Renee Ramey - Showcase Your Work in MRA’s Photo Contest! - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Renee Ramey. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to a MetalCast from MetalCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we are here to talk about all things metal and what's better than a photo, a beautiful picture of a metal roof. So we're going to be talking about that today with our dear friend Renee Ramey with Metal Roofing Alliance. Renee, welcome to the show.

Renee Ramey: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love having you on this show. I love having you back. You're doing such fun things and really you have done so much for the industry through the Metal Roofing Alliance and just you personally, to grow the awareness of the beauty of metal roofs. You're pretty amazing.

Renee Ramey: Oh, well, thank you. I believe in the product with all my heart, so it makes it a little easier.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It does make it easier. So let's start this off with an introduction. So if you can introduce yourself, tell everybody a little bit about your career and about Metal Roofing Alliance, that would be great.

Renee Ramey: Yeah, so my name Renee Ramey, currently executive director of the Metal Roofing Alliance. I believe I'm working on year six in this role. Prior to this I worked with a... we'll call it a metal convert and some paint lines, worked at a service center distributor and have always been involved on the trade association side. So even when I was back with my previous employers, I was still involved with MRA, MCA, the different associations out there. So I've always been very passionate about this part of the industry and am very excited and lucky to be in this role now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, the industry is lucky to have you and with that experience. We need to make things fun, and you have done such a great job, you and your team, Darcy, and the whole team at MRA on making things fun. And one of the things you've done for several years is your photo contest. So I would love for you to share with everybody about your photo contest. What's it's all about, how people can get involved because it's such a great tool, I think for contractors too.

Renee Ramey: Yeah, and we've had a lot of success. It is super fun. It was our way of rewarding those in the industry that are using metal in residential applications and that are doing quality installs on beautiful homes. And when I say beautiful home, it doesn't have to be a 5,000 square foot, it can be a 1200 square foot. It's just doing a nice job with a beautiful product that fits the architectural style of the home and is a roof that will last for a lifetime potentially.

So the way the contest works, and we've done this for several years now, we have changed up how we offer it out to the market. It's always been available to homeowners, but we invited the industry in as well this last year. So the contest is quarterly. All you have to do is submit a couple images and a little brief description of the home or the project or as a contractor, what was difficult about the job or what you love best about the job. It's just a description of what you believe tells the story of that roof. And we have several judging criteria, but in essence it looks at not just the aesthetics, but it looks at the type of product installed. It looks at the difficulty of the job or the conciseness of the install.

So it's just a way to honor those that are out there doing quality work. And the benefit is if you win, you get a $300 gift card. And more importantly, in our opinion, as you get a professionally written case study about that project, which MRA will promote on your behalf, you as the installer, if the manufacturer... excuse me, is involved, we'll call them out as well. If a homeowner wants to be involved, they're involved. But in essence, MRA's out there promoting this case study on all our various platforms, and you're available to use that case study in your own promotions as well as the installer. So it's kind of a win-win.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It is. It's so important. And we take those case studies, those profiles, you send them to us and we put them on AskARoofer, we put them on MetalCoffeeShop, we put them on RoofersCoffeeShop because, I mean by you sending that out to so many channels and all the different folks, that is great for the contractor's SEO too, search engine optimization.

Renee Ramey: And obviously we're putting it on the MRA website site as well. So between you, me and the others that post, it's just great free marketing for that installer.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Everyone loves to look at beautiful pictures of roofs, right?

Renee Ramey: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'm sure everyone does because I know I do. But I've seen them and they're just so outstanding. They're amazing. We see them all the time. We're getting photos coming into MetalCoffeeShop and RoofersCoffeeShop every day. But I would love for you to share some of your premier projects. What have been some of your favorite photos or projects that have come in?

Renee Ramey: Yeah, well, I'll go back to what I said a bit ago. One of my most favorite projects was this small, I'd call it more modern home that was built and it was very dark siding, had a beautiful sloping standing seam roof on the side of a lake. It was just beautiful, beautiful setting, beautiful modern building. But then some of our other projects that have just warmed my heart are the ones that have all these various roof lines and different patterns and shapes to the roofs and the colors that got installed on this one. It was the copper colored and it's just pops and it's beautiful. And yeah, I guess again, being a geek in the industry, roofing geek, it's just like, wow, it's a piece of art. So yeah, those are just a couple, but they're all so just eye-catching.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's what I've seen. And then when you start getting into the craftsmanship when they're doing turrets and they're doing all the intricate folding in different parts of the roof, I love that. And the thing is that there's so many different types of metal roofing that everyone knows out there. You have your shingles, standing seam, all the way to these just intricate metal roofs that have so many different changes and angles. And I'm not even saying all the things, but I just look at it and I'm just like, wow, I can't believe that it's put together. But they're all beautiful, no matter what kind of roof it is, they just add such an architectural flare to the home or to the building, the commercial building too. I know we're talking residential, but I can't leave those guys out.

