Catching up with one of the industry’s oldest coatings associations

By Emma Peterson.

As the market demand for coatings continues to rise, take a moment to hear insights from RCMA members who have been there since the beginning!  

In the last decade, the interest in roof coatings has accelerated rapidly across the building industries. Chris Huettig, the current president of the Roof Coatings Manufacturers Association (RCMA), pointed out, “There's been somewhere between 8%-12% of growth in the sector over the past six years and it continues to be on that upward trajectory still.” To learn more about this exponential rise and the changes that have come with it, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Chris and his fellow RCMA member Jenn Brake from Brake Marketing & Management for an episode of CoatingsCast.

The rise in demand for roof coatings is a rather recent development. RCMA is one of the oldest industry associations catering to coatings professionals, having been founded in 1982. Chris, who in addition to his RCMA presidency also serves as the national director of technical services at KARNAK, shared a little bit about this recent shift in interest for coatings among industry professionals. “People are facing that this earth has limited resources that we need to manage better, and roof coatings have their key in place in that to do that. They weren’t always, but contractors now are trusting coatings. They're putting it into their arsenal as offerings,” he explained.  

This newfound  trust is in part due to the hard work of organizations like RCMA, who aim to create an “opportunity for all of our minds to get together to help advance coatings in the industry itself,” but there have also been some larger societal shifts in the last decade that have fostered the rise of coatings.  Chris explained, “I think Covid spurred some of the growth when there were raw material issues and coatings were a viable solution. But besides that, the technology that we have today is continuing to be robust and grow, so we're able to make better products that are viable solutions to extend the service lives of roofs, address energy savings options and more.”  

Jenn, who is the new executive director for RCMA, shared a bit about the organization’s plan to keep up with this rising demand. She shared, “We have a new technical director named Dr. Ralph Paroli who's known for his research and roofing materials. We also have a new account executive named is Rock Miller who's really going to help us to get the word out, let people know what roof coatings are all about and the benefits.” On top of all of their new outreach strategies, RCMA is also working on a new website that will provide industry news and technical information about roof coatings!  

Read the transcript, Listen to the full conversation or Watch the recording to learn more about RCMA and all they have done and continue to do for the coatings industry.