Roof Coatings as Easy as 1-2-3-4 - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Abby Feinstein of CertainTeed. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello, welcome to Coatings Talk from Coatings Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we are here today to talk about how to make coatings and coating installations easy, high performing so anyone all kinds of roofing contractors can get involved. We have the expert from CertainTeed, Abby Feinstein here today. And we're going to be talking about coatings as easy as one, two, three, four. So before we do introductions, let's start with a little bit of housekeeping. This is being recorded and it will be available within 24 hours.

And since today's Friday, that 24 hours means Monday. It will be available by Monday. And this is a special time for us on Friday. So be sure to share this out for folks who maybe couldn't see it. It'll be on demand, get it out to your company, to other roofing professionals. We also will have the chat open, so be sure to let us know who you are and where you're calling in from, what kind of business you have. You can chat throughout the entire presentation and we want your questions and your thoughts. So for introductions, I am so happy to welcome Abby back. We've done a lot of webinars together. It's always my favorite. Abby, welcome.

Abby Feinstein: Heidi, it's so great to see you. How are you?

Heidi J Ellsworth: I am good. I am good. This is a nice way to spend a Friday afternoon with you, Abby. I like it.

Abby Feinstein: It is. I can't think of a better way to spend my Friday afternoon. Thank you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I know.

Abby Feinstein: Thanks for having me for real.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it. So why don't you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what you do with CertainTeed.

Abby Feinstein: Sure. I am the director of product management, marketing and sustainability within our commercial buildings and infrastructure division. So I've been in that role for about a year and a half. Most of my last 10 years at CertainTeed has been in commercial roofing, and before that in my career, I guess first 15 was in solar and building efficiency. And I will take this time for a shameless plug to say that I love what I do and I love working at CertainTeed and within Saint-Gobain. I was pretty nervous actually a decade ago to take a ... I was with smaller companies, to take a role in a bigger company and fantastic culture. I really can't say enough about them so.

Heidi J Ellsworth: If you're looking for work-

Abby Feinstein: Saint-Gobain careers.

Abby Feinstein: Right there.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And I tell you what, you all do such an amazing job. And I hear this all the time and with the products that are coming out, what we're going to talk about today, it shows.

Abby Feinstein: Thank you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: So I know I already said this, but the chat is open and we already have some warmest greetings from Pakistan. Hey, thank you for being on. That's pretty cool.

Abby Feinstein: Hi. Nice to see you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I'll be asking you questions as we're going through and reading some of the comments, so please share in the chat. Okay. So Abby, let's start at the very beginning with looking at the growth of roof coatings. It is phenomenal. What are you seeing and what are some of the stats out there?

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. So when I present on this, I'll often say if you're not in get in and I think there was a roofing contractor through NRCA came out with a poll late last year. I'm going to flub this a little bit, but something like more contractors are reporting now being in coatings than in traditional factory-made membranes and shingles, which is a staggering number. And it was the first time that they saw that statistic in the history of their survey. For the last decade, coatings roof restoration has been the fastest growing or at least one of the fastest growing segments within the commercial roofing space. Typically, seeing year-over-year growth between eight and 10%. This year we're seeing a little bit of a slowdown market wide I would say. So we're seeing where post pandemic money is drying up a little bit. In any given election year, you start to see some contraction and hesitation to spend money. So nothing necessarily against coatings in particular, but just a relative hesitancy in the construction segment. Good Q1 and Q2, but we're expecting the back half to be a little light. But there's a lot of elements driving this growth specifically for coatings. If I could speak to that.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes. Please.

Abby Feinstein: I'll use a couple of buzzwords here and then we'll get into each one in a little bit more specificity as we go. But there's a low barrier to entry sustainability, easy to learn, labor efficient and cost-effective, which we've got up in here at CapEx versus service maintenance. So it's important to understand as a roofing contractor getting into this business, what you can offer your customers, your clients. When you're doing a tear-off or a re-roof, that's a capital expense and that money that's outlaid for that building needs to be depreciated over many, many years. I think typically 20 though. My father's an accountant and he would be sad that, I don't have that number. But a roof restoration is considered maintenance. So any monies that are spent towards that are depreciated in year one, which is a big deal. So there's other things that play into the cost-effective nature, but I wanted to say that right up front because it's a big one.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. And this repair versus tear-off too, it feels like that is a driving with landfills and what we're seeing out there. It just feels like that's a driver.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. I think there's a few other pieces that come into the sustainability of it, but it's a huge one. Tear-off contribution to landfill is tremendous. And I'm sure any contractor on this call can attest to just the one roof that you're on when you're ripping it off. I live in a single-family home and tearing this off would be gutting for me, but I'm a tree hugger.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Me too. Me too. But I think that is what's happening in society overall. And so we're seeing this growth like you said, from so many different areas. So contractors, this is the time. If they're not in coatings yet, this is a time to get involved if you already are, to really understand all the different options that you have out there and what's working. So let's talk just a little bit about barriers to entry for contractors who want to get into this market.

