Building Brands
The Building Brands podcast, hosted by Luminus Owner & CEO Tim Bouchard, is a biweekly show that dives into marketing and branding strategies relating to the building materials industry. If you’re an owner or marketer in the manufacturing, distribution, or contracting spaces, this podcast is for you. In each show I’ll dive into a wide variety of topics with industry experts in the building materials and marketing spaces. So whether you’re reinventing a well established company or introducing a new company or product line to the market, these conversations will allow you to draw inspiration from the experiences and knowledge of others who have been there before and succeeded.
Building Brands
Managing Multiple Building Materials Brands
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Nate Renzella
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Season 1
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Episode 17
Nate Renzella, Technical Sales Representative from Tremco talks about how Tremco manages multiple product brands under one parent company, how that approach has helped grow Tremco by offering more solutions to their customers, and how to maintain brand recognition with such a diverse product catalog.
Tim
Welcome Building Brands listeners. For this 17th episode, I'm joined by Nate Renzella, Technical Sales Representative at Tremco Commercial Sealants and Waterproofing. Tremco construction products group is the industry's only provider of comprehensive systems and services for all six sides of the building enclosure. In this episode, Nate talks about how Tremco manages multiple product brands under one parent company, how that approach has helped grow tremco by offering more solutions to their customers, and how to maintain brand recognition with such a diverse product catalog. Enjoy the episode.
Tim
If you're an owner or marketer in the building materials, manufacturing, distribution, or contracting spaces, looking to set up your brand for success now and in the future, this is the podcast for you. on this show, we talk about brand and market strategies used in the real world that grow companies and truly connect with consumer audiences. So sit back, listen in and let's get to it. Okay, welcome Nate Renzella, Technical Sales Representative at Tremco Commercial Sealants and Waterproofing. Nate was actually a referral from one of my previous guests, Dane. So thanks for listening to his email and offering yourself up as bait for my my podcast episode. I appreciate that. So, welcome to the show. And why don't we start with the easiest question I always ask everyone, which is, tell us why you're here. Who are you?
Nate
that's a that's a loaded question. First of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity, appearing on a huge show. A nationally syndicated podcast is not done before at
Tim
least 50. Listeners say 50,000. But now the extra zeros aren't worth it.
Nate
Yeah, well, that's 50 more than I normally speak to. So, no, I appreciate the opportunity. As you said, my name is Nate. And I've been with tremco for about a year. And I have a fairly a typical path to arriving at tremco. I grew up in Canada. I got here I like to tell people got here how most Canadians got here. When I finished school, I did a political science degree at the University of Western Ontario. And I fell backwards into coaching the National Baseball team and Slovakia. I was a four year ballplayer at Western and found myself in Slovakia.
Tim
Like everyone.
Nate
Yeah, that's pretty typical. And so I, well over in Slovakia, I had a weekend off, I ran into some other Canadians and they said, what are we gonna do this weekend? So I don't know, let's just go get on the train. And we'll leave on the next train that's leaving as soon as we get to the station. So we ended up in Salzburg, Austria A few hours later. And this crazy little woman that kind of looked like the witch and Snow White convinced us to stay at our hostel. We weren't sure if we were going to get murdered or not. But we got over to this hospital and it was pretty nice. And we decided to go back to the train station and just see hey, what time is the train leaving so we can get back to Slovakia in a couple days. And I got back to the train station. This crazy little old woman was now harassing to Cute Girls. And I started talking to those cute girls. convinced them to stay in Salzburg for a few days, they had gone the wrong way on the train. And now, two and a half, three years later, we got married. So to one of the girls, so she was she was finishing up her school here in Nashville. And so we came to Nashville. So I that's that's my typical story of how I got to the US. And my background. All of my training at that point was I was working towards becoming a professional firefighter. So I worked in the fire service for 10 years, I worked as a firefighter and EMT, I got to see lots of crazy stuff that most people will never get to see. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. And while I was there, I'd run into I promoted and become a fire inspector. And I would go to all the inspector conferences and hilty was always there, and they had kind of casually started recruiting me. So I said no to them for a few years. And I eventually said yes, I went to work for hilty for four years as fire protection specialists. That was a natural fit. I had the fire background. While I was at the fire department, I completed a master's in Fire and Emergency Management at Oklahoma State go pokes. hilty was a great fit. So I spent four years there. I really enjoyed my time there was a great way to stretch myself and grow. However, out of the blue tremco came call and I didn't know much about them. And I've been here for a year, so I'm really enjoying my time here so far.
Tim
Yeah, the classic Canada to Europe to Nashville to Yeah, everyone's taken that path. You know, luminess is based in Buffalo buffalo is basically little Canada, you know? Yeah.
Nate
Lots of bills fans in my family.
Tim
When it's not COVID season, we can cross the bridge on foot and go hang out whenever we want.
Unknown Speaker
So that's it. That's the Rainbow Bridge over there, isn't it?
Tim
Yeah. Rainbow Bridge peace bridge. All bridges. Yeah. So talk about Tremco a little bit they do sealants and waterproofing. So it's a it's a coating company that kind of meshed well with with what you were doing at hilty. So what got you involved over here? What's, what's your role coming over to this company now? Sure.
Nate
Yeah. Initially, I was a little confused why they were talking to me, but I quickly realized it's very similar similar type products, but a much bigger role in the construction process that was previously just focused on fire stopping and providing tested listed solutions for fire rated construction. That's pretty much all I did there. Over here, I've delved into a lot more. And what drew me to this place, quite frankly, was the people. I mean, I started interviewing with management and some of the other staff and some of the other technical sales reps started calling them talking to guys on the phone. And I was just thoroughly impressed with everybody, everybody was great. And I thought, you know, this is not something I've done in the past. But this is a good opportunity to kind of stretch and grow and learn, make myself a little more relevant in the construction market and know a little more than just firestopping. So just look like a good opportunity for me. And basically what I do here is I, I work with the contractors, and I work with the distributors, and I try to provide solutions. I try to fix problems, and I try to be a trusted partner just provide a face for tremco in Tennessee. I think that's kind of what differentiates tremco we have a lot of technical sales reps that do exactly what I'm doing. We're not relying on third parties to represent us. And I think that's important. So chunko itself. I mean, I've learned over the last year it's pretty remarkable company's been around for 92 years. William Troy Hoff started a small roofing manufacturing company way back when, in 1928, in Cleveland, Ohio. So long, long reputation in terms of roofing, the tremco name comes from the first three letters of his name tiare. The M is for manufacturing and the CEO is for company, that's where we get Tremco from. And interestingly enough, there was a gentleman that worked for William Troy Hoff named Frank c Silva. He worked there as an office boy, he left and had a very successful career selling roofing materials and coatings himself. And in 1947, he founded a company called RPM, Republic pattern metals company. And RPM grew and he decided that he wanted to buy Tremco so he had this vision Before he died in 1971, that it would be great if RPM could buy tremco, the company that he had worked for as a young kid. And in 97, after his death, his son Tom selvin, achieve that goal and they purchased tremco. So that's where we see one of the first major, you know, acquisitions for rpm. So we're talking about Tremco a lot today, but our parent company is rpm. Hmm. And so, today, rpm represents almost a $6 billion a year collection of companies in all kinds of coatings. There's different divisions. We have a construction products group, which is the group I'm in, we have performance coatings, we have a consumer group, people will be familiar with Vera Thane rustoleum, products like that. You find Home Depot and Lowe's. We have that group and then we have a specialty products group as well. So it's a it's pretty big company. It's pretty diverse. It's actually been pretty helpful during the pandemic, where our sales were down a little bit. The traditional consumer group was up a lot because people were home working on projects that really helped at the end of the year at the bottom line.
