Unlocking Efficiency with Labor-Saving Innovations - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Wesley Sherrer and Tom Rhoads of Hunter Panels. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello, and welcome to Coffee Conversations from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and today we are talking about something that I find pretty dang fascinating and that is how are products brought to market? And what are they doing to help save time and labor, which is so important right now. We have looked at this and we thought we need to talk to our friends and experts at Hunter Panels and find out what they're doing around labor savings, but what's really happening in the overall industry. And, of course, we want all of you to be part of that conversation. Ask questions, make comments.

Housekeeping wise, this episode of Coffee Conversations will be available on demand within 24 hours. It is being recorded. And like I said, the chat is open, so let us know where you're from, what kind of business you have, the name of your business, your name. Also, please make comments, ask questions all the way through, because this is going to really be about how contractors help drive product innovation through really great manufacturers. Let's get started. This Coffee Conversations is being sponsored by Hunter Panels. Thank you, Hunter. They are the leader in time efficiency and products, energy efficiency, you name it. They're bringing products to the market that really are making a difference, both for contractors and for building owners. Along with that, we have some experts from Hunter Panels and Carlisle Construction Materials with us today. Wes, welcome to the show.

Wesley Sherrer: Thanks for having me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I am very excited to hear all of this, but let's start with an introduction. If you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do with Hunter Panels.

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, sure. As you mentioned, I'm with Carlisle Construction Material and Hunter Panels. I've been in construction for a little over 25 years now. I actually started as a kid working with uncles who did rough carpentry, painting, masonry and landscaping. 25 years, sounds like a long time. I'm not as old as I look. I got my degree in marketing from Ohio State and an MBA from Lebanon Valley. I live in Missouri with my wife and three children. And ultimately at Hunter, I'm responsible for basically bringing products from ideation all the way to launch and support for customers in the field.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's excellent. Thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited about this topic. I also want to welcome Tom, who's a Western Regional Manager with Hunter Panels. Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom Rhoads: Well, thank you, Heidi. Thanks for having us today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, I'm so excited. If you could introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do with Hunter Panels?

Tom Rhoads: Sure, absolutely. Again, I'm Tom Rhoads. I'm the Western Regional Manager for Hunter Panels. I manage a sales team of eight rep groups across the Western US all the way from Denver to Hawaii. I cover those continuous markets all the way to the Pacific Coast. Enjoy the business, I've been in it 10 years now with Hunter, but 20 years in the overall building envelope has been my time in the industry. And certainly, it has been a good growing experience and lots of change and rapid change has been really part of what we do. I'm excited for that. And like I said, most of the time I'm spending my time working with my reps out in the field. I interface a lot with contractors, distributors and architects all through the Western US.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Welcome. Thank you. Wes, just real quick, an overview of the types of products that Hunter Panels brings to the market, just for those who might not know.

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, sure. The primary product that Hunter Panels brings to market is polyisocyanurate insulation materials, which is a foam plastic for use in both commercial walls, commercial roofs. And now it's growing in more popularity for both residential walls as well as subgrade applications.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent. Okay. Well, along with that, Wes, I want to talk about the big picture of the labor shortage and what factors... Because of the labor shortage, we've had so many things happen in the last decade, right? Between the recession, COVID, material, labor shortage and really now the labor shortage is defining a lot of product innovation. Can you give us a little bit of what you see out there in the larger picture of how that is driving product innovations?

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, sure. If you look at historically, I think there's two views for it. There's what's happened and what's coming and what we can see on the horizon, right? You hit nicely on the labor shortage. We have struggled to find enough labor to install the square footage of materials that are required for us to meet our growing population. Commercial construction tends to be very labor-intensive. We as an industry tend to be slow to adopt new technologies and as a result of that we've continued to maintain this very high labor rate, very labor-intensive applications for our materials. That has certainly been a challenge. Skilled labor is another huge one, right? As safety continues to be a big concern for us on the rooftop and in construction in general, we've seen fairly high levels of turnover where people are leaving for other jobs.

And in labor markets like this where jobless rates are very low, we tend to see a vacuum created within the commercial construction space. That's a challenge to fill. Then forward-looking, some things that are happening to us on a legislative perspective, we're starting to see sustainability grow and sustainability requirements find their way not only within code and government funded projects, but even within the private space where private companies and public companies now have sustainability goals and sustainability requirements as part of their recruitment policies in finding new labor coming out of high school and college where kids want to work for sustainably oriented and minded organizations. It's becoming a recruiting tactic for a lot of companies. It touches in all areas of labor in interesting ways.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It really does and I find it so interesting, your point about sustainability in the next generation, because it's the next generation of employees, people who are working with roofing companies, owning roofing companies, but it's also the next generation of building owners and that end consumer and their demands that are out there. Tom, what are you seeing on that larger picture of how the labor shortage is driving innovations?

