We hit the jackpot at IRE Day 1

We had a full day of interviews, seeing old friends and making new ones, handing out swag and rocking the roof with hospitalities!

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a conversation the Coffee Shop crew had after the first full day of the International Roofing Expo. 

Heidi Ellsworth: We had an amazing first day at the International Roofing Expo (IRE). The soundstage, sponsored by SRS Distribution, was busy all day long. Karen and I did a lot of interviews. We also had an amazing Coffee Conversations with our contractor panelists who really talked about some great topics from says sustainability to AI, including labor and diversity.

And our team out on the floor, who had booth interviews, everyone loved them, and we had so many contractors come up, and just lots of great things happening. 

The First-timers Event was fun. Everybody had bracelets and it really was all about Roofing Respect, and we had so many people stop and say on their way in, we love RoofersCoffeeShop. So that was great. And then we did go to EagleView and KARNAK hospitalities. We love those guys, saw so many people from the industry. What the industry is doing to take care of the contractors is really phenomenal.

Alex Tolle: This is my first IRE and it was so much fun. First day, the first time going, I met so many contractors and I got three of them signed up for R-Club. I got to meet a lot of my current R-Club members including Blair from Wagner Roofing and Wendy Marvin from Matrix Roofing and Home Solutions and Michelle Kettering from LTD Exteriors and it was just so much fun to hang out with all these people.

Karen Edwards: This morning was amazing. Because we're located in the lobby. And while everyone was waiting to get into the show, because it didn't open until 11, and they might not have gone to the second session of their classes, they were kind of like what am I going to do now? And so everyone came to talk to us, everyone, everyone. We were busy.

We did a live podcast. We did a little live RLW, we are live on the TV in our booth, which was really fun. I've been coming to the IRE for a lot of years. And this might have been one of my most fun IRE's ever. And the feedback from our friends and family and supporters and our customers has been. "Wow, thank you for everything you do. You're so amazing. This is so awesome." And it is such a pleasure to be able to give back to the industry and to be able to bring the IRE live to others. That's what this is about. Megan, your multimedia team has been amazing. We've had crews going around the show floor we've had the soundstage. We have an overwhelming amount of content so people tune in and listen.

Megan Ellsworth: We really do. This is the first year we've had this. First year we've had two floor teams cruise the floor because we only had one crew, Lauren and James last year. That was great. Being able to get four types of content at the same time as soundstage content and then having that doubling with social media content was so great and to go back to the R-Club, I think my favorite thing about the R-Club is being at tradeshows and having contractors come up to us. And it's like we're all family. RCS and all the R-Club contractor members, we're all best friends.

And all night, we were at hospitalities for EagleView, and Karnak. And Alex was just mingling with all these contractors. And jokingly saying we're best friends now. But that's not even a joke. It's so true. We're all just best friends and that's what I love about this industry so much and I am constantly telling all my friends that if you need a job, look into roofing, because it's like one big family and I love it. I love it so much. And if you had asked me when I was 16 if I would be saying this today, I would have told you you're crazy. But I love it so much.

Alex Tolle: I think that's why I mean, it would have been cooler to be there earlier because there were so many contractors just hanging out. I think it was great to see all the contractors and to meet all of them and shake their hands and become their best friends. That is the goal. We have never had anybody focused on educating our contractors. And now that we do, they're like, "Oh, yeah, great. I love your website." R-Club brings so much value to them. And they don't necessarily understand that until they have someone to totally focus on it with them. 

So I got a lot of feedback today of things that we could add to the R-Club or things that can be better. Like people want insurance information, how to work with insurance, and I have somebody who wants to offer that to our R-Club, which is really cool. So I took a lot of notes today.

Lauren White: James and I were one of the floor crews who went out on the tradeshow floor for scheduled interviews, which was phenomenal because people were already ready and prepped with things that they wanted to talk about and products they wanted to highlight. And anytime we asked for a demo, everybody was super excited to give a demo. So even just between interviews when we had 10-15 minutes we were going over to our friends and just asking, "Will you fire up a machine? Will you show us how this works?" CIDAN was great and let us see some fun demos. We got KARNAK showing us some underwater demos of their products too, which was really cool. And we went to their hospitality later tonight, which was so much fun. And they're celebrating their 90th anniversary, which is amazing.

Megan Ellsworth: That's why I love our content, because it's so organic and authentic. I think authenticity is so important in media, because there's a whole generation of people, kids, whatever, that see all this really scripted content and TikToks and what not and I think just being authentic on camera is so important.

And that's why I love RoofersCoffeeShop. And that's why I loved day one of IRE. And I think it was a great day. It was so busy. The show floor opened at 11 and we got there a little before nine. We were trying to set up soundstage and y'all were trying to set up the booth. And there was constant traffic to the booth.

Lauren White: Oh, and we sponsored the First-timers Event right before the Welcome Party at Beer Park in the Paris and ABC Supply sponsored the Welcome Party. And we handed out our Roofing Respect bracelets with roofingrespect.com on them. And had a lot of fun with our friends at the EagleView and KARNAK hospitalities. Now we are finally home.

And that's a wrap on Day 1! Stay tuned for our recap of Day 2!