Tim
Well this is Come up on the show before to you, but I can't tell you how many personal projects I saw pop up in like march through June like everyone's like, Alright, we got little Well, we have extra a lot of extra time. We're home all the time home sucks, let's make it better. That's right projects there. That's how it goes. Yeah, you know, you brought this up as part of even the corporate growth too but you have multiple layers to this RPM is corporate to tremco tremco itself has multiple those multiple product divisions. Yes. And that's sort of what I want to poke out a little bit and talk about some of that too. You know, there's there's all sorts of different reasons for acquisitions and developing new product lines. It's it could be growth driven through, you know, either wanting more products to offer your current customers It could also be you want to find new customers and by diversifying, you can pull those people into your world. What sort of approach were they try was Trump co trying to take to do this and and that will kind of set the foundation for us to talk about like approaching growth strategy like that?
Nate
Well, I think you just have to look at the the mindset of how rpm and tremco operate. We don't really focus on selling products. For example, if you called me up and said, I need some help, I'm not gonna push a product on you. I, quite frankly, I don't I don't care. I'm more interested in what's your problem? How can we fix it and what potential solutions do we have? Because we have waterproofing products as you mentioned, we have you know, below grade waterproofing, we have sealants. We have air barriers. We have traffic coatings, we have roofing materials, we have eafs material, exterior insulated foam systems like drive it we have expansion joints, we have insulated concrete forms with new dura. So we basically have everything that can prevent air and moisture getting into your structure. And we these are flexible, durable technologies, we can use them in different applications. And connectivity is our key. We want to be able to tie all those things together because that's where buildings leak is when one product touches another product and overlaps. That's where we could have a potential failure So really what we're about what guides our strategy is we talk to our customers and we say, What problems do you have? What pain points do you have? How can we help. And then if we see a product, such as we'll seal, which is a pre compressed expansion joint, it fits in our portfolio, that was one of the things we were missing. So we acquired them last year. So really, what we're about is trying to provide a single source to treat an entire structure, what we call the six sides of the building below grade, the walls and the roof. And we want to be able to give you a solution that works. That's integrated with all the other solutions we offer. And we want to be able to offer you one warranty. That's good for the entire building for the duration of building something that's going to perform something that's not going to fail and something that we're going to warranty and I'll shoulder the burden of the cost of the building.
Tim
It sounds that's even a little bit more or not more, but also tied to the mission of the company to if you're not just selling products, but you're trying to help people complete their products and have a lot lifetime of value from using those products. That's, that sounds like it's almost tied to company mission to and in a way that this is how we deal with our customers.
Nate
It really is one of the things I like here, one of the things that bleeds down through the organizations is, you know, Frank Sullivan had said, you know, you hire the best people to do their jobs and get out of their way. And you see a lot of micromanagement in corporations, and you see a lot of people, you know, drilling down and telling everyone what to do. And there's a certain amount of that that's required, but at the end of the day, you know, what needs to get done, and you know, what needs to happen to be successful. And for me, it's about just working with our clients or customers or partners. And just like I said before, what do you need to accomplish your goal and how can we fill in the gaps? How can we make your life easier, and I think if as that bleeds down, if you're empowering everyone to do their jobs, in terms of research and development and marketing and just how you go to market every day, I think you can be successful when the people that are close to your customers are able to report back and be able to make things happen on the ground.
Tim
It also sounds like bringing in those extra product lines, and developing new product lines is also helping you from a sales technical representative aspect of your customer service. Right? Like, you can go back to people and say, Hey, remember that issue you had three years ago on that project that we couldn't figure out a solution for? Like, I've got something now the next time you have this prod type of project? Yeah, we're talking, I'm gonna bring it up, and we're gonna get this thing solved.
Nate
Yeah, a good example of that is now that we have drive it in our group, rpm zone, drive it for a long time, but they weren't in our group. And so we're always working at trying to foster more collaborative collaboration and operational excellence between all of the companies. But you can imagine how many people are involved when you've got that many employees in that many companies. So there could definitely always be more synergy there. But I think we're doing a better job at promoting communication between all these groups and sharing products and technology. But you're absolutely right. A perfect example, as I was saying, I'm able to go back to some of our customers that install airbags drive it previously promoted backstop NT is their go to air barrier? Well now they can provide a solution in terms of our exoair 120 or exoair 230 or xr 430 they have more options to provide a higher performing air barrier behind their each system. So for me, it's a great way to go back to some of my contractors and say, Oh, well I could get you trained to install backstop NT behind eafs. Or now you could work with the contractors that are going to be doing the drive it and we can install our air barriers and we're going to have a tested solution so that everything is congruent, everything will have a tested warrantable system backing it up.
Tim
It's a good reminder that by by expanding products either through internal innovation or through the acquisition method, that actually having high quality products that can solve more problems for your clients is just another aspect of marketing growth too. It gives you an excuse to go back to someone and have this conversation which is great for client retention and growth. have existing accounts as well as finding those new customers that haven't even approached you yet?
Nate
Yeah, I always like to have a reason to go see people and visit people, especially in the times that we're in right now where everyone's a little more conscious about, you know, distancing and face coverings and ensuring that we're not spreading the virus. I like to have a good reason to be there. And and it provides me ample opportunity to say, Oh, hey, you're talking about this project? Here's a sample you can take a look at this.
Tim
They are they're still product brands under tremco that you guys kind of focus on using with clients still, or is it really like whatever we can offer we'll put up I mean, maybe even bring it to a marketing aspect or their products that you put more marketing focus on even though you have a full collection just because they're tremco staples, or you know, that's the product that can bring people in?
Nate
Yeah, I mean I think we have our bread and butter what we know what we're what we're good at, you can look at the revenue streams. You know, we're obviously generating more revenue with certain product lines than we are with us. But I think there's a really concerted effort to take companies and integrate them into what we do, not just at the research and development level, but out in the field to, I'm talking about drive it, I'm talking about nudura, I'm talking about will seal in addition to my line of sealants, waterproofing, deck, coatings, airbags, etc. So I think it's just kind of integrating it all together, and, and having more touch points. It also depends on the customer. You know, a lot of customers don't necessarily do all of those things. So it's opened up some new customers. For me, I'm working more on the residential side now, as well as the commercial side with our TBS our Tremco barrier solutions line. So yeah, I think it's a bit of both.
Tim
Growing the product line so expansively if you run into any confusion in the market about which products you're actually known for, or which ones people should actually approach you about.
