a pleasure. I enjoy this. And heck, maybe we'll take a trip down this summer to MetalForming and get to see you guys in person.

Heidi J Ellsworth: We'll hang out.

Anthony Velez: I like it.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Hang out in MetalForming. I love it. Randy, thank you so much for all your knowledge, for the technology that you bring to the industry and all of your wisdom. Thank you so much for being on today.

Randy Begger: Well, thanks for having us, Heidi. It was great. Appreciate it.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It was really great. Again, thank you Metalforming for sponsoring this. Ken, thank you. Steve, the whole group who's there, Chad, you guys just are amazing group to help. And thank you so much for getting this information out there. Please share it. Please know that you can, as I said, get this out to your friends who are thinking about this. And also, you can get ahold of any of these folks through us or through the directory, Metalforming directory on both Roofers Coffee Shop and Metal Coffee Shop to get all the information you need. Of course Heidi at Roofers Coffee Shop, and we'll get it to you there.

And I have all kinds of messages coming in through the chat saying thank you, that it was great and everyone loved it. So thank you so much everyone for being on. Please join us in two weeks. This is a big topic. Mergers and acquisitions is sponsored by Adams and Reese. And we will have Trent Cottony, Stephanie Tausos, Mike Blumenfeld and Bobby Mesmer, who is a very large metal building erector on here too, talking about that side of it. So very exciting. Join us all. And gentlemen, thank you. We'll see you again soon. Thank you so much for everything.

Ken McLauchlan: Thank you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And thank you all for watching. We'll be seeing you next week in two weeks. Have a great day.