Tom Rhoads: I find it really interesting that this labor issue is really in the top three concerns contractors, for example, have right now. And if you sit any time with a contractor, you sit with distribution, you'll hear this consistently all through every conversation, how it's limiting the amount of rooftops that we can do. Even with backlogs, a company with backlogs or concerned about having the labor extend out all the way through the year to be able to cover their backlog work. There's some indicators out there that continue to have everyone concerned, which is a lot of these issues that relate to why we have such a labor shortage continue on and they're not going to change over the next several years. This is not going away anytime soon.

For example, we've got declining birth rates. We have an aging workforce, which is typical all throughout the country. I read a report the other day, coming into 2024, there were about 9.4 million jobs available, but only 6.3 million people available to fill it. That's an astounding shortfall. Just in a landscape view, that's the kind of conversations we have with contractors that they're concerned about those trends. But back to your original question, that's really what's driving the need to have products that can save labor. Wes said it best. We are slow as an industry to adopt new technologies. You can go into other industries and robotics are a much bigger portion of the business. I was in an Amazon warehouse not too long ago and a third of their space in the Amazon warehouse was robotics.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Tom Rhoads: It's amazing how industries are adopting it, but we're a little bit slower on the roofing side to get there. I think that as we move in that direction, that demand for those labor saving products is only going to grow.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. As you're looking at this, Wes, with your team and you're looking at products that are coming out, what are some of the things, the labor saving products, that you've brought on from Hunter recently that have due to this demand and these changing factors?

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, three very recent ones come to mind. The first is Redi Flash. As we're talking about industry trends, we've seen fully adhered applications grow. The use of adhesives grow. One of the big things when you're using adhesives is temperature. It's a huge variable in how fast adhesives splash off to be able to apply that next layer of the roof. You run into a couple of things there. One is the efficiency of it, right? On cold days, adhesives take longer to flash off and so you've got guys standing around on a roof waiting for adhesives to flash before they can keep going. Huge waste of time and energy and labor. Then on the flip side of that, on hot days you've got adhesives flashing off almost too quick. You've got guys rushing around trying to keep up with how fast adhesives are flashing off.

And when we rush, we tend to make mistakes. It becomes a safety thing, right? Fatigue kicks in. Really what Redi Flash does is it provides contractors with a light-colored side of our installation boards and a dark-colored side of our installation boards, standard on our H-Shield CG and H-Shield HD products where contractors get to choose between a light-colored facer and a dark-colored facer going up to either speed up or slow down adhesive flash off as just a lever of control that they've traditionally not had when it comes to installation and adhesives on top of them.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'm just really interested too in... As we're looking at this board up here on the screen right now, but how does that come about, Wes? As you're looking at this, how did that come about?

Wesley Sherrer: A big part of it's what we call ethnography. We go out and we watch contractors work, which seems weird, right? And maybe is very uncomfortable the first few times, for sure. But ultimately, we're just looking for waste. We're just looking for where contractors are getting held up or slowed down or struggling or when they start cursing. When they start getting upset or frustrated in general and trying to document those things and then understand, "All right, what can we do about this? How can we solve this?" It's a silly thing when you think about it. Generally, if you go out in Texas on a roof in the summer, you don't wear dark-colored shirts because you get hotter, right?

You wear light colors because it's... And vice versa when you go out in a cold climate, we generally wear darker colors and we inherently know this, but to apply that to a product in this way really comes about as a result of just seeing adhesives grow and thinking through, "All right, here we've got this problem. How do we solve this? How do we make this a little easier for contractors and our customers to resolve that labor issue?" Right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. And Jason, thank you so much, on the chat just said, "We just used that cover board on a re-roof project, and it is crazy how well it worked." The contrasting color actually did make a big difference. There you go. Contractor feedback right there.

Wesley Sherrer: Thank you for sharing that, Jason. Appreciate that very much.

Tom Rhoads: One of the comments I continue to get from contractors as we sit with them about this particular technology, "Is why did you wait so long to get to this?" You know what I mean? It's like, "Oh man, it's a no-brainer once you're on the roof and using it."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It makes sense.

Wesley Sherrer: It's a duh, right?