Abby Feinstein: So if you're on right now and you're a residential roofer, interested in dabbling in commercial or in commercial roofing but have been maybe overwhelmed or hesitant to get into coatings, it is a low barrier to entry. So roof restoration you can think of it's essentially an extension of repair and maintenance. And while you can certainly invest $10,000 and go buy a spray rig, that's not the first thing I would suggest you do. And you can literally walk into Home Depot, spend 70 bucks and have the tools you need to essentially start a repair and maintenance group. Talking about tarps, gloves, empty pail, grab a screwdriver so you can pop some lids, trowels, rags and you are on your way into commercial roofing and you have your foot in the door.

In contrast, the biggest in commercial roofing, the biggest factory made membrane in the market is TPO. If you wanted to get your foot in the door with TPO, you're talking about spending. You need more guys in a crew to put something like that down. Those rows are heavy and large. And so you're talking about running a couple Leister guns to be effective. So that's a couple thousand dollars right there. You need a generator to run those guns. You need something to get that generator up on the roof. Even if your distributor does it, they're not there when you need to take it off the roof. So none of that really exists in roof restoration. So that's a big piece. Now, I do want to say that while you can get into this easily, I'm not saying you should. And we'll get into training a little bit later, but I don't just go to Home Depot and buy all this stuff and start billing yourself as a roof restoration expert or somebody that can do repair maintenance unless you're properly trained and we'll talk about that.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. And that's the one. And as it is with everything in roofing and overall everything in construction, you have to build the relationships and get the resources that you need. If you aren't working with a manufacturer that you trust and who's helping you, you're going to have to go through a lot of mistakes probably.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. I would highly suggest I think contractors that are successful. Maybe it's not one single manufacturer all the time, but manufacturer support is incredibly important and we're aware of that as a manufacturer.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And getting into it is so much easier when you have the right partnerships.

Abby Feinstein: 100%

Heidi J Ellsworth: And it just makes you go through there.

Abby Feinstein: 100%. Well, we're your safety blanket. Yeah.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And also to make sure it's right, and then you're not going to be in trouble and reduce risk. It all comes together. Okay. So let's talk about ... One of the things you were like ease of installation, like training for the crews. Talk a little bit about what you've done at CertainTeed to really make this easy, to make it accessible really to everybody.

Abby Feinstein: Sure. Yeah. You know what, I'm going to talk about Smartcoat in just a second, but I do want to say category-wide ... And I don't want to ruffle feathers with contractors that are on this call, but I would say when you talk about roof restoration and the application techniques necessary to do that successfully compared to that of traditional factory-made membranes, I think the application skill is ... Dare I say lower. And I'll explain what I mean by that. So while this is a lower part of the market at this point, when you're dealing with hot asphalt, you got to make sure you're not going to set a 550 degree kettle aflame. You got to make sure you're pushing your asphalt out just the right amount so that it's not cooling and you're reducing your adhesion. You're not dealing with a torch and you've got open flame on the roof. You're not staying behind for a fire watch. You're not worried if you're going too fast and under welding a seam. All of those skill sets are not necessary. There are different skills needed for restoration, but I would argue easier to learn and get a knack for. You see what I'm saying there?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Abby Feinstein: I don't want to make it feel like coating guys are untrained, but it's different. It's a different type of training.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Getting into it is a little bit easier.

Abby Feinstein: It ties right to it. That's right. The other thing to consider ... And this is going to be roof restoration with any products as compared to traditional membranes, is tying in. So if you're restoring a roof, you're not doing those nighttime tie-ins every night because you're not fundamentally opening up the roof. If you're doing a tear-off, you've created albeit one giant leak or even if you're tearing in stages every night. Now you could do, let's say a really small roof if you're a residential guy and maybe you're just doing an attached garage or something that you may be torn off and done in the same day. But in reality, most projects take multiple days, weeks. Some very large commercial jobs can even extend into months. And so that means every night and every morning you're spending labor hours doing a nighttime tie-in to get that roof into the dry and just duplicating that work over and over again where you're not doing that with roof restorations. So I think that's important to understand as well.

On the Smartcoat side specifically, I'll talk about the one, two, three, four which is where the title of the webinar comes from. So our products are named in an application or a contractor-centric way. So when you look at our products, we have a 100 series, 200 series, 300 and 400. And those correspond to the steps that you're going to take when doing a proper restoration. Whereas other brands have a numbering system but are oftentimes related to the chemistry or potentially have no meaning whatsoever. They're just numbers to almost make it easier for bilingual customers to order what they need to order and not be worried about English words.

So we've heard time and time again that that numbering system is helpful and I'll give a real quick anecdote of how that played out for me. So one of my very early ... When we were first getting into liquid applied roofing as a business and we were trying to do some promotional work, we were filming an install on the West Coast. And I got to the job and I went up and I noticed that the contractors had already started flashing curbs, base flashing penetrations, but they had not yet done anything for surface prep. And it was an asphaltic roof, so it was going to require a bleed blocker to prevent that staining from coming up onto the coating. Our bleed blocker is in the 200 series. Our flashings are in the 300 series. In this case it was silicone. So what they were flashing the perimeters and so forth with was a silicone-based material. And the 200 bleed blocker is an acrylic or a water-based material. Regardless of what brand you're working with, that chemistry does not stick to silicone. You can't take a water-based acrylic and stick it down to silicone, it will delaminate.

