Start crazy, land simple

So I'm kind of thinking that, uh, the way you've been describing the business, uh, kind of a, it's grown from this sort of small family-owned, uh, o- organization into, into the bespoke manufacturer that y- you, you folks are today.

Um, so there m- were there any kind of particular really key moments of change along the time that you've been there that really, you know, stand out to you? You know, talk about what they were, whether they were market changes, technological changes, leadership changes.

Uh, what were the key moments of change that, you know, really stick in your mind with your journey?

We've, we've had quite a few, actually.

Uh, the owner is very driven to be ahead of the curve, which is absolutely fantastic, and it's at the same time, sometime- it's hard to keep up with, uh, but it's good.

So as a manufacturer, we were the one of the first manufacturers to bring in, we call it double pane glass.

So essentially, you used to have one piece of glass, now we put in double glass.

Uh, and that just increases the energy value.

So everybody was here, we wanna be here.

And then somebody else comes here, so what's the next level? We As a company, we spend a lot of time investing in knowledge outside of North America through, you know, Europe or China or wherever it might be, as they tend to be a little bit further ahead in technology.

So we brought, uh, it's called thermal break essentially, and it's a thermal barrier to stop the hot and the cold from coming in and out of your house.

In North America, everybody just used basic PVC, so we brought in a polyimide, which is like a glass-based thermal break.

We brought that into the North American market as the first person or the first company to do that, pardon me.

From there though, we were purchasing so much and we were having to bring it in from Spain and Italy and all over the, all over Europe.

Our volumes were too high, so they ended up building us a manufacturing facility in Ohio, and then it continued to expand.

So now everybody in the industry is moving it.

So again, now we're here.

Now everybody's coming up here, so what can we do next? So in about 2006, '7, I believe it is, uh, we ended up deciding that powder was the way to go.

So we were buying extrusions that were wet paint, and we decided, nope, powder is the more environmentally friendly, economical, as well as we could powder coat it in-house that way.

So we went out to the market, and there was probably, I would say, 15% of the market that was using powder coat at the time.

And we decided, nope, we are going to move to powder coat.

In fact, we told our customers we are powder coat or nothing, and we lost a f- you know, a few customers along the way.

They've come back since then.

Mm.

But now the market is about 90% powder, which is absolutely phenomenal.