Nate
Yeah, yeah, sir, for sure. And, you know, we'll seal had some independent reps. So there's still some independent reps that are still loosely tied. And so the customer will say, well, do I call you or do I call them and, and I just remind people, hey, we're all one tremco now it's the Tremco construction products group tremco CPG, you can contact me if you want me to be your touch point. And I'll get you started with any of these, if I'm not an expert in this area, I've got people that are more than willing to help. But it's a it's a great opportunity to remind people that we do have a huge offering, there's no need to be confused. Don't Don't let this you know, overwhelm you just just call me and we'll have a conversation.
Tim
So let's talk about that. From the marketing perspective. You know, we kind of got a handle on how the business is using it to their advantage and how to help their clients and also grow for tremco itself when when they're putting marketing messaging and communications out into different channels, online print, trade shows, whatever it might be, how are they trying to make sure that everyone realizes that each of these products are part of that group and that collection of offerings do you have?
Nate
Well, we've, we've done that on a marketing scale, we're really focusing on unifying our operations. So we want to be one company, we want to be one brand with one warranty and one message that doesn't change. And we spent a lot of resources and time to work on that and to brand it, and we want to just focus on the power of one phone call, one email, one point of contact, we don't want the confusion. Because we have a lot of systems we have a lot of transitions, connections, adhesion between all these different product lines, a lot of different expertise from different people. So now it's it's really all from one entity. Like I said, it's one warranty. And we're going to be there to plant health plan, install and support the building through the life of the structure.
Tim
And at face value. I mean, you can even see this on your website. I know you guys are working through this. you acquire products fairly regularly, I believe, which means you're always bringing them in but you can't just turn on a dime. So it seems like you're facing Some products into that tremco look and feel because that's at face value. That's the first thing that people see if it looks familiar to a tremco products lock up and a logo or colors or fonts or whatever, oh, I'm starting to realize that this is part of the bigger picture.
Nate
Sure. And I think the key there is, the as a brand you want to influence the companies that you're acquiring or the brands that you're pulling into our group, our construction product group, is we want to maintain our history of values, we want to spread that throughout. And we want to keep the tone aspects of the brand, we want to keep it tremco. But we don't want to eliminate where those brands came from. There's value there. So we want that individual value differentiation. So we want a singular expression of for our brand, but we don't want to replace the history. And we want to keep those like for example will seal. If you go to the website, it has our tremco T and it has the wheel seal next to it all in tremco Green, so you can tell it's part of our group, but it's still we'll see It's if you've been dealing with with will seal for years, you shouldn't notice a huge difference other than the branding and realize that okay, this is part of a larger group now.
Tim
Yeah, it's unnecessary change, but it's very delicate and how you have to move it step by step. I mean, there's, there's a time maybe three or four years from now where you might completely consume that into the Trump co brand. But for right now, at least, and I don't know this, but for right now, at least you take that, that first step, which is introduce some of the colors lock it up. So it's part of a partnership presentation. And you start to bring people into the tremco world to because, you know, they're they're used to dealing with the other company, and now they have to understand who they might be working with on the tremco side. So right, you have even beyond the look and feel tremco itself, like you said, has its own mission values and the way that they want to support the industry and work with their clients. So that actually has to also carry down into the other companies kind of blend into this right tone and personality.
Nate
Sure. And like you said, it's never really static. It's constant. really changing throughout the last year when we really, you know, push this all together. But last year, there's definitely been some growing pains and some challenges and assigning duties and territories and management coverage. There's been a lot of shuffling. But it's as we're starting to come out on the other side of that move through it, you starting to see the value of all of these brands that they everyone has something to bring to the table. And all these brands have a lot of value with the relationships they've established with their customers or in their markets, the research that Dr. It has done, I mean, there's some really cool stuff that we're all able to start sharing and collaborating to make a better you know, Trump algo tremco construction products group.
Tim
Let's talk about getting these things out into the world too from a marketing collateral aspect. Nowadays with everything being so focused digital, especially with the pandemic now to a lot of people are shifting their marketing spend and activities priorities over to the digital side. websites that are over the last 10 years have just become where the funnel ends up as part of a lead capture. So you guys have the tremco website, you also have all of your products, too. And I believe that the majority, if not all of them have their own dedicated web presences as well. Can you touch on what that like ecosystem looks like and why why you might take that approach?
Nate
Yeah, so I mentioned, I don't know if I got into it before but there's, there's basically, for lack of a better term. There's there's six or seven companies that that we're talking about here. So the master brand tremco construction products group has our commercial sealants and waterproofing. That's, that's the group I'm part of. We have our roofing division, which focuses on roofing as the second one, we have the Tremco barrier solutions, which is the residential group. So commercial sealants, and waterproofing, roofing and tremco barrier solutions all have their own websites with the tremco brand and the T. When we when we pull drive it into our group drive, it has their own website, their own facilities, their own distribution network, as does new Darren Wilson. So those groups still have their own websites. We'll see you nudura drive it TBS Roofing And Commercial sealants and waterproofing. But they're all you can you can get to one from the other there they're starting to be they're adding links, and it's a work in progress.
Tim
What are you looking to gain by having all those separate web properties? Is it so you can specialize content for each of the product doesn't get jumbled up in one damn site? I mean,
Nate
I can't imagine trying to go to one website. I mean, you go to the commercial sealants and waterproofing website, it can be a little overwhelming, we have a lot of products. And there's a lot of dropdowns. And just finding what you need can be a little overwhelming if you're not on the site all the time. And the other thing is, it's got to do with familiarity. I know as a consumer, if I'm used to the way the Amazon interface looks like when I go to that website, if they change anything, I'm like, Oh, this is different. So I think for a lot of people, if you've been buying will seal or new durer drive it for years, there's value to going to a website that you're familiar with where you know where the drop downs are, you know where the submittal information is the old adage of an broke, don't fix it. So I think just rebranding it and making it part of our group is good. But to me, I don't see that it hurts to have the individual websites, I think it you maintain that history and that product identity,
Tim
What you're really trying to do on those types of sites to when you have expansive or numerous products within each of those product lines, you probably have very specialized filtration and categorization options. Imagine if you had all six of those product lines on one site, you'd have six different filtration systems, depending on which section you'd go to, it'd be crazy, it'd be really overwhelming. I mean, the other aspect of this too is if you really are despite them being part of the overall Tremco brand, if they have their own web presence, that gives them a top level domain authority for someone to look up find with specialized content on the homepage, and then of course, the specialized filtrations and all of the product resources. And the other thing that I'm not sure if you guys do this, but you might have something to talk about is for how you might convert Someone for each type of product like is, is is every product looking for a phone call or a form submission or a purchase or a consultation request? Like, I'm assuming that each product might have its own type of goal that you're trying to get someone to as a lead generation
Nate
In terms of exactly how the lead generation works, I'm probably not the guy to answer that question. I can tell you from my perspective in the field I routinely receive leads in a couple different ways, or people have asked a question. They provide a location where they are and then I reach out to them if they're in Tennessee, or the northern part of Georgia, wherever they are, we then focus in and try to figure out how we can assist. But that lead generation looks different. I mean, sometimes they just want somebody on site. Sometimes they want to know what product offering is best best for their application. Sometimes they need help, just finding some middle information or lead information, very specific questions. And sometimes it's a warranty issue. Hey, this was installed years ago. I'm having a problem with it. Can someone come look at Do you also have a collection of assets outside of the website that you're using and regular communications with the clients like digital like tech sheets or cell sheets or product catalogs, proof materials? What else are you doing around the web and digital world to interact with your customers on your account basis. I know our customers will receive periodic communication via email, in some cases, printed letters if something's changing, or a price structure changing, or when we merged all these companies together there was there was communication with our distributors and our customers. This is what we're doing. This is what it looks like. It's the same tremco we're all together. So we've we've employed that type of marketing. We also have a lot of print materials, I find it's really valuable to leave behind a high quality brochure or to mail one out color samples. In our world color samples are really important when you're trying to use a sealant. You don't want a green sealant run down the middle of a gray wall. So we have a lot of different color options. So in terms of samples I send a lot of those to the design community because they say I want to see what this is going to look like I can't tell from the website. So a lot of our stuff is tactile, you got to be able to feel it, touch it to really understand how it performs, what it's going to do, and how it's going to last. So we do a lot of that and we're still changing the branding, changing logos it's a work in progress.