So I jumped up and I said, "Hey, you don't know me from Adam, and here I am this five foot nothing woman that's not a roofing contractor in any way, shape or form, but I know my products." And I was like, "You guys can't do this. It's not going to stick." And they were like, "Oh, we've been working with such and such brand for years. It's no problem." And I tried to explain, it's not a brand thing, it's not that our product is worse than another. It is a chemistry thing. So they were pissed at me and they were like, "Do you want us to stop?" And I said, "Yes. That's why these are numbered this way. You don't use a three before you use a two." So they got real pissy and they stopped what they were doing and they started doing the surface prep and the day ended, and it was not a great working relationship at first.

So we come back the next morning and in what they did yesterday, they coated of course with the bleed blocker, some of the flashing. And so I called the foreman over and I said, "Do me a favor. Just get down on your hands and knees and peel off the bleed blocker from that flashing." And he was like, "Well, it's not going to peel off." And I said, "Trust me." So it peeled right off because it's an acrylic going down to a silicone. He was shocked. They were primarily a Spanish-speaking crew. He starts speaking in Spanish, called everybody over, show them. And they were like, "Why didn't this other company that we've been working with tell us this? This is how we've been doing our roofs. We always do our details first." And I was like, "I don't know." So they started calling me Little Lady Chief that day. And it was awesome. So I showed the owner. Because crews turn over and so forth, and you don't always have the same people and it's a way of keeping yourself out of trouble.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What a great story and what a great example. And when you really think about ... This almost shifts it back a little bit to what you were saying right at the beginning. But there are so many ... When you say ease of installation, it's not just ease of installation for the contractor, it's ease of installation for the building owner. And there is so much out there that nowadays you think about all the sensitive, obviously hospital schools, but apartment buildings, all of that. I remember way back in the day before I got into roofing, I was sitting at my desk and I could all of a sudden smell the roofing that was going on above us. And this is a long time ago as my partner Vicki says, that smells like money. But it-

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. I would say the same.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. It smells like money. But in today's world, what's going on too is it's just a lot lower disruption to tenants.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. No. Absolutely. And we'll talk about this a little more in terms of when you're starting your business strategically, verticals that you might want to focus on. But both for, I would say self-adhered technologies in modified bitumen as well as Smartcoat or roof restoration, definitely one of the advantages ... Well, first of all, ease of installation also translates to some extent to cost-effectiveness for the building owner, but also to ... Maybe I would argue and I'll explain more, but flexibility year round for when you need to handle your facility's maintenance.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's true. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So as the contractors are starting to get out there and they are looking at this, there's a lot ... Roof prep is very important. In fact, we've had many webinars on this before. But I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the roof prep and how important it is and how to go about it.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. Yeah. One of the field techs that we have in our business, Steve Proctor, he presents on what are the key success to roof restoration. It's preparation, preparation, preparation. So he's definitely drilled that into my head. And I would say when you're talking about is a roof a good candidate for a coating, it's not really material dependent so much. So it's not a conversation of can you restore a TPO, can you restore metal, can you restore EPDM? Broad brush speaking I'm sure there's a roof material out there that can be challenging. But broad brush speaking, you could restore any roof. The question is really of the condition of the roof and is it a good candidate for restoration? And while there's a few things to look at there structurally, you want to make sure that the roof is clean, dry and sound. Or we oftentimes reverse it. Sound, clean and dry.

So the number one name in the game there is moisture. So what you want to avoid is entrapped moisture. If you have a roof that has had leaks or challenges and you've got moisture in the system, and then what you do is cover that up, you're not taking care of the problem, you're burying the problem. And essentially what you've created is a band-aid, not a business. And that will come back to haunt you. If you suppress the moisture, you're going to end up with blistering and ultimately delamination. So there's a few tools out there and methods for figuring out and assessing whether a roof is a candidate for restoration in terms of analyzing moisture. You can do core cuts. There's certainly a visual inspection and walking. Sometimes you can just feel it and it squishes down. And then of course you can do nuclear scans or IR scans.

And in terms of for you companies that are not in it yet, this could seem perhaps intimidating, I would say you don't need to start out the gate knowing how to do your own moisture scans. There's plenty of companies out there that you can partner up with. But as you get down and advance your skills, probably one of the number one moisture scan companies in terms of equipment is FLIR. They have a great training package. It's fairly inexpensive to own your own equipment, get the training to use it. So that's something that you can work your way into within the first year or two I would say. In some cases, I will say in terms of cautionary tales, it can be more challenging than less to figure out what's going on in the roof. For example, when you have a gravel roof, you can't see, right because gravel. So certainly you need to spud all of that gravel off, but even then there can be fissures and micro cracks in the roof and you're not really sure what's going on there. So I would just say if you're not a seasoned guy and haven't been in roof restoration for years yet, maybe walk away from that one.

But once you know that there is moisture in the roof, it's not like it's just not a candidate. And when you come back to what does roof prep involve, part of that is repairs. So if you know that there's a section of the roof that has entrenched moisture, you would cut that out, take it down to the deck, bring it back up to a sound state with like materials that's still part and parcel to roof restoration. So major repairs, cleaning the substrate properly, getting all your flashings replaced or into a watertight condition. And really when you're talking about roof restoration, that's all the watertight nature of it. Yes. You're ultimately going to coat that roof with a nice monolithic coating, be it acrylic or silicone or chemistry of choice. But in a way that coating becomes a sacrificial layer that is protecting the roof. It's all the other stuff that you did that's making that roof watertight really. So preparation is key.

