Roofing Passport : Making More Money With Metal - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Sherwin-William's MetalVue Marketing Segment Manager, Junny Lee, and MetalVue OEM Program Manager, Brendan McGinnis. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Okay, let's get started. Hello, my name is Megan Ellsworth and you are watching a MetalTalk from metalcoffeeshop.com. This will be recorded, or it is being recorded and it will be up on metalcoffeeshop.com within 24 to 48 hours. If you really like the MetalTalk and you want to share it with all of your coworkers and friends and family members, then it'll be up and ready to share within that timeframe. I am really excited, because today we're talking with Sherwin-Williams and we're talking about their Roofing Passport Program with Junny Lee and Brendan McGinnis. Hi, gentlemen. How are you?

Brendan McGinnis: Howdy, howdy.

Junny Lee: Hey, Megan.

Megan Ellsworth: Hey, I'm excited because this is such a cool program and we love working with you all and being a part of it. But before we get into the coolness of it, let's have some introductions. Junny, can you just tell us a little bit about you and your role at Sherwin-Williams?

Junny Lee: Absolutely. Thanks for having me here. I've been with the company now going on 11 years. I just joined the coil team last June of 2024, leading up to that change in my career, [inaudible 00:01:31] and sourcing and supply chain. This is my first four-year in team. Still am excited to be a part of team, because I get to work with guys like Brendan McGinnis all the time. I'm based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota and yeah, happy to be here.

Megan Ellsworth: Yay. Well, we're glad to have you.

Junny Lee: Thank you.

Megan Ellsworth: Brendan. Hello. Can you tell us a little bit about you?

Brendan McGinnis: Yeah, I will unfortunately tell you a little bit about me. Brendan McGinnis, I've been with Sherwin for going on seven years now. Actually started in the research and development space, working with the actual wet coatings and formulating them and doing a lot of color matching and came over to the MetalVue team early last year. I'm based out of Bowling Green, Kentucky, so little separated from everyone on our team that's normally up in Minneapolis, but a lot of our customers that we deal with on a day-to-day basis are down here in the southeast, so it's a much easier drive from here than it is trying to fly out from MSP down to Atlanta, Florida, Texas, all those fun places.

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Let's get started. What exactly is MetalVue, Brendan?

Brendan McGinnis: MetalVue was this thing that Sherwin decided to create several years back actually, and the whole point of it is to grow metal market share and the residential re-roof space. We are doing that by creating a natural collection point. In the asphalt shingle world, you've got several major manufacturers and they are the touch point for that product. But with metal you've got 1,700 different metal manufacturers nationwide. They all operate a little differently, they purchase steel from different places, but one thing that the vast majority of them have in common is that they're using metal coating with Sherwin-Williams coil coatings. We saw that as our opportunity to be the collection point and create this program to help expand this market. We're doing that through several different avenues, and the biggest of which is the Roofing Passport Program. What Roofing Passport really does is just trying to make the whole process easier.

We'll get into that a little bit more later, but from quoting and bidding to estimating a job, that's typically been the biggest amount of heartburn that you would get when trying to sell or quote or install a metal roof. We're trying to take all of the difficulty and the pain points out of that. But beyond that, we're offering all kinds of different things from ongoing sales training that is metal-specific installation training that we have available, plus a lot of different partnerships that we've put together in this industry, trying to find best in class, so that you don't have to do that homework, right? We've already done it for you. If you need connections to a CRM, if you need connections to a financial institute, if you need connections to some marketing materials or just a marketing firm, we've already done all that homework and we've got it done for you, we can make those connections for you.

Megan Ellsworth: That's great