Tim
Yeah, I mean, the the samples and swatches and things like that are great conversion tools too. Because those are those help the customer actually do their job correctly and generate more interest and getting back to you like hey, look, they sent me this they're trying to help me I can actually tell how good this thing is. Now I gotta get back to Nate and see how we can work on us. Exactly.
Nate
I probably I almost I'd say almost every day I'm at the UPS Store. It feels like sending somebody somewhere samples especially right now where there a lot of the design communities working from home. Yeah, and it's a it's a great way to say Hey, I'll send you something you can look at this for yourself and see and like you said it's it's it's a great way to convert to sales because people can see it. Touching for themselves?
Tim
Yeah, you're giving them value back for reaching out like, yes, contact us, and we will get you things that help you to do your job, which is worth contacting us. Yeah, Nate is good at his job, he'll help you. Yeah. The other thing you mentioned, too, that's pretty important too, is that that leave behind when you're working with someone, whether you're visiting them in normal times, or mailing it to them now, because of the distancing and everything like there has to be some level of quality to that too. Otherwise, it's going to not match with what you're trying to do from a quality standpoint, from the product side, hundred meet all those things working in unison.
Nate
Hundred percent. The stuff that I'm leaving behind are really high quality high gloss brochures, the samples aren't actually cured samples, I would hazard to guess how much money we spend on producing the samples because it's all real product just in small quantities. I think we do a really good job of that.
Tim
I mean, I would venture to guess and you don't have to say anything like if you don't know the numbers, but I would venture to guess that people that are getting samples are converting higher into sales versus people that are just generally reaching out right and and that process that used to As part of that,
Nate
for sure, yeah.
Tim
So in terms of the construction and building products industry in general, there's a lot happening culturally right now. But as far as the industry in terms of products and innovation, where do you think we're going in the next 10 years that that brands will have to consider adapting to?
Nate
Well, I've listened to some of your other podcasts. And I think everybody's saying the same thing. So in our world, in terms of building enclosures, people want better connectivity. So much time is lost. While we're waiting to find out if product x is compatible with product why and we have to do a mock up and we have to wait 28 days we have to do a fusion testing. And if that fails, and you've got manufacturers pointing the finger, well, they have to approve this or I'm not approved. It's just it's wasted time. Speed of installation is really important. Time is money in every business, but especially in construction. We have to be efficient. I don't want to just be fast, I need to be good at what I'm doing. So we need to provide products that are not only fast to install. But it's an efficient way in terms of scheduling. It all needs to go together cohesively, and help move the job along. The performance testing has to be there. It's not good enough for a rapper or a company to say, product x works really, really well. Right? That's great. Proven. So we have spent millions in our testing facility in our labs, and we're testing all the products, especially all the products that we have to integrate them all together so we can provide that one stop shopping experience. prefabrication is huge. I'm seeing more and more penalization of walls, the concrete gets poured and the walls are coming in preassembled with all the conduit in them, some cases the pipe in it, it's about speed of installation, and providing better quality control and quality assurance if it's pre manufactured in a in a climate controlled environment. In a stable environment. It's much easier to QC QA out in the field as well. So we're seeing more and more building information modeling. I've been seeing that For the last several years, I'm seeing more and more done digitally, to try to find clash detection and problems ahead of time. doesn't always translate to the field. But it's, it's, it's coming. And I think it's becoming more and more prevalent. But at the end of the day, the other thing that's really going to change over the next 10 years, I think COVID has really brought this to the forefront is how is technology going to be able to improve collaboration and communication in the construction process? You know, we're, we're on a zoom meeting today. I don't know how many zoom meetings you've been on the last three months, but I've been on more than one to many. And, and and the fact is, that's, I think that's an increasing trend. I think we're going to see more and more that it's again, it's about speed and efficiency if I don't have to drive somewhere for a meeting, and we can quickly meet via zoom, I think we're going to see more of that. So as a company, I think we've got to be prepared to tackle that and and integrate what we do into prefabricated projects where we can and prefabricated solutions that increase speed and efficiency.
Tim
Yeah. On the brand side, a little bit more about, you know, the company as a whole, what do you think everyone should be considering right now from a branding perspective, strategy or otherwise, to make sure that their brand is up to speed?
Nate
That's a pretty high level question. And I don't know that I'm fully equipped to answer. But I think at the end of the day, your brand needs to practice what they preach, if you're going to put it out there that you're going to do it, you better be able to deliver it. And I think tremco is uniquely positioned that we're not relying on outside help. We have our own technical resources in the field and in the lab. And if we say we can do something, we can do it, we can back it up. And I would, I would say that other companies need to be in the same position.
Tim
And that's why when we start working with people, whether it's from a campaign or just an overall strategy standpoint, we're always doing claims analysis with them like okay, you are saying these things make you stand out? Yeah. Okay. How are you proving them if you can prove them? Do they relate to your audiences? If so, we got that Winter. Let's push that as our marketing campaign. Yeah. 10 that's how you craft the right differentiated message. But you got to back it up, right? Sure. You gotta back it up. Yeah. Is there? Is there anything else that you want to toss out to the people before we wrap up and and say goodbye?
Nate
Well, there's a, there's a couple things. One of the values one of the main values, that RPM is the value of 168. And at first glance, that might not make much sense, but there's 168 hours in each week. And though each of those hours is a gift, and we need to focus on what matters, we need to take care of ourselves and our families. We need to listen to our customers, and we need to do what we say we're going to do. It's marketing is nothing if you're not going to do what you say, you're not going to show up. You know, wise man, my grandfather once told me, you know, 90% of life is just showing up. You know, and I think that's in light of all of everything we've experienced the last six months, you know, every every hour matters and and that's a founding principle of this guy. And to make use of every bit of time that we have,
Tim
what a great uplifting bit of knowledge that was.
Nate
That's what I'm here for.
Tim
And then if you want to close, I always give everyone the opportunity to let people know where they can find them a little bit more about their company. So Tremco...
Nate
Here's a shameless plug. You can find more information about us at tremco sealants comm if you don't want to type all of that in, you can find us on LinkedIn, which is a great way to find information. We're constantly posting stuff. We do tremco live broadcasts every Friday at 3pm. Eastern, they're, they're entertaining. Marcy Tyler does a great job with Paul Hogan boom. And you can kind of find out what we're working on. It's a brief brief synopsis. We've got our test facility, we're going to be doing virtual tours of that, which I think people will find pretty interesting. And we have a blog out there called build Meets World. And you find a lot of good relevant information there as well.