Heidi J Ellsworth: No, that makes total sense. I want to go back to the very beginning. You had said depending on what type, you can coat pretty much anything. But what are some of the things that you're seeing mostly being coated, and what are some of the ones that maybe you might want to think about?

Abby Feinstein: Let me start with any material at all what we see big time is roofs getting to the end of their warranted life and folks wanting to be able to maintain a healthy roof, protect their facility, protect their assets, but not spend big money with tear-off. So I would say in fairness, by and large, that is a big piece of the business. Just being able to keep the health of the whole building system without spending big money. It's probably arguably the most cost-effective way to get to a twenty-year material labor warranty is roof restoration. But in terms of failures or things of that nature, we see a lot of TPO failures. I don't think that's probably going to shock anybody. We see a lot of neglected metal roofs. And in that case, you're not necessarily as worried about moisture as you are about rust and making sure you're doing proper rust repairs or replacement if need be of panels and so forth. That's probably the most that we see.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Makes sense.

Abby Feinstein: CertainTeed does not sell ... And I was going to talk about this a little bit more. We do not offer TPO today, and we do a lot of restorations of our old roofs. One of the advantages to that is if it is a CertainTeed roof, which is a modified asphalt roof to begin with, we not only cover the warranty of the roof restoration system, but all the way to the deck because if it's our material, it's our material, we're going to stand behind it. So for some reason in the future, you restored a roof and let's say there was a single-plyer EPDM underneath and there could a situation where you've got some finger pointing that what didn't fail was the roof coating and was what was underneath. We alleviate that by just saying we stand behind the whole thing.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. That makes sense.

Abby Feinstein: Tits to bits as they say.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah. No. That's great. Well, and I think this is what's so important to so many customers too. When you're looking at all the different types of business out there and they're looking to have a long-standing roof, a lot of times they have social consciousness in there like we don't want the roofing to go to the landfill. And so as contractors are looking at what types of customers will consider roof restoration, you have a great list here and I'd love for you to go through that and how contractors should be approaching them about restoration instead of tear-off.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. So I started to say earlier with regards to seasonality, and we'll start with schools, they have occupants. Well, occupants in quotations. They have students. Not living in there, which is why I was doing the air quotes. But they have occupants. And so you often see, or at least we see that they're trying to get their work done in the summer when nobody's there. When you're talking about doing a restoration or even honestly with self-adhered membranes, we see it. You can extend that work into in-session work because you're not disturbing the students. There isn't that smell of money that you talk about fundamentally. I'm strictly talking about a recover with SA, you certainly wouldn't want to tear-off a roof in the middle of school being in session. And with restoration, you're not doing that tear-off. So you're not cutting the roof open and causing that level of disturbance with anyone inside. That's obviously critically important to year-round verticals like hospitals and hospitality where there's always people there. You're not going to shut down a hospital, you're not going to shut down a hotel to do this work. So it's about doing that work and maintaining that facility with the least disturbance as possible.

Also, depending on the size of the job, when you're talking about restoration and pale goods, certainly if you were using drums and totes, you've got a different story here, but with pale goods, you don't need a crane to load the roof. You can do it with a simple ladder lift. And so that can be disturbing in the parking lot and so forth to have something big like that.

And it is a very cost-effective solution. So across the board, I don't think we've ever run into a customer where budget isn't a thing and everybody would like to stretch their dollar a little bit further. So even if they've earmarked X amount of money for your roof, assuming that it was going to be a tear-off, if you as a contractor can come in there and change their mindset and say, "This is actually a pretty good candidate for a roof restoration." Talk them through that they can take some of that money that they were going to spend on roofing and get something else done. And you're a hero. So look, pricing is different market to market. And so I don't want to ... I don't know. I'll say a number and then half the people on this call will say no way. Just putting thumb in the air, you could do a hundred square job for, call it $60,000 all in for a roof restoration and you'd be offering a 20 year NDL. And mind you, for the contractors on here, that's probably something close to 14 to $15,000 in materials. So this is a highly profitable product line for you. There's a lot in there for labor and profit.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is great. Now, one of the big things that we keep hearing about is data centers. And when you think about everything that's going on with what they need to protect under that roof and how important it is, talk to us a little bit about that. And hospitals are the same way, obviously. High level of what you need to be careful of in the structure. So what are you seeing with data centers?

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. With any of these as the value of the asset or the operation within the building increases, so does the risk averse nature of the facility manager. Because if you're talking about an open warehouse and you have a leak, it's a nuisance, it's a headache. It's not a legal liability, it's not stopping your operations. It's not fritzing out million dollar computer systems with businesses attached to it that are going to sue you. So when you get to data centers and with our increase in reliance on the internet as it's increasing, data centers are cropping up more and more. And those are absolutely one of those risk averse clients. And so I'm going to talk in a little bit about one of the strategies that we take with what we're recommending for coating systems. But you're putting that client in a situation where one, like I said, you're saving money on the tear-off and typically you're not seeing the lower end factory made membranes going on data centers. Even for us, you're seeing more commonly a three applied modified system than you are a two applied modified system. They're really trying to beef up what's on some of these buildings to make sure that they're not leaking through and causing damage to what's inside.