Tom Rhoads: Yep.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And I love how you say, "We just watch them." Watching and really interacting with the contractors as part of the entire process. We have a little video here that I want to show. Maybe you gentlemen could talk us through this. Wes, starting with you. Let me just start it. Talk about watching, this is a time trial.

Wesley Sherrer: This is actually our most recent product launch. We actually just launched this product on Monday, believe it or not, which is a 12-foot board. And essentially to that labor savings end, we get the, "How do we move faster? How do we install boards bigger?" Or, "How do we install boards faster?" Well, we can just make them bigger. So instead of the traditional eight-foot length, we were making a 12-foot length. And in the process we did trials and time trials and was able to capture this. On the left, you see the same crew, the same roof, putting in eight-foot boards and then putting in 12-foot boards and the associated time that it takes for just laying those boards out.

We were able to show that 12-foot boards, we could save 34% in labor, just time, laying out and installing the boards as compared to laying out eight-foot boards. Interestingly enough, one of the things we looked at were even bigger boards, beyond 12 foot. And through this, that same contractor highlighted that there is such thing as too big and you start getting into and creating new problems. That iterative testing and prototyping and field trials go a long way in terms of understanding what's actually working and what's maybe a decent idea, but not the idea where you maybe take a good idea too far.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, and that's really working with those contractors. Tom, when you see this time test and in talking to the contractors. I know this just launched, but I would think there'd be some excitement around this type of... I guess I want to say too that sometimes when you think about product management, you think about R&D, you think about manufacturing. You think about these big labs and scientists and big formulations and all of that. Whereas it really sometimes comes down to the length of the board or the color of the board. It's so cool.

Tom Rhoads: Yeah, and it's ever so simple in some cases to make a tweak like that, that will have a huge impact on the industry. In this case, for example, you think about the savings of time, some of that is in the fact that you reduce the number of fasteners that are needed on there. It sounds simple, right? We save about three fasteners per square with this new product. It sounds like a small amount, but that's a big deal to these guys when they're expanding it out on 1,000 squares. It's a big deal. Yeah, so far the reception has been fantastic. People are saying, "Wow, this is really going to open up some opportunity for us." And it's not in every case that they'll use it, but they will certainly find space for it and there will be some that where profit margins will be increased because of this. That's a big deal to a contractor.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is. When you're looking, just so we got the comments and please everyone, ask questions, bring your comments in, on how these products are helping to reduce the overall project timeline. Those two things, plus I know you also have your HD composite board. Maybe, Wes, talk a little bit about that because, Tom, you were talking about the fastener reduction, uplift. Those three products really have come out and made some big changes for you and contractors.

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, sure. HD composites were bit of an evolution. Watching contractors use cover boards in particular, cover boards are very common in commercial roofing. They add a level of not only wind uplift, but resilience for foot traffic. We see them for hail, both severe or very severe. Sometimes they're used as a thermal barrier, right? Depending on what you're trying to accomplish with the board. Seeing gypsum tends to be a pretty heavy cover board. It's kind of the air apparent, if you will. That's the traditional cover board that's been used in the commercial roofing world. Again, very heavy. It's pretty labor-intensive to move around, cut, truck. When we think about logistics and some of the challenges through the pandemic around trucks. You get about three times the square footage of a high density polyiso board per truck for as you do with gypsum. You start to think about the implications of rooftop loading. One truck, three times a square foot, loaded up onto a roof compared to three trucks of gypsum.

What distributors can do... Some distributors have told us they can load two trucks of high density polyiso in a day compared to one truck of gypsum in a day, just because you don't have to move the pallets around the roof as much to spread weight out. You can lift multiple pallets at a time, right? Now you're delivering six times as many square feet in a day with an HD polyiso as you are a gypsum cover board. All those things start to add up really quickly. We've seen HD cover boards grow in the market in place of gypsum.

Then, again, watching the installation of cover boards, you say, "Well, we're installing insulation and then we're putting a cover board on top of that. Gee, what if we just combine those and contractors only had to move one board?" Right? Then in applications where you're fully adhering that cover board, "Gee, we can take that adhesive away from a material cost perspective and a labor perspective and remove an entire layer of application by just doing this in our plants, which is fairly easy for us to do, compared to making contractors spray another layer of adhesive and deal with flash off times and everything that comes with it."

It was cool evolution that really gave us phenomenal efficiency in terms of eliminating that layer of adhesive. The installation speeds moving a 30-pound... Gypsum cover boards are typically around 60 to 80 pounds. HD cover boards are 12, 13 pounds, much, much lighter. Just moving the board around and then on top of that, the application rates. Interestingly enough, as we started testing the board, not only did we see those efficiencies come through, but it actually outperformed the separate systems. When you're layering installation in a cover board, it actually doesn't perform as well as when we are combining those in the plan. And part of that comes through with fastener reduction. We're able to get FM 1-90 approvals with six fasteners instead of the traditional 12 and 16 fastener applications.