Renee Ramey: And it's always amazing to me some of the projects that come across in the contests that you can't even tell it's metal. The metal profile is just so perfectly mimicking some other product and it's installed perfect. And you're just like, is that metal? Wow, that's impressive. I love that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I have to say, I know this is a little off topic, but I'm sure we're going to see it in our photo contest soon, but when I was at the last METALCON and also at the National Frame Builders, where I think I saw you at both of those, some of the print that's coming out on metal, some of the different, they're doing camouflage and they're doing nature scenes, the coatings that are going on to some of the metal. I am just waiting. I'm just waiting to see what comes across with those.

Renee Ramey: Yeah. It's going to be beautiful. Always moving and shaking, aren't we?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. They have siding that looks like board and bat. Yeah, we're going to see a lot out there. So MetalCoffeeShop and RoofersCoffeeShop. So RoofersCoffeeShop has been doing a photo contest as you know for many years also. We do it quarterly and we started that with MetalCoffeeShop last year when we launched. And so we have worked with you and the Metal Roofing Alliance. We had great success last year with some beautiful roofs that came in. Us sharing ours with you, you sharing yours with us so that we can give everybody a little bit more exposure.

Right now, I do have to say we are not doing roofs. We are doing roofing pets. So we have metal pets out there right now, so everyone should check it out. We had a zebra come in, believe it or not. Yeah.

Renee Ramey: Wow.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I know. Photo contests are just fun no matter what you do. But let's talk a little bit about MetalCoffeeShop and what you saw coming from us working together on those great projects that came in.

Renee Ramey: Yeah, actually it's been a godsend to us because off and on, we will struggle to get enough contest entries to make it a real battle to win that prize. And that's something that you guys have brought to the table in partnership with RoofersCoffeeShop and MetalCoffeeShop is the overwhelming number of entries that are coming in and the great descriptions and the more vast array of projects that are out there. Yeah, it's been wonderful.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We feel exactly the same way with you when we work together. And I think we all know that in industry, when we work together to lift and show the amazing craftsmanship of our contractors out there, all great things come from that. And we're going to do that again. So when we finish roofing pets or metal, I should say metal, metal pets will end on June 30th. And then we're working together again to bring more residential beautiful roofs on our next contest. So everyone who's listening to this, you got a July 1st, get your projects ready and send them on in because we'll be sharing them with Renee. And we don't give as cool a gift because $300 is pretty awesome, but we do give out swag box and boxes of love.

Renee Ramey: That's amazing though.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Everybody gets something. So I know we were here to talk, we wanted to really talk about the photo contest and everything, all the fun stuff. But I really would, whenever I have you here, Renee, I'm kind of like, Ooh, I want to hear what's going on. So what are some of the things you're hearing currently in the residential metal roofing market? What's some of the hype out there? What are you hearing about the market and what are the contractors doing?

Renee Ramey: Gosh, I just had to answer some of those questions earlier, well, earlier this week. And in talking with our contractors and our manufacturer members, we're not seeing anything slow down. If anything, we're starting to see that spring summer rush coming in. Most everybody I speak with is doing well, very busy, has maybe a little softening in the backlog, but nothing bad. And so that's exciting. We're anticipating some good stuff going into this year. We've been answering a lot of questions about the different type of roofing products. You mentioned some of the different paint systems that are coming out, multicolored paint systems, that's getting some attention. And so we're excited about that.

But yeah, we've got a TV episode coming out with a new roof being put on a home and excited to see the testimony of the homeowners that comes out of that. We've got some videos being made. We've got a lot going on to just kind of spread that word about metal roofing. But no, I think it's great. I expect market share to continue to go up.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You know almost every podcast, videocast, people are probably tired of hearing this actually. On webinars, I talk about your market share study with Dodge. And so just to prove to everybody that I'm not making all these numbers up, maybe you could share just a little bit to go along with what you're saying about the growth, what was kind of the final, the big numbers that came out of that study?