So if you can create a situation where ... And I'll explain this further. But every 10 years you're essentially renewing that roof for a fairly incremental spend, putting peace of mind for facility managers and customers. It's a great opportunity. The other thing that I don't have on this list that I wanted to mention I thought of was solar. So we're seeing more and more solar as well. And when you put on a solar system, those are 25 year warranties. And so we'll run into situations sometimes when they're considering replacing the roof regardless of where it is in its lifespan because they're going to put a solar system on that has a 25 year warranty. Well, when you put those panels on and so forth, you're making it fairly difficult to service that roof underneath. And so our standard warranties are 10, 15 and 20 years pretty much standard in the industry, but we also have a 25 year system that we tie specifically for solar integrations. And that can be a much more cost-effective way to go about putting solar on a building because it is expensive enough to get into the solar realm without having to tear-off the roof below. If you can restore the roof and almost give it new life for 25 years matched to the solar warranty, that's another great opportunity. And also flashing in all those penetrations and so forth.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. No. And we're hearing about that so much with the solar. And when you think about companies that are thinking about solar data centers, there tends ... And I know I've said this before, but it just keeps hitting my mind, is that there tends to be a lot of environmental policies and that they are looking ... I know I've heard from many data centers that they want a certain type of products. Energy efficiency and everything like that. So when you put all that together, the protection and the be able to get on there, plus service and maintenance for contractors. Having a service and maintenance program and then putting it together with this is huge. Which leads us to this gateway opportunity. Yeah, there you go.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. No. That's a great transition. So I would like to talk about this in terms of both customers and contractors. So I'm assuming there's a wide spectrum of folks on the call today. Some folks not even in the commercial space, as I said, some folks in the commercial space but not in coatings. So when you think about getting into roof restoration from a career development perspective, it is getting your foot in the door with commercial roofing and you don't have to go zero to 60 immediately. So you can think of it, like I said, it's an extension of repair and maintenance. So you can get yourself situated with the repair and maintenance element of it before you get into any type of coating application and start offering that as part of your business, get a repair and maintenance crew together and then grow that into a full roof restoration.

And same goes for customers. So a way to think about this ... And this is also a way to offer your services to your customers depending on where you are in the country. Let's talk about it seasonally first and then we'll talk about budgets. So if you're up north, we're going to quickly be getting into the time of year where applying coatings becomes more challenging. So acrylics are certainly out the window. You can deal with silicones further into the colder months. But at some point you're really into, I'm doing repair and maintenance and I'm kicking the rest of the can down the road. And so that's the same way you can think about your business. You can offer to your customers, look, I'm up on this roof, I'm walking the roof. It really is a great candidate for restoration. But hey, let's budget for that next year. Let's just get you repaired and back in the dry and get all your flashings and so forth up to snuff and offer them a repair and maintenance budget first before offering a full restoration. And by the time you get to doing that coating, there's probably very minor cleanup and repair that you would need to do within that six months to a year time.

That's from a seasonal perspective. The other thing is budget. Some people don't have the budget to spend for the coating portion of it. However big the roof is, you're going to need gallons and gallons of coating to put down that monolithic membrane. If you want to quote that, but split it up in half you can do the flashing and repair first and then budget for the coating at another time.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That makes so much sense. And that's great for the customers.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. And this is where I also wanted to talk about ... I guess it's a little bit tangent to a gateway, but I was saying earlier about a strategy for how you would approach your customer or these data centers. So you can offer a 20 year NDL with roof restoration. That's possible, but what we also see a lot of contractors offering and I would dare say recommend is more of a 10 year approach where you build in this kind of recurring revenue relationship with your customers. So it helps them reduce their spend upfront because if they're buying 20 years worth of materials, that's a higher material spend. If you're looking for a 20-year warranty, you're putting less wet down, less dry mills ultimately. So you can help them out by keeping their budget a little bit tighter in the beginning and then build that relationship such that you're checking on that roof every so often with your repair and maintenance crew. And then in 10 years they're planning to recoat it. We're going to bring it back to that bright white, highly reflective nature every 10 years instead of waiting 20 years and every roof has dirt pickup and so on and so forth. And it's going to reduce the reflective nature of that roof over time.

So that's another way to think about it. And 10 years is a long time for dogs, but I don't know, I have kids, I feel like 10 years went by like that. So it's not a long time When you think about that in 10 years, you're getting those customers back with no customer acquisition cost. You're building those relationships. So I think that's all part of a strategy with this.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And if you're doing service and maintenance up on the roof yearly or twice a year-

Abby Feinstein: Which you should be. Yeah.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Which you should be. And that's what I love when you talk about from repair and maintenance or if you have a service and maintenance program to full roof restorations, that allows you to do whatever the customers need. And I love how you said maybe do repair now and then budget in for next year because now is the time when people are starting to work on their budgets.

Abby Feinstein: Right. And don't be afraid to help guide your client in that way as a contractor. Like I said, you have an opportunity to be the hero there. They might come to you feeling like they need a new roof, and from a dollar signs perspective, that's great for you to put on a new roof right now. But the end game is important here. If you can help show a customer how to save some money, spread out their budget, you're getting that business back in 10 years because now they trust you. Right? Yeah. You know what I'm saying.