Tim
Great. Well, thanks for coming on. This was awesome. Appreciate it.
Nate
Thanks for having me. It's been fun.
Tim
If you're interested in hearing more stories and strategic insights from industry experts, please subscribe to the building brands podcast on Apple, Spotify or Google. If you've enjoyed this episode, please post a review and share with others who may be interested as well. Thanks for listening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Welcome Building Brands listeners. For this 17th episode, I'm joined by Nate Renzella, Technical Sales Representative at Tremco Commercial Sealants and Waterproofing. Tremco construction products group is the industry's only provider of comprehensive systems and services for all six sides of the building enclosure. In this episode, Nate talks about how Tremco manages multiple product brands under one parent company, how that approach has helped grow tremco by offering more solutions to their customers, and how to maintain brand recognition with such a diverse product catalog. Enjoy the episode.
Tim
If you're an owner or marketer in the building materials, manufacturing, distribution, or contracting spaces, looking to set up your brand for success now and in the future, this is the podcast for you. on this show, we talk about brand and market strategies used in the real world that grow companies and truly connect with consumer audiences. So sit back, listen in and let's get to it. Okay, welcome Nate Renzella, Technical Sales Representative at Tremco Commercial Sealants and Waterproofing. Nate was actually a referral from one of my previous guests, Dane. So thanks for listening to his email and offering yourself up as bait for my my podcast episode. I appreciate that. So, welcome to the show. And why don't we start with the easiest question I always ask everyone, which is, tell us why you're here. Who are you?
Nate
that's a that's a loaded question. First of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity, appearing on a huge show. A nationally syndicated podcast is not done before at
Tim
least 50. Listeners say 50,000. But now the extra zeros aren't worth it.
Nate
Yeah, well, that's 50 more than I normally speak to. So, no, I appreciate the opportunity. As you said, my name is Nate. And I've been with tremco for about a year. And I have a fairly a typical path to arriving at tremco. I grew up in Canada. I got here I like to tell people got here how most Canadians got here. When I finished school, I did a political science degree at the University of Western Ontario. And I fell backwards into coaching the National Baseball team and Slovakia. I was a four year ballplayer at Western and found myself in Slovakia.
Tim
Like everyone.
Nate
Yeah, that's pretty typical. And so I, well over in Slovakia, I had a weekend off, I ran into some other Canadians and they said, what are we gonna do this weekend? So I don't know, let's just go get on the train. And we'll leave on the next train that's leaving as soon as we get to the station. So we ended up in Salzburg, Austria A few hours later. And this crazy little woman that kind of looked like the witch and Snow White convinced us to stay at our hostel. We weren't sure if we were going to get murdered or not. But we got over to this hospital and it was pretty nice. And we decided to go back to the train station and just see hey, what time is the train leaving so we can get back to Slovakia in a couple days. And I got back to the train station. This crazy little old woman was now harassing to Cute Girls. And I started talking to those cute girls. convinced them to stay in Salzburg for a few days, they had gone the wrong way on the train. And now, two and a half, three years later, we got married. So to one of the girls, so she was she was finishing up her school here in Nashville. And so we came to Nashville. So I that's that's my typical story of how I got to the US. And my background. All of my training at that point was I was working towards becoming a professional firefighter. So I worked in the fire service for 10 years, I worked as a firefighter and EMT, I got to see lots of crazy stuff that most people will never get to see. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. And while I was there, I'd run into I promoted and become a fire inspector. And I would go to all the inspector conferences and hilty was always there, and they had kind of casually started recruiting me. So I said no to them for a few years. And I eventually said yes, I went to work for hilty for four years as fire protection specialists. That was a natural fit. I had the fire background. While I was at the fire department, I completed a master's in Fire and Emergency Management at Oklahoma State go pokes. hilty was a great fit. So I spent four years there. I really enjoyed my time there was a great way to stretch myself and grow. However, out of the blue tremco came call and I didn't know much about them. And I've been here for a year, so I'm really enjoying my time here so far.
Tim
Yeah, the classic Canada to Europe to Nashville to Yeah, everyone's taken that path. You know, luminess is based in Buffalo buffalo is basically little Canada, you know? Yeah.
Nate
Lots of bills fans in my family.
Tim
When it's not COVID season, we can cross the bridge on foot and go hang out whenever we want.
Unknown Speaker
So that's it. That's the Rainbow Bridge over there, isn't it?
Tim
Yeah. Rainbow Bridge peace bridge. All bridges. Yeah. So talk about Tremco a little bit they do sealants and waterproofing. So it's a it's a coating company that kind of meshed well with with what you were doing at hilty. So what got you involved over here? What's, what's your role coming over to this company now? Sure.
Nate
Yeah. Initially, I was a little confused why they were talking to me, but I quickly realized it's very similar similar type products, but a much bigger role in the construction process that was previously just focused on fire stopping and providing tested listed solutions for fire rated construction. That's pretty much all I did there. Over here, I've delved into a lot more. And what drew me to this place, quite frankly, was the people. I mean, I started interviewing with management and some of the other staff and some of the other technical sales reps started calling them talking to guys on the phone. And I was just thoroughly impressed with everybody, everybody was great. And I thought, you know, this is not something I've done in the past. But this is a good opportunity to kind of stretch and grow and learn, make myself a little more relevant in the construction market and know a little more than just firestopping. So just look like a good opportunity for me. And basically what I do here is I, I work with the contractors, and I work with the distributors, and I try to provide solutions. I try to fix problems, and I try to be a trusted partner just provide a face for tremco in Tennessee. I think that's kind of what differentiates tremco we have a lot of technical sales reps that do exactly what I'm doing. We're not relying on third parties to represent us. And I think that's important. So chunko itself. I mean, I've learned over the last year it's pretty remarkable company's been around for 92 years. William Troy Hoff started a small roofing manufacturing company way back when, in 1928, in Cleveland, Ohio. So long, long reputation in terms of roofing, the tremco name comes from the first three letters of his name tiare. The M is for manufacturing and the CEO is for company, that's where we get Tremco from. And interestingly enough, there was a gentleman that worked for William Troy Hoff named Frank c Silva. He worked there as an office boy, he left and had a very successful career selling roofing materials and coatings himself. And in 1947, he founded a company called RPM, Republic pattern metals company. And RPM grew and he decided that he wanted to buy Tremco so he had this vision Before he died in 1971, that it would be great if RPM could buy tremco, the company that he had worked for as a young kid. And in 97, after his death, his son Tom selvin, achieve that goal and they purchased tremco. So that's where we see one of the first major, you know, acquisitions for rpm. So we're talking about Tremco a lot today, but our parent company is rpm. Hmm. And so, today, rpm represents almost a $6 billion a year collection of companies in all kinds of coatings. There's different divisions. We have a construction products group, which is the group I'm in, we have performance coatings, we have a consumer group, people will be familiar with Vera Thane rustoleum, products like that. You find Home Depot and Lowe's. We have that group and then we have a specialty products group as well. So it's a it's pretty big company. It's pretty diverse. It's actually been pretty helpful during the pandemic, where our sales were down a little bit. The traditional consumer group was up a lot because people were home working on projects that really helped at the end of the year at the bottom line.