Renee Ramey: Yeah, so actually, I just got the report for last year's market share, and I haven't even crunched the numbers yet, so I can't speak to 2022. But 2021, we had reached 17% market share in the re-roof. And we started at three when MRA was created. So we're gaining ground. We've seen year over year increases since I've been in this role especially. So yeah, I think awareness is out there. You know a homeowner in this day and age, sustainability and recyclability and earth friendliness. There's just so many important topics that homeowners are starting to pay attention to and to purchase, make those purchases off of. And metal just ticks the boxes in all of those in such great ways that I think that awareness within the consumer market is just starting to take off.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I'm really excited to hear about 2022 because it just seems like it's only going to grow again. I mean how great would it be if you hit 20?,

Renee Ramey: Yes. That's our goal. We're trying to. We originally had 25 by 25, but yeah, you never know.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I don't think that's too far off. I'm just saying. I know, the way it's growing and what we keep hearing about metal and like you said, I mean it's performance, durability, longevity, but it's also solar. I mean, it's such the perfect system for solar and that is taking off on such a huge level. So yeah, I think we're only going to see growth. So for those contractors out there who are doing metal right now and have that as part of their business, along with some of the contractors who maybe are thinking about getting into metal, especially obviously all residential, what are some of the things that MRA can help them to help them either grow their current metal business or get into residential metal roofing?

Renee Ramey: Yeah, well hopefully everything you need, no, we have references to training programs. We can connect you with manufacturers depending on the type of product you're looking to install. We can get those connections made. You can get trained by the manufacturers of the products that you desire to install. We have marketing resources galore. I mean we'll make you custom resources. We have our generic resources. We have a roofing visualizer that you're welcome to link to. We're just here to provide the marketing tools necessary to get your homeowners to consider metal roofing. And nothing's off the table that I've come across so far. So we're just here to lift you up and help you be successful at getting metal on roofs.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, just this morning, in fact, you're probably going to see that my name come through. I was on the site and I was looking for metal contractors in the Oregon area because I'm in central Oregon. Had this beautiful mountain metal roofing company come up outside of Portland. I think they're about 90 miles from us. Because I was just kind of curious and that is just such a great benefit for contractors to be able to have homeowners like myself go in, put in the information and then have those contractors come up who you know do metal and who are so committed that they're part of the Metal Roofing Alliance. Talk a little bit about that.

Renee Ramey: So in order to be a member of MRA, you have to be sponsored by a current manufacturer member. And rest assured, we are continuously growing our manufacturer membership. So there's dozens to choose from from a manufacturer perspective. But we ask that you get sponsored, it's our way of knowing one, you are familiar with metal roofing product, you've been trained, you are an upstanding business. It's kind of just ticking those boxes because MRA is all about quality, quality metal roofing and quality installers. So by being a member of MRA, it's like having a third party validator to your workmanship and your business and the products that you put on. And that goes a long way in differentiating your company from any other metal roofing installer out there that is not an MRA member.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah. And you come up and homeowners are finding you. We also have Metal Roofing Alliance on AskARoofer, which is another place where homeowners are finding him. So homeowners are finding Metal Roofing Alliance through AskARoofer. So through just such an amazing search engine optimization. So as a contractor, whether you're already in metal or you want to be in metal, talk to your metal manufacturer and talk to them about Metal Roofing Alliance. If they're not part of it, ask them why. Okay, so July 1st, we've got our new contest coming and we are excited about that. So Renee, I say let's make sure everybody out there get some into us.

Renee Ramey: Absolutely. We'll be promoting it, looking forward.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. That was great. And you know what? We're all at METALCON in the fall. We have programs coming out on that. There's just so much happening. So stay tuned to every MetalCast so that we can keep you up on what's going on in the industry and all these great resources like Metal Roofing Alliance. So Renee, thank you so much for being here today.

Renee Ramey: Aw, thank you Heidi. Always a pleasure.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you all for listening. Be sure to check out the Metal Roofing Alliance directory on MetalCoffeeShop. It's also on RoofersCoffeeShop. You can find it in both places. And then be sure to check out all of our MetalCast, on MetalCoffeeShop under the read list and watch, under MetalCast. And you can see some great videocast, video podcast, whatever you want to call them. They're all there. Or check your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and hit the notification so you don't miss a single episode. Or check it out on YouTube. We are on video there too. So MetalCoffeeShop YouTube. We'll be seeing all of you next time on MetalCast.