Heidi J Ellsworth: No. I know. Exactly. I've seen it work time after time after time. It seems so basic, but it's not. It's building those relationships and really having the right solutions to bring to it and the right employees. And I love that you put on here on a gateway to opportunity because with the labor shortage right now, employees are so important. So being able to offer them this kind of work that is cleaner a little bit, like you said, lower barriers to entry, that can really help with your culture of your business too.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And we're not talking about labor today specifically, but that issue for contractors hasn't changed in years. Vetting good loyal labor is a challenge.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. So get them the work that everybody wants.

Abby Feinstein: That they don't mind coming back to next week. That's right.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Exactly. Okay. I've hit on this a couple of times because one of my favorite topics, but sustainability and really all those customers we showed a couple slides ago, working with them not only on budget and product, but also on what are your sustainability goals. Talk a little bit about that.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. And I think to your point, it's fair to say that especially those types of verticals that we were talking about are more and more having a social responsibility program, having to answer to their stakeholders and investors what they're doing to address climate change and be more sustainable. So right on the money. I would say second to cost-effectiveness and ease of installation and so forth, I would absolutely say that sustainability is a top three driver for why we're seeing such consistent, tremendous growth of this product segment.

So we talked about tear-off a little bit before, but I'll repeat that. Just the sheer landfill avoidance that you can do when you're restoring a roof as opposed to tearing it off is tremendous and really limitless. You're not adding a ton of weight to that roof so you can coat and coat and coat and coat and if you've got that roof tied up and healthy before you start that process, there's probably no reason to ever tear that roof off which is great. It's a labor saving and it's a sustainability piece for sure.

The other element is the reflectivity. So there are various colors offered within the actual coating, but by far the most popular color is bright white. And people talk a lot about the impact that will have to the building itself, which is true. There's plenty of studies out there, frankly, whether you're talking about reflective granules or reflective membranes, when you reduce the heat absorption of the roof, it has great impact on the cooling load of that building.

But I was just talking to a colleague of mine in the industry and he was sharing with me and I might butcher this, I think it was Baltimore. It was a really awesome story and I'm sure you could find the study or I can share it with you. I don't know if you have some way of sharing it with people that are on the webinar.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Put it on your directory.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. Okay. So there was a study that was done a couple of years ago in Baltimore, so urban environment where they were working on ... There was a pretty repressed area. People were dying. They didn't have the money to be running their air conditioner. Really hot summer. Not fun and games for this particular neighborhood. I think it was sponsored through RCMA, and the roofs were coated. And for folks that are not familiar, there was a heat island effect going there where it wasn't just about reducing the individual building loads, but what they saw was that the ambient temperature of that community, not just in the buildings, but standing on the street outside the ambient temperature was reduced by 10 degrees, seven or 10 degrees. Something substantial and noticeable. And ultimately, I don't want to sound trite, but it became life-saving.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Abby Feinstein: So that's a huge thing. Not everybody's in an urban environment, but the heat island effect is real. So for folks in LA County and so on and so forth, and out there, of course you've got Title 31 code that you need to meet. So bright white reflective coatings help there from a sustainability perspective.

The last thing I want to touch on, and I'm speaking a little bit out of turn here, I will admit. So I don't want to make the claim, but CertainTeed is looking into it. So I can't claim at the moment. But from just brief carbon assessments that I've done with our sustainability department and so forth, I think it's reasonable to think that the embodied carbon or the global warming potential of the product. So when you're manufacturing the product is really what I'm talking about, that your impact to the planet during the manufacturing process is lower. It seems pretty straightforward that that would be the case for acrylic, a little less certain on the silicone side. We're still conducting life cycle assessments. But that's also another ... One of the big contributors to global warming is the construction of these building materials. And so that's something that we're incredibly serious about. We have very rigorous goals to meet for what we'll call our midterm goal in 2030. And our 2050 goal is to be net-zero carbon.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow. That's amazing.

Abby Feinstein: At Saint-Gobain. So that's another reason why we're committed to these types of technologies because it plays into where we need to get as a culture, as a society.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And you're walking the talk.

Abby Feinstein: We're trying.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's cool.

Abby Feinstein: It's hard, Heidi. It's hard.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It's hard. I love that. I know. And there's so many considerations, so much we're looking at. Okay. So with all of this, we know the market, we know how it works, everything, but like you said earlier, there's nothing more important than training because that is going to reduce the risk for the contractors and improve the vinyl product for the building owner. So talk about training and how that works, how it works with CertainTeed.

Abby Feinstein: Sure. Yeah. Right. I can't understate this. I've done my job if I've gotten you excited about coatings and entering into that space, but I will have done a disservice to you if you just go right out the door and buy some material and start selling the job. So by all means, you need to know what you're doing. I would say CertainTeed is ... We'll talk about our training opportunities. But any manufacturer worth their weight and salt is going to have a program to support their contractors in getting them up to speed. Of course, we hear that it is one of the benefits in working with CertainTeeds as a partner.

We certainly hear of some other large manufacturers that don't do a great job at returning phone calls, especially for smaller contractors. We are the we people contractors. Excuse me, manufacturer. We are very used to working with, I guess what's deemed tier two and tier three smaller contractors and we're here to support that effort.