Tim
Well this is Come up on the show before to you, but I can't tell you how many personal projects I saw pop up in like march through June like everyone's like, Alright, we got little Well, we have extra a lot of extra time. We're home all the time home sucks, let's make it better. That's right projects there. That's how it goes. Yeah, you know, you brought this up as part of even the corporate growth too but you have multiple layers to this RPM is corporate to tremco tremco itself has multiple those multiple product divisions. Yes. And that's sort of what I want to poke out a little bit and talk about some of that too. You know, there's there's all sorts of different reasons for acquisitions and developing new product lines. It's it could be growth driven through, you know, either wanting more products to offer your current customers It could also be you want to find new customers and by diversifying, you can pull those people into your world. What sort of approach were they try was Trump co trying to take to do this and and that will kind of set the foundation for us to talk about like approaching growth strategy like that?
Nate
Well, I think you just have to look at the the mindset of how rpm and tremco operate. We don't really focus on selling products. For example, if you called me up and said, I need some help, I'm not gonna push a product on you. I, quite frankly, I don't I don't care. I'm more interested in what's your problem? How can we fix it and what potential solutions do we have? Because we have waterproofing products as you mentioned, we have you know, below grade waterproofing, we have sealants. We have air barriers. We have traffic coatings, we have roofing materials, we have eafs material, exterior insulated foam systems like drive it we have expansion joints, we have insulated concrete forms with new dura. So we basically have everything that can prevent air and moisture getting into your structure. And we these are flexible, durable technologies, we can use them in different applications. And connectivity is our key. We want to be able to tie all those things together because that's where buildings leak is when one product touches another product and overlaps. That's where we could have a potential failure So really what we're about what guides our strategy is we talk to our customers and we say, What problems do you have? What pain points do you have? How can we help. And then if we see a product, such as we'll seal, which is a pre compressed expansion joint, it fits in our portfolio, that was one of the things we were missing. So we acquired them last year. So really, what we're about is trying to provide a single source to treat an entire structure, what we call the six sides of the building below grade, the walls and the roof. And we want to be able to give you a solution that works. That's integrated with all the other solutions we offer. And we want to be able to offer you one warranty. That's good for the entire building for the duration of building something that's going to perform something that's not going to fail and something that we're going to warranty and I'll shoulder the burden of the cost of the building.
Tim
It sounds that's even a little bit more or not more, but also tied to the mission of the company to if you're not just selling products, but you're trying to help people complete their products and have a lot lifetime of value from using those products. That's, that sounds like it's almost tied to company mission to and in a way that this is how we deal with our customers.
Nate
It really is one of the things I like here, one of the things that bleeds down through the organizations is, you know, Frank Sullivan had said, you know, you hire the best people to do their jobs and get out of their way. And you see a lot of micromanagement in corporations, and you see a lot of people, you know, drilling down and telling everyone what to do. And there's a certain amount of that that's required, but at the end of the day, you know, what needs to get done, and you know, what needs to happen to be successful. And for me, it's about just working with our clients or customers or partners. And just like I said before, what do you need to accomplish your goal and how can we fill in the gaps? How can we make your life easier, and I think if as that bleeds down, if you're empowering everyone to do their jobs, in terms of research and development and marketing and just how you go to market every day, I think you can be successful when the people that are close to your customers are able to report back and be able to make things happen on the ground.
Tim
It also sounds like bringing in those extra product lines, and developing new product lines is also helping you from a sales technical representative aspect of your customer service. Right? Like, you can go back to people and say, Hey, remember that issue you had three years ago on that project that we couldn't figure out a solution for? Like, I've got something now the next time you have this prod type of project? Yeah, we're talking, I'm gonna bring it up, and we're gonna get this thing solved.
Nate
Yeah, a good example of that is now that we have drive it in our group, rpm zone, drive it for a long time, but they weren't in our group. And so we're always working at trying to foster more collaborative collaboration and operational excellence between all of the companies. But you can imagine how many people are involved when you've got that many employees in that many companies. So there could definitely always be more synergy there. But I think we're doing a better job at promoting communication between all these groups and sharing products and technology. But you're absolutely right. A perfect example, as I was saying, I'm able to go back to some of our customers that install airbags drive it previously promoted backstop NT is their go to air barrier? Well now they can provide a solution in terms of our exoair 120 or exoair 230 or xr 430 they have more options to provide a higher performing air barrier behind their each system. So for me, it's a great way to go back to some of my contractors and say, Oh, well I could get you trained to install backstop NT behind eafs. Or now you could work with the contractors that are going to be doing the drive it and we can install our air barriers and we're going to have a tested solution so that everything is congruent, everything will have a tested warrantable system backing it up.
Tim
It's a good reminder that by by expanding products either through internal innovation or through the acquisition method, that actually having high quality products that can solve more problems for your clients is just another aspect of marketing growth too. It gives you an excuse to go back to someone and have this conversation which is great for client retention and growth. have existing accounts as well as finding those new customers that haven't even approached you yet?
Nate
Yeah, I always like to have a reason to go see people and visit people, especially in the times that we're in right now where everyone's a little more conscious about, you know, distancing and face coverings and ensuring that we're not spreading the virus. I like to have a good reason to be there. And and it provides me ample opportunity to say, Oh, hey, you're talking about this project? Here's a sample you can take a look at this.
Tim
They are they're still product brands under tremco that you guys kind of focus on using with clients still, or is it really like whatever we can offer we'll put up I mean, maybe even bring it to a marketing aspect or their products that you put more marketing focus on even though you have a full collection just because they're tremco staples, or you know, that's the product that can bring people in?
Nate
Yeah, I mean I think we have our bread and butter what we know what we're what we're good at, you can look at the revenue streams. You know, we're obviously generating more revenue with certain product lines than we are with us. But I think there's a really concerted effort to take companies and integrate them into what we do, not just at the research and development level, but out in the field to, I'm talking about drive it, I'm talking about nudura, I'm talking about will seal in addition to my line of sealants, waterproofing, deck, coatings, airbags, etc. So I think it's just kind of integrating it all together, and, and having more touch points. It also depends on the customer. You know, a lot of customers don't necessarily do all of those things. So it's opened up some new customers. For me, I'm working more on the residential side now, as well as the commercial side with our TBS our Tremco barrier solutions line. So yeah, I think it's a bit of both.
Tim
Growing the product line so expansively if you run into any confusion in the market about which products you're actually known for, or which ones people should actually approach you about.
Nate
Yeah, yeah, sir, for sure. And, you know, we'll seal had some independent reps. So there's still some independent reps that are still loosely tied. And so the customer will say, well, do I call you or do I call them and, and I just remind people, hey, we're all one tremco now it's the Tremco construction products group tremco CPG, you can contact me if you want me to be your touch point. And I'll get you started with any of these, if I'm not an expert in this area, I've got people that are more than willing to help. But it's a it's a great opportunity to remind people that we do have a huge offering, there's no need to be confused. Don't Don't let this you know, overwhelm you just just call me and we'll have a conversation.