HD composites are the only polyiso solution that gives us very severe hail rating. Even from an impact resistance perspective, we get there with a polyiso solution with HD composites where we have to use very specialized gypsum materials. It's all around a multi win type of system. As you start to layer these ideas and thoughts and uncover new problems that you're creating without knowing it as you're introducing products. It's neat.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Tom... Go ahead.

Tom Rhoads: Heidi, I might just add to a couple of things that Wes has said that he's explained it really well, this progression of evolution for coming up with this product, but starting back with that half inch HD, those advantages, just to give you an idea what that looks like on the roof. If you do a thousand square job, for example, gypsum, it's going to take six trucks of material to land at that job. When you put it in perspective this way, where a half inch HD, it's just two trucks. Think about that from what Wes has said, the impact of getting it up on the roof and all that, it can all be done in a day rather than three days. There's such a significant impact there.

The other part of it is Wes was talking about the weight of these boards. Well, what that looks like on the roof, if you've been up there actually watching installations. A person can handle two to three boards per hand and carry it across the roof. You can't do that with gypsum. It just doesn't work that way. I do know a guy at my gym that could probably carry two of those. It's just not normal for that to be as efficient as carrying HD boards around on the rooftop. Long story short, those are big pieces. I would add also on the HD composite side, there's two wins. Number one is, it works as a win for both mechanically attached and fully adhered. The fully adhered piece is that you reduce a complete layer. You just completely get rid of a layer of adhesive. And in a day and age where adhesive costs are continuing to rise, that's a challenge. And it's a big deal with these guys. There's adhesive savings and then there's the labor piece as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Wes, you had said something earlier, and Tom, I wanted to hit back on this with you too, is that contractors have backlogs. Especially on the commercial side, we're seeing a lot of backlogs and they're just not able to get the jobs done as quickly as they want to for building owners and new construction, everything that's going on. This makes a huge difference on those project timelines. What are you seeing Tom out in the field on that.

Tom Rhoads: As far as the timelines down to the job site, what that looks like, yeah, there's a lot of stress there. It's a big deal. Basically, these contractors have very limited time in almost every case to finish a job. It's one of the big stressor points for contractors to finish a job on time and really down to every single minute matters to them. When we get into these jobs, it's always... I guess when we start talking about labor savings components within our products, it's really an easy thing for them to hear, because right now in their brain, that's their next worry is that next project and the timeline that they have to finish it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And what has to happen and how fast can you get that done successfully with high performance. Right?

Tom Rhoads: Exactly.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: What about specific case studies or success stories were these labor saving products have made a significant impact? I know you had a job in Washington. You had another one in Philadelphia. Let's start with the Washington one. Tom, maybe you could give us some examples from the field.

Tom Rhoads: I think both of those were ones that Wes had worked out. I've got a job in Oregon, I can share here shortly, but let Wes handle that piece of it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Perfect.

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Prototyping and field trials are a critical part of the process, right? It's great that you can uncover a problem and generate a solution, but geez, it sure goes a lot further when you can put something in front of those contractors and say, "Hey, how's this work? Do you like this? What are the new problems this might create for you that we can't even fathom or think through?" It's amazing how the difference in the product evolution comes as a result of that. Yeah, the time trial that you saw on the 12 foot was done with a contractor in Washington as part of those field trials in the product creation and product launch. That was with high-tech where we saw those 34% savings. Then we did a Redi Flash. We just recently launched the Redi Flash on our paper faced installation, and as part of that, did a project in Philadelphia with Mike Kobithen Roofing and saw a 30% labor savings. Happened to be a cold day, a sunny cold day and he used the dark side of the board and we did dark side and light side.

And compared how fast was the team able to move using the dark side instead of the light side, and it was about a 30% difference in his labor for that particular project. We also do... Sorry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, go ahead.