I was just talking actually with Gabe Lane earlier this week about ... He's one of our field techs for commercial roofing. And he was telling me that ... I think it was a group of five contractors that came up from Venezuela, not a lick of them, English speaking. He spent a day with them training them on coatings. And then that was earlier this year. And then a couple of weeks ago he was back because they had their first job. It was a 250 square, so not a particularly small job. A 250 square job. He came was on the job with them on the job training, get them going and supporting them. There was one English-speaking foreman, and it was a very successful day. Will they absolutely see after they do it over and over again, greater gains in productivity and profitability? Absolutely. But did they walk off that ... In the drive feeling confident and like they delivered what they sold to their customer? 100%.

And the other piece to it is with ... There was very few things that were good coming out of the pandemic, but one of the things I think that were good was contractors and all of us got much more used to virtual meetings. So as much as there's some things that you just can't replace having a live body next to you teaching you and showing you the way all the time, our field techs are using FaceTime or whatever your video conferencing of choice is to help do roof walks, help troubleshoot. So we've found a way to put these amazing people literally two places at once by leveraging their phone. Yeah. But I thought that story about those contractors was a great example of just going from zero to 60 with the right training and support. So we're very-

Heidi J Ellsworth: With the training. Right.

Abby Feinstein: That's right. With the right training.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And again, finding that manufacturer who is focused on training but then also has that field technical support because I think that's really important. The fact that you went out onto the roof with them to get them going.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. And I can't say enough about our field tech folks from CertainTeed to GCP. I don't know if everybody's aware. It was a fairly recent acquisition, but CertainTeed acquired GCP, so we're all one big family now and building envelope expertise across the board. We've just got some great people out there. The other thing is, I would say in my experience, I've worked with folks that really know coatings or whatever trade. They're really skilled at what they do, but they're really horrible at teaching and communicating. That's not the same skill set. I've just been so impressed with our tech team from that perspective that they're patient, they communicate well. Early days when I was meeting with other manufacturers just at courtesy to try to learn this business a little bit, it was like I would walk off the roof sometimes and say, "I have no idea what that guy just said."

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Abby Feinstein: We're committed and I think we've got the right butts in the seats.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. I love it. And I think that's so important. And then along with training, obviously you really need to understand your products. So let's talk just a little bit about those products.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. So I'll try not to use this too much as a sales pitch, but I guess I'll forewarn probably for the next five minutes or so, it's going to be a sales pitch so buckle up. So I would say within the Smartcoat line, we have a couple really standout products. Two of which I'm going to highlight here is our Smartcoat 365 Silicone Mastic, and our 450 High Solid Silicone. So our 365, which by the way, within the next few months, you're going to start to see we're doing a rebrand. So we're going from Smartcoat 365 Repair Mastic to no on the Smartcoat, and it's just 365 Repair Master. And I'll explain one of the benefits of this product is that while it's a great mastic to use within an overarching restoration system, it's also an awesome standalone repair solution.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Oh, that's nice.

Abby Feinstein: So it is versatile, it spreads great, it sticks to anything, it goes down underwater. We have that published. So I love ... Our techs are always doing a demo where we've got ... It's like the ... What's that spray where there was a guy with the roof screen and he was-

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes.

Abby Feinstein: But wait, there's more.

Heidi J Ellsworth: He does that under the boat.

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. Yeah. That guy. So we're always doing similar stuff. We've got a tub and we've got holes in it and you can just put it down and it immediately stops the leak. So great versatile tool. 365 so year round. You don't have temperature constraints. You don't have weather constraints. So we like to say, when you need a repair that's more than a patch, 365 is your go-to. So that's a great product. And also in terms of the gateway approach to things, that's the first product you should buy from us. Get ahold of 365. Start getting familiar with doing those repairs with 365. And if you're already in coatings and considering making a switch to Smartcoat, that's definitely going to be a key product for the silicone restoration system.

And then on the silicone side of things, from a top coat perspective, guys just love our 450. So it has a tenacious bond. We've got some of the techs that are part of our business now have been with other companies over the years, and they don't like to sell things or support things that they don't believe in and they said, "I've not seen anything like it." It really without any primer will stick to most roofing substrates including TPO.

Obviously you need to do an adhesion test so I don't want to say just go out there and coat the world. But we always recommend to do an adhesion test. We have adhesion test kits. But it's tremendous on the bond strength. It self-levels and spreads like a dream. So it's very, very nice to work with. When you're doing silicone coating you're not so much rolling the way you would think of painting a wall. You're almost moving material around the roof to get that mill thickness that you're looking for. And this works with you instead of against you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Nice.

Abby Feinstein: And the other thing I would mention is in terms of coating. So if there's already silicone on the roof and you're restoring something that's already been there, our silicone will stick to other manufacturer silicone as well as to itself. So that's the product pitch on individuals. I would also recall back to the one, two, three, four. Contractors really like the numbering system and the nomenclature of our products in terms of ease of use and making sure that you're doing things in the right order. And the last thing in terms of maybe products considerations before I move to warranty is simply the breadth of the products at CertainTeed. Consider there's not a lot of coating manufacturers out there that also have shingles that also have roll goods. If there's any distributors on the line, this is a good thing for those businesses because you're not forced necessarily to bring in a full truck of coatings if that's not what you need at the minute.

You can mix those trucks with shingles and roll goods because stocking all of those products nationwide in all of our plants and warehouses. The other thing that plays into, from a contractor's perspective I mentioned before, is the warranty. So if you are a CertainTeed loyal contractor and you can go back to, hopefully you've got some ... You can lean on us if you register the warranty with us to get to those addresses and so forth. But if you've got a good address bank of projects that you've done, you can keep an eye on those warranties as they're coming to an end and go back and offer a restoration solution that no one else is going to be able to offer but you because you will be able to offer a warranty from the deck up. So I do want to drive that home.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow. When you think about from a marketing standpoint, what that means, just even looking at your old warranties being a part of it, that is a strategy for contractors for work that I just think is sometimes not taking advantage of as much as-

Abby Feinstein: 100%. 100%. And whether it's making a small investment and nothing to do with coatings, but a decent CRM system or customer resource management system. But people are always looking for the next lead. I need leads. I need leads. When you're talking about repair and maintenance and roof restoration, if you're in the business in some other way, you already got your leads. Go back and develop those relationships. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Just because it [inaudible 00:53:04] true doesn't mean it's great.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It's so true. So true.

Abby Feinstein: Absolutely.

Heidi J Ellsworth: We have a quick question here that I want to make sure we get out there, and thank you so much for this question. It says, "To enhance this roller applied effect of distributing rather than painting, are there any roller characteristics or material that you would recommend?"

Abby Feinstein: That's a good question. So yeah, there's a minimum nap thickness that you certainly want to be using. Also, instead of doing ... Our field tech guys like to say a dip and roll. I'm not a field tech, so I don't want to be like ... This is not a training. That's my disclaimer. But you don't do in out, in out, like you're painting. I believe if I'm going to get this right from the last time I went to a training, it's like six total movements. It's like up back ... You're moving things around, then let go. Don't keep messing with it. It's like making muffins. If you over mix muffins, they're very dense. You don't want to overwork the coating.

The other thing that you consider is a Better Spreader. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's like a tray with holes in it and you pull it so you can be ... It helps with, instead of just staging your roof ... And we didn't even talk about because we didn't get into too much application techniques, but gridding your roof out and staging it. Instead of just pouring out of the pail, you can pour into the Better Spreader and then drag along and it will almost distribute for you.

And at that point, you might not even need a roller. You could even use a squeegee to just move it around and level it out and make sure you're getting your mill thicknesses consistent. So hopefully I didn't just make my field techs cringe if they're on the call, but I think I got that right.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, and this leads us to that. How to get started. And so more questions like this, people wanting to get started, how do they do that?

Abby Feinstein: Yeah. So I know you said earlier on there was a lovely attendee from Pakistan.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes.

Abby Feinstein: I can't help you. I'm sorry. But in terms of North America, CertainTeed has territory managers all over the United States and Canada, so they're probably your easiest in to at least ask the questions and they can spoke and answer and help get you going in terms of a live body. But in terms of some of the resources that we offer, they would attach you to our field techs. So each region has its own tech that would be the right person to actually administer training for you if live training is what you're looking for. But even before that, there's quite a few digital tools that I would point somebody to. And you can see some badges on the screen there. So we have credentialing at CertainTeed or certifications if you will, that kind of thing for both the contractor as a human as well as the contractor, as a business.

And our credentialing programs are very education-based. Our low slop roofing applicator's manual, which is what's sitting behind those badges. You can go through that manual and read through. I know it's so old-fashioned, but just read. And it actually will tell you a lot of what you need to know about the basics of the materials and how they work, as well as how to apply them. And then we have a quiz at the end of each section. And if you go through that, that's an online quiz, you would be achieving your master craftsman in liquid applied roofing credential. That's for you as a person.

Then you can step that up to get your master craftsman select certification or credential, excuse me, by attending a class and actually doing it live. And then as a business, there's a different application if you want to offer extended warranties or particularly our labor and material warranties. That's when you want your business to become a gold star liquid applied roofing contractor and there's an application required for that and always a good thing if you think about that holistically to have some master craftsman as part of your job so that when you're going out on those jobs, you've got guys that know what they're doing. Installing. Your first step is our local territory managers.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And that's a sales point too. When you're talking to your building owners, right?

Abby Feinstein: Absolutely.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. So great. Wow, this has been excellent. I have to tell you. And I did say out there if there's any more questions, now is the time. We actually just have a couple of minutes. But Abby, I want to say thank you. That was tremendous. That was a great to spend a Friday afternoon.

Abby Feinstein: Thanks Abby. As always it's awesome to be here. Thank you for having us and giving us a chance to talk with our customers.

Outro: Yeah. It was so great and thank you all for attending. I hope you're having an awesome day. Be sure to check out the CertainTeed directory on Roofer's Coffee Shop and Coatings Coffee Shop where you can get all of this information, including that report that Abby's going to give us and we're going to upload. And be sure to check out all of our coatings talks that are on Coatings Coffee Shop. You can find so much great information. It's all there, including our very first coffee conversations with the Roof Coatings Manufacturers Association that just happened yesterday.

So again, Abby, thank you. Oh, here we go. We have one question. Will the recording of today's webinar be available? Yes, it will. Please share it out and it'll be available on Monday. Usually it's 24 hours, but since this is a Friday, look for it Monday around noon and it's right on the read, listen, watch navigation on a Coatings Coffee Talk under Coatings Talk.