Tim
So let's talk about that. From the marketing perspective. You know, we kind of got a handle on how the business is using it to their advantage and how to help their clients and also grow for tremco itself when when they're putting marketing messaging and communications out into different channels, online print, trade shows, whatever it might be, how are they trying to make sure that everyone realizes that each of these products are part of that group and that collection of offerings do you have?
Nate
Well, we've, we've done that on a marketing scale, we're really focusing on unifying our operations. So we want to be one company, we want to be one brand with one warranty and one message that doesn't change. And we spent a lot of resources and time to work on that and to brand it, and we want to just focus on the power of one phone call, one email, one point of contact, we don't want the confusion. Because we have a lot of systems we have a lot of transitions, connections, adhesion between all these different product lines, a lot of different expertise from different people. So now it's it's really all from one entity. Like I said, it's one warranty. And we're going to be there to plant health plan, install and support the building through the life of the structure.
Tim
And at face value. I mean, you can even see this on your website. I know you guys are working through this. you acquire products fairly regularly, I believe, which means you're always bringing them in but you can't just turn on a dime. So it seems like you're facing Some products into that tremco look and feel because that's at face value. That's the first thing that people see if it looks familiar to a tremco products lock up and a logo or colors or fonts or whatever, oh, I'm starting to realize that this is part of the bigger picture.
Nate
Sure. And I think the key there is, the as a brand you want to influence the companies that you're acquiring or the brands that you're pulling into our group, our construction product group, is we want to maintain our history of values, we want to spread that throughout. And we want to keep the tone aspects of the brand, we want to keep it tremco. But we don't want to eliminate where those brands came from. There's value there. So we want that individual value differentiation. So we want a singular expression of for our brand, but we don't want to replace the history. And we want to keep those like for example will seal. If you go to the website, it has our tremco T and it has the wheel seal next to it all in tremco Green, so you can tell it's part of our group, but it's still we'll see It's if you've been dealing with with will seal for years, you shouldn't notice a huge difference other than the branding and realize that okay, this is part of a larger group now.
Tim
Yeah, it's unnecessary change, but it's very delicate and how you have to move it step by step. I mean, there's, there's a time maybe three or four years from now where you might completely consume that into the Trump co brand. But for right now, at least, and I don't know this, but for right now, at least you take that, that first step, which is introduce some of the colors lock it up. So it's part of a partnership presentation. And you start to bring people into the tremco world to because, you know, they're they're used to dealing with the other company, and now they have to understand who they might be working with on the tremco side. So right, you have even beyond the look and feel tremco itself, like you said, has its own mission values and the way that they want to support the industry and work with their clients. So that actually has to also carry down into the other companies kind of blend into this right tone and personality.
Nate
Sure. And like you said, it's never really static. It's constant. really changing throughout the last year when we really, you know, push this all together. But last year, there's definitely been some growing pains and some challenges and assigning duties and territories and management coverage. There's been a lot of shuffling. But it's as we're starting to come out on the other side of that move through it, you starting to see the value of all of these brands that they everyone has something to bring to the table. And all these brands have a lot of value with the relationships they've established with their customers or in their markets, the research that Dr. It has done, I mean, there's some really cool stuff that we're all able to start sharing and collaborating to make a better you know, Trump algo tremco construction products group.
Tim
Let's talk about getting these things out into the world too from a marketing collateral aspect. Nowadays with everything being so focused digital, especially with the pandemic now to a lot of people are shifting their marketing spend and activities priorities over to the digital side. websites that are over the last 10 years have just become where the funnel ends up as part of a lead capture. So you guys have the tremco website, you also have all of your products, too. And I believe that the majority, if not all of them have their own dedicated web presences as well. Can you touch on what that like ecosystem looks like and why why you might take that approach?
Nate
Yeah, so I mentioned, I don't know if I got into it before but there's, there's basically, for lack of a better term. There's there's six or seven companies that that we're talking about here. So the master brand tremco construction products group has our commercial sealants and waterproofing. That's, that's the group I'm part of. We have our roofing division, which focuses on roofing as the second one, we have the Tremco barrier solutions, which is the residential group. So commercial sealants, and waterproofing, roofing and tremco barrier solutions all have their own websites with the tremco brand and the T. When we when we pull drive it into our group drive, it has their own website, their own facilities, their own distribution network, as does new Darren Wilson. So those groups still have their own websites. We'll see you nudura drive it TBS Roofing And Commercial sealants and waterproofing. But they're all you can you can get to one from the other there they're starting to be they're adding links, and it's a work in progress.
Tim
What are you looking to gain by having all those separate web properties? Is it so you can specialize content for each of the product doesn't get jumbled up in one damn site? I mean,
Nate
I can't imagine trying to go to one website. I mean, you go to the commercial sealants and waterproofing website, it can be a little overwhelming, we have a lot of products. And there's a lot of dropdowns. And just finding what you need can be a little overwhelming if you're not on the site all the time. And the other thing is, it's got to do with familiarity. I know as a consumer, if I'm used to the way the Amazon interface looks like when I go to that website, if they change anything, I'm like, Oh, this is different. So I think for a lot of people, if you've been buying will seal or new durer drive it for years, there's value to going to a website that you're familiar with where you know where the drop downs are, you know where the submittal information is the old adage of an broke, don't fix it. So I think just rebranding it and making it part of our group is good. But to me, I don't see that it hurts to have the individual websites, I think it you maintain that history and that product identity,
Tim
What you're really trying to do on those types of sites to when you have expansive or numerous products within each of those product lines, you probably have very specialized filtration and categorization options. Imagine if you had all six of those product lines on one site, you'd have six different filtration systems, depending on which section you'd go to, it'd be crazy, it'd be really overwhelming. I mean, the other aspect of this too is if you really are despite them being part of the overall Tremco brand, if they have their own web presence, that gives them a top level domain authority for someone to look up find with specialized content on the homepage, and then of course, the specialized filtrations and all of the product resources. And the other thing that I'm not sure if you guys do this, but you might have something to talk about is for how you might convert Someone for each type of product like is, is is every product looking for a phone call or a form submission or a purchase or a consultation request? Like, I'm assuming that each product might have its own type of goal that you're trying to get someone to as a lead generation
Nate
In terms of exactly how the lead generation works, I'm probably not the guy to answer that question. I can tell you from my perspective in the field I routinely receive leads in a couple different ways, or people have asked a question. They provide a location where they are and then I reach out to them if they're in Tennessee, or the northern part of Georgia, wherever they are, we then focus in and try to figure out how we can assist. But that lead generation looks different. I mean, sometimes they just want somebody on site. Sometimes they want to know what product offering is best best for their application. Sometimes they need help, just finding some middle information or lead information, very specific questions. And sometimes it's a warranty issue. Hey, this was installed years ago. I'm having a problem with it. Can someone come look at Do you also have a collection of assets outside of the website that you're using and regular communications with the clients like digital like tech sheets or cell sheets or product catalogs, proof materials? What else are you doing around the web and digital world to interact with your customers on your account basis. I know our customers will receive periodic communication via email, in some cases, printed letters if something's changing, or a price structure changing, or when we merged all these companies together there was there was communication with our distributors and our customers. This is what we're doing. This is what it looks like. It's the same tremco we're all together. So we've we've employed that type of marketing. We also have a lot of print materials, I find it's really valuable to leave behind a high quality brochure or to mail one out color samples. In our world color samples are really important when you're trying to use a sealant. You don't want a green sealant run down the middle of a gray wall. So we have a lot of different color options. So in terms of samples I send a lot of those to the design community because they say I want to see what this is going to look like I can't tell from the website. So a lot of our stuff is tactile, you got to be able to feel it, touch it to really understand how it performs, what it's going to do, and how it's going to last. So we do a lot of that and we're still changing the branding, changing logos it's a work in progress.