Wesley Sherrer: We also do internal testing. We have a lot of facilities where we have mock roofs and we'll bring contractors in and teams in and we'll just ask them, "Hey, you guys are great at this stuff. Why don't you install this product?" "Nice work." We tear it off and, "Hey, now install this one." Tear it off, "Install this one." Right. We'll install and time those installations. Then that generates some really interesting side-by-side time-lapse videos where we can justify the claims that we're making around labor savings. When we go out and we launch a product and we say 34%, 30%, 60%, those kinds of things, there's direct tie there. We're not just guessing. We're not doing some back of the napkin math. We're actually testing and using trained applicators to understand where we're getting those savings from.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think that is so important, and this is one of the things that for everyone watching and please ask questions, make comments. But how important that is? How important the testing is? How important... What you said earlier, the observation, first just observing, then developing and then testing and then coming back and testing again, because a lot of that, Wes, also goes into building codes and code approvals and all of that. Can you talk just a little bit about how contractors can be a part of that to really help when have ideas and when they have thoughts? I'm going to share...

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, absolutely. Tom, did you want to share that HD project?

Tom Rhoads: I was just going to add on to what Wes was talking about. I have a real life example of how the HD composite, for example, was a real labor savings for a specific job. We just started a job in Oregon. It's a big data center. As you know that's a big growth area for the industry is these data centers popping up all over the place. In this case, in our 30 job, two layers of two six and then the cover board on top. And as we spent time with the folks that were going to be managing this job, we were able to talk about the HD composite and the light bulb went on in the room universally that this was the way we needed to go. As we have just recently started that job, they're realizing the savings in a dramatic way.

In this case, for example, it was 1,600 squares and if we would've gone with the separate layers, we would've had 4,800 squares of applied material. But because we were able to go to the HD composite, make it just literally two layers, we ended up with 3,200 squares of applied materials. A huge savings for these guys.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Tom Rhoads: Again, adding to the margins, they had already factored in the costing on doing them as separate layers. Every win that they have from that point down is a margin advantage for them on the job. That's a job that's going to be a complete win when it's completed here by the end of the month.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Just what's some of their feedback? I know that they're obviously going faster. They've saved a quarter of materials, but what is some of their other feed... What are they saying to you, Tom?

Tom Rhoads: Just exactly that. I guess they're astounded by the amount of labor savings. We had gone in selling the idea that it was about a 30% savings, right? Because talking about one less layer. But in the reality, it's actually working out to be more than that. Just think about that. A 30% savings in labor for a contractor on a job, they're ecstatic about it. Here's the thing, this will spin into more jobs because of that. It's one of these things where once folks use this product, they say, "Okay, why would we do it any other way?" That's the kind of reaction you get. That's the upside of it.

Wesley Sherrer: One of the most common questions that we get from... Or the common comments that we get from contractors when they try something like Tom sharing in this particular example is, "Gee, I should have tried it sooner." Right? But it's force of human nature. We get into a habit and it's easy to just hit the repeat button, right? Breaking out of a pattern or a cycle to try new things is uncomfortable. There's risk there. It goes back to exactly what Tom was talking about and around labor's tight and the possibility of labor savings products is great, but there's some risk in trying it. You know exactly how long it takes you to do what you're currently doing. You're not so confident in trying something new. Generally, that's where we see these early adopters and they tend to grow as they start accommodating new materials. Like, "Oh yeah, what else do you have?" Then we create almost early adopter super fans, which is fun. And it becomes a game of how do we accelerate that and make more super fans?

Tom Rhoads: It also broadcasts a light on. To me, it sheds a light, I should say. Sheds a light on how important education is in this industry. We're on a constant mission to try to get these materials, because we have an assortment of other products as well alongside these that are labor savings products, particularly in the tapered side of our world. There's a lot of products there that we can save some pretty significant amount of dollars on the labor side. With that said, it just seems like it's an education opportunity for us as a company and we're heavily focused and we're up to the task for going after the teaching moments to show how these things really do work.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I was going to say, Tom, I think that's critical, because there's so many different teaching moments. When we first started and we were just heading down this road of really talking about what goes into the testing? What goes into the time trials? What really the manufacturer puts into it. That was one of the things I was most excited about this conversation today, is that I think probably the general roofing community doesn't know how much goes into this to really make sure that when it does go to market that it's going to perform. Yeah, we wanted to save labor, but we also want it to perform so people, so feel comfortable. Wes, talk just a little bit about the commitment of the manufacturers and how you communicate that to the contractors so that they, for your super users, have that sense of confidence.

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, I think it surprises people actually, right? When you talk about testing, most people think coat testing and without a doubt, code testing is one of the most expensive areas for a product that is launched, right? It is expensive for us to run through the gambit of UL, FM, ASTMs that we have to run through to launch a product. But the real expense actually is... For every product that works, we've got nine products that don't, right? We spend a lot of time and energy in testing those products and prototyping those products and trying to figure out how to make those products work. And to your point, maybe we get to a place where we're like, "All right, we can solve this problem in this way, but gee, we can't produce it." Or maybe we can produce it, but it costs five times more than the current thing does.

Nobody wants it that bad, and you end up actually solving problems that you can't commercialize. There's real cost in that. As a company, we have committed several... As a public company, I can share this stuff. We've committed several things to the street on our vision 2030 that we're committed around. Innovation is one of those strategic pillars. We have committed publicly to turn 25% of our sales will come from new products by 2030. We will increase our spend to 3% of revenue, which is an increase of five to eight times what we have traditionally spent in innovation. That puts us 3%, doesn't sound like much, but that is world-class innovation with the likes of the most innovative companies out there. Pick the one you like. That's at that level for a construction company is pretty amazing. We just announced a $45 million RNI building expansion for our research and innovation center, which by the way is only three years old.

We're already expanding it, right? And all of that is to prototype faster, get more materials and more solutions in front of contractors and customers and architects to understand what works, what doesn't work, right? Well before we even get to the testing piece of it and actually the product launch side of it. Then once we get something that customers say, "Yeah, this is great, we want it." As simple as a multicolored facer is or seems to be, or a 12-foot board seems to be, there are huge, huge real implications for us to actually produce those materials and think about our suppliers and the materials we have to get from them and changing their manufacturing processes to be able to accommodate the innovations that we want to make. It really becomes this cohesive approach, not only with us and our customers, but with our vendors to be able to actually bring these solutions to market. It's a pretty time and labor-intensive undertaking for us as a company to innovate even in the small seemingly obvious ways.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. Well, I think that's so cool, first of all, that the pillars by 2030, the innovation, because we just started out this whole conversation with the fact that we don't do a lot of new innovation or even try new products in the roofing industry with robotics and environment and sustainability and everything. We've had this QR code up on the screen. If contractors have ideas, how do you bring those in? How has that become part of your product development?

Wesley Sherrer: Several ways. Ultimately, we're listening for those pain points. We want to know, we want to hear the complaints, the frustrations, which probably isn't common, but we love it. Really there's opportunity in this. If you listen close enough and dig a little deeper, typically that's where you can really uncover these golden ideas. Our best ideas, shocker, come from customers, right? We're not coming up with these. Customers are saying, "Hey, it'd be cool if we could do this." Or, "Hey, this is frustrating. It'd be really nice if you guys could figure out how to do this instead." We beg customers for that feedback. There's a QR code to submit ideas. These dump right into our product management team and our innovation teams are combing through ideas every day, every week, every month.

As we're listening for those pain points, this is one way. Also, we host contractor events. We travel with contractors, architects. We love engaging in two-way conversations with customers. Then I talked about ethnography, just going out and watching roofs go down and understanding where there's challenges there. We're also looking the forward-looking side of things, the socioeconomic environment, the legislative environment and even the political environment has huge implications on the direction our industry goes and the innovations we have to come up with as well. We're talking about a lot about products today that even goes into processes. You think about innovation and labor savings. We talk about products because it is where it makes the most sense, but process is a huge part of that. You think about the training programs that we've stood up in the training center that we've invested in Pennsylvania and around the country to help contractors overcome the challenges of trained labor to bring somebody in.

And then you're employing your best, most experienced people to train new people. Well, what if we took that off your plate and we trained them? We're not going to polish them off, right? We're not going to get them to where you want them to be, but we can at least give them a base of knowledge that is consistent for the industry and then lets you get them to where you want them to be and teach them your specific ways. But those kind of things are freight innovations where we get to partner with our customers in a real and unique way.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: When I think about this, and I just want to say to everyone out there watching, if you have ideas that you want to... Obviously take a picture of the QR code, but also drop any ideas or thoughts in the chat. It doesn't even have to be ideas, it can just be pain points. That's the thing, is like, "Where's your pain points?" Then together we collaborate. Tom, you have to see this all the time out in the field with contractors. How has that process been for you as they are bringing ideas to you or pain points or just looking for technical support and training?

Tom Rhoads: Yeah, it's just always a continuous requests that we have out there to say, "Hey, we have this issue in the field." It's one of these things where... I think most companies or most of our contractors, most of our distributors look at us as the innovator in the industry. They feel very comfortable in asking for solutions. That's what we want. It's nice to sit there and talk about, "Hey, what if we did this?" You can get into some really interesting conversations about how dynamic that really is to a contractor in the field when they're faced with challenges. It comes up quite a bit. But I was going to add in there too, just this. Where I see a lot of interest in these type of products we're talking about is when there is a significant labor component savings for them, is what are the challenges they have in implementing those products?

Let me use an example. We have a product called a Target Sump. That product is a tapered component dealing with the challenge of field cutting drains out. I've been in enough jobs to watch what this means in the field, but these guys will typically have to field cut all of these pieces to make out a drain. And it takes time. It's about 20 minutes on average to do a single drain. Well, we have this product called a Target Sump, where we actually go ahead and tape and seam and precut these pieces to one foldable product that just folds out and lays down in literally one minute.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Tom Rhoads: That's a huge savings. Anyway, just to answer the question, when these guys in the field are experiencing difficulties, that's the type of solution they want. They want a solution that has real impact. We spend a fair amount of time in these conversations talking about what's the next grade item?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: How do you even improve what you already have, again?

Tom Rhoads: Exactly, exactly.

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, it's great that you've mentioned the pain points. Not just submitting ideas, but the pain points because our teams are always learning. We have entire teams that literally are just learning so that we can bring those pain points to them. They're reading trade journals and research papers. They're looking at how people are solving similar problems in adjacent industries. We are teaming up with other innovators within and outside of our space to bring really unique and, to me, mind-blowing ideas of ways we can solve these problems. It's a ton of fun.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's so cool. One of the things that this really makes me think about is the process of contractor-driven ideas, pain points, R&D that goes into it, all your product management, but you're launching a new product, 12-foot boards this week. And as a contractor, I have to believe there's some trepidation. When you have new products, you have to change your training of your employees, maybe not on everything, but you want to make sure it works. Is there going to be any undetected problems with it? What's your advice, Wes, for contractors as they want to become these early adopters, but what should they be thinking about as they bring in these new products into their processes and installations?

Wesley Sherrer: I think it's like anything new, right? Anything new, you've got questions. The more questions you ask, the more you understand and the more you understand, the less problems you tend to run into because you're not making assumptions, right? I think that's the biggest thing really, is you've got to know the products and how they substitute, what they substitute for? And really that just comes from a conversation. We do the best we can I'd say. We're certainly not perfect at it, but communicating out what the new products are and how they work and what the value proposition is. If one of those pique your interest and seems like it could be a solution, engage in a conversation, let's talk about it. We can absolutely walk you through and would love to walk you through how it works, why it works, where it might work, where it might not work.

Because at the end of the day, again, we want super fans, not super detractors. We want it to work for you. We're invested in making it work for you. Part of that comes from understanding where it doesn't work for you as well, right? We talked about the HD cover boards. Great, great solution from a labor perspective, from an installation perspective, from a performance perspective, when you talk about resiliency, but cover boards are also used as fire resistant thermal barriers. Well, that's not a good substitute for a polyiso high density cover board.

It's not going to work there. Don't use it there. You're going to run into problems. That level of conversation is important for us to have, and it's really a two-way conversation. The communications are really just meant to spark that interest and start the conversation. I'd say that's the biggest thing for contractors to know is we don't expect you just take these and run with them. We are actually hoping that you get a little excited and then engage us in a conversation so that we can help you project the project if need be, to get comfortable with these new products so that you can realize the benefits and we grow together as companies and as an industry all around.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think where it really comes in the field, manufacturers reps, sales reps, technical reps, regional managers, are so important to those relationships with the contractors and bringing new products. Tom, what feedback have you heard from roofing professionals who are using these labor saving products in some real world applications?

Tom Rhoads: Yeah, I hear quite frequently how much, first of all, they get to the opportunity where they're actually trying these products. And it's like Wes said earlier, some of the comments I get back are, "Man, why didn't we start this sooner?" I get that kind of a reaction quite often. But the other piece of that is... We've done enough of these product launches over the years that we fully realize that there's a lag time there from the time that it's launched as we go through that education piece. And all of the touch points that we have within our company, whether it be OMSs who are constantly communicating with the distributor base or RAMs or our salespeople out in the field, are constantly in touch with different decision makers within the organizations, these contract organizations. And it just takes time. You're trying to gather all of the stakeholders in a company to help them make a decision to move on these products.

There's a bit of a lag time there, but as we go through that process, I think the critical piece is for companies to completely feel comfortable in making these changes before they do it. We recognize that. I hear that a lot, that these guys want to just... They want to sift through the information. They want to be sure. They want to engage in all of the technical information that's available to them. Our time trials experience with other contractors, all of those things come into play in making those decisions.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They do. There's so much to take in consideration. But when it does differentiate your business... Obviously, what we've talked about with the savings is out there. But you know what? I can't believe we're getting to close to the end of the hour. This has just been so great. But, Wes, you said something earlier that I really wanted to hit on right here at the end too, is that, yes, it's about pain points, it's about contractor information, but it's also about other things, politically, regulations, all those things. One of the big motivators out there right now for new product development is environmental and sustainability. Can you talk a little bit about your strategy and how this really is affecting product development also?

Wesley Sherrer: Yeah, sustainability is a huge thing. It's continued to grow in our industry. If you guys are paying attention at all to the Inflation Reduction Act and the things that have changed as a result of it in concrete and asphalt and glass and steel, kind of iteration number two for the Inflation Reduction Act and some of those things and the government spending as a result and the influence government spending has on our industry in general. Sustainability is huge. It's another one of those pillars for our vision 2030. We are absolutely committed to sustainability. We're committed to net zero, not by 2030, but we're committed to net zero. And part of that's not only the products we're introducing, but how we're manufacturing those products. What you're seeing on the screen is a photo of our newest polyiso manufacturing facility in Sikeston, Missouri, which is the first industrial manufacturing facility in North America to achieve LEED platinum.

We are the first and only manufacturer that has a LEED platinum manufacturing facility for LEED v4, which is a huge accomplishment and commitment to that net zero in the way that we're producing our products, right? We take it very seriously. Another token in that regard is our roof take-back program. We've partnered with Nationwide Foam who is taking back roofs. You think about the waste that goes into a landfill. Our products are made to be resilient. They got to last 20, 30 years and then typically another 20, 30 years when you put a second layer over top of them, right? Here you are with products that are made the last 40, 60 years. They don't inherently break down. We've engineered them to not break down. What happens? They go to landfill and they don't break down, and it's a huge, huge waste.

You think about landfill diversion and end-of-life circularity. We've come up with solutions. We even have an incentive for contractors to actually utilize recycling the roof at end of life rather than throwing it away.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great.

Wesley Sherrer: In addition to the products we make... Sustainability means a lot of different things, but we've also just in April, actually the week of Earth Day, we launched the industry's first Polyiso Eco, which is a bio-based polyiso material where we've substituted some of the traditional oil-based raw materials for bio-based alternatives with varied loading levels, right? That's starting to hit into some of those greenhouse gas limitations that we're seeing show up in architectural specifications. Again, tenant investor, corporate ESG goals. Then we're even starting to see it creep into code. California is a prime example on the West Coast. January 1st, 2025, California is introducing embodied carbon requirements for not only restorations but new builds.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Wesley Sherrer: It's coming.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And this all affects product development. And that's the thing. I always go back to Henry Ford. If you would've asked people what they wanted, they want a faster horse.

Wesley Sherrer: I love that saying.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Tom Rhoads: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think that is such a challenge for you and for all of your team to not only listen to pain points, bring those in, but also be looking forward on, "Hey, in California next year, you need to have this because this is what's going to affect your business, Mr. Contractor." These relationships are so important. I do want to say that Hunter Panels does a great job in getting this information out. If you look at hunterpanels.com, they're really cool insulation insights. You can find a lot of this information that Wes and Tom are talking about. Excellent. Absolutely excellent. Gentlemen, I also want to bring up that QR code one more time and say to everybody, get a snapshot of this. If you have ideas or thoughts or questions, you can get this. Just go right through this QR code. Of course, you can always get it to RoofersCoffeeShop, and we'll get that off to Hunter Panels also there, full directory on the site. Wes, Tom, thank you so much. What a great episode. What a great conversation.

Wesley Sherrer: Thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate the opportunity.

Tom Rhoads: Thank you, Heidi. Really enjoyed it.

Outro: That great, great information. Thank you so much. Please, again, check out the Hunter Panels directory on RoofersCoffeeShop and also the QR code. Also go to Hunter Panels to check out the installation insights to get more information about all of these product developments and everything that's coming out. I do have to say also, congratulations, gentlemen, on a great launch of those 12-foot boards. That's pretty dang exciting too. Just happened. You can find that on RoofersCoffeeShop too. Big thank you to a Hunter Panels for sponsoring this and for bringing all the great information to the market.

This is the kind of information that is excellent to share with your team, with your other roofing professionals, heck, even your friends and family. In 24 hours, this will be available on demand. Be sure to share it within your company so that everyone can get all of this information. And next, in two weeks, we will be talking about maximizing solar rooftop durability. Solar, another big initiative. Be sure to check it out in two weeks. And for everyone here at RoofersCoffeeShop and Coffee Conversations, I want to say thank you. Have a wonderful day, and we will be seeing you again soon.