Tim
Yeah, I mean, the the samples and swatches and things like that are great conversion tools too. Because those are those help the customer actually do their job correctly and generate more interest and getting back to you like hey, look, they sent me this they're trying to help me I can actually tell how good this thing is. Now I gotta get back to Nate and see how we can work on us. Exactly.
Nate
I probably I almost I'd say almost every day I'm at the UPS Store. It feels like sending somebody somewhere samples especially right now where there a lot of the design communities working from home. Yeah, and it's a it's a great way to say Hey, I'll send you something you can look at this for yourself and see and like you said it's it's it's a great way to convert to sales because people can see it. Touching for themselves?
Tim
Yeah, you're giving them value back for reaching out like, yes, contact us, and we will get you things that help you to do your job, which is worth contacting us. Yeah, Nate is good at his job, he'll help you. Yeah. The other thing you mentioned, too, that's pretty important too, is that that leave behind when you're working with someone, whether you're visiting them in normal times, or mailing it to them now, because of the distancing and everything like there has to be some level of quality to that too. Otherwise, it's going to not match with what you're trying to do from a quality standpoint, from the product side, hundred meet all those things working in unison.
Nate
Hundred percent. The stuff that I'm leaving behind are really high quality high gloss brochures, the samples aren't actually cured samples, I would hazard to guess how much money we spend on producing the samples because it's all real product just in small quantities. I think we do a really good job of that.
Tim
I mean, I would venture to guess and you don't have to say anything like if you don't know the numbers, but I would venture to guess that people that are getting samples are converting higher into sales versus people that are just generally reaching out right and and that process that used to As part of that,
Nate
for sure, yeah.
Tim
So in terms of the construction and building products industry in general, there's a lot happening culturally right now. But as far as the industry in terms of products and innovation, where do you think we're going in the next 10 years that that brands will have to consider adapting to?
Nate
Well, I've listened to some of your other podcasts. And I think everybody's saying the same thing. So in our world, in terms of building enclosures, people want better connectivity. So much time is lost. While we're waiting to find out if product x is compatible with product why and we have to do a mock up and we have to wait 28 days we have to do a fusion testing. And if that fails, and you've got manufacturers pointing the finger, well, they have to approve this or I'm not approved. It's just it's wasted time. Speed of installation is really important. Time is money in every business, but especially in construction. We have to be efficient. I don't want to just be fast, I need to be good at what I'm doing. So we need to provide products that are not only fast to install. But it's an efficient way in terms of scheduling. It all needs to go together cohesively, and help move the job along. The performance testing has to be there. It's not good enough for a rapper or a company to say, product x works really, really well. Right? That's great. Proven. So we have spent millions in our testing facility in our labs, and we're testing all the products, especially all the products that we have to integrate them all together so we can provide that one stop shopping experience. prefabrication is huge. I'm seeing more and more penalization of walls, the concrete gets poured and the walls are coming in preassembled with all the conduit in them, some cases the pipe in it, it's about speed of installation, and providing better quality control and quality assurance if it's pre manufactured in a in a climate controlled environment. In a stable environment. It's much easier to QC QA out in the field as well. So we're seeing more and more building information modeling. I've been seeing that For the last several years, I'm seeing more and more done digitally, to try to find clash detection and problems ahead of time. doesn't always translate to the field. But it's, it's, it's coming. And I think it's becoming more and more prevalent. But at the end of the day, the other thing that's really going to change over the next 10 years, I think COVID has really brought this to the forefront is how is technology going to be able to improve collaboration and communication in the construction process? You know, we're, we're on a zoom meeting today. I don't know how many zoom meetings you've been on the last three months, but I've been on more than one to many. And, and and the fact is, that's, I think that's an increasing trend. I think we're going to see more and more that it's again, it's about speed and efficiency if I don't have to drive somewhere for a meeting, and we can quickly meet via zoom, I think we're going to see more of that. So as a company, I think we've got to be prepared to tackle that and and integrate what we do into prefabricated projects where we can and prefabricated solutions that increase speed and efficiency.
Tim
Yeah. On the brand side, a little bit more about, you know, the company as a whole, what do you think everyone should be considering right now from a branding perspective, strategy or otherwise, to make sure that their brand is up to speed?
Nate
That's a pretty high level question. And I don't know that I'm fully equipped to answer. But I think at the end of the day, your brand needs to practice what they preach, if you're going to put it out there that you're going to do it, you better be able to deliver it. And I think tremco is uniquely positioned that we're not relying on outside help. We have our own technical resources in the field and in the lab. And if we say we can do something, we can do it, we can back it up. And I would, I would say that other companies need to be in the same position.
Tim
And that's why when we start working with people, whether it's from a campaign or just an overall strategy standpoint, we're always doing claims analysis with them like okay, you are saying these things make you stand out? Yeah. Okay. How are you proving them if you can prove them? Do they relate to your audiences? If so, we got that Winter. Let's push that as our marketing campaign. Yeah. 10 that's how you craft the right differentiated message. But you got to back it up, right? Sure. You gotta back it up. Yeah. Is there? Is there anything else that you want to toss out to the people before we wrap up and and say goodbye?
Nate
Well, there's a, there's a couple things. One of the values one of the main values, that RPM is the value of 168. And at first glance, that might not make much sense, but there's 168 hours in each week. And though each of those hours is a gift, and we need to focus on what matters, we need to take care of ourselves and our families. We need to listen to our customers, and we need to do what we say we're going to do. It's marketing is nothing if you're not going to do what you say, you're not going to show up. You know, wise man, my grandfather once told me, you know, 90% of life is just showing up. You know, and I think that's in light of all of everything we've experienced the last six months, you know, every every hour matters and and that's a founding principle of this guy. And to make use of every bit of time that we have,
Tim
what a great uplifting bit of knowledge that was.
Nate
That's what I'm here for.
Tim
And then if you want to close, I always give everyone the opportunity to let people know where they can find them a little bit more about their company. So Tremco...
Nate
Here's a shameless plug. You can find more information about us at tremco sealants comm if you don't want to type all of that in, you can find us on LinkedIn, which is a great way to find information. We're constantly posting stuff. We do tremco live broadcasts every Friday at 3pm. Eastern, they're, they're entertaining. Marcy Tyler does a great job with Paul Hogan boom. And you can kind of find out what we're working on. It's a brief brief synopsis. We've got our test facility, we're going to be doing virtual tours of that, which I think people will find pretty interesting. And we have a blog out there called build Meets World. And you find a lot of good relevant information there as well.
Tim
Great. Well, thanks for coming on. This was awesome. Appreciate it.
Nate
Thanks for having me. It's been fun.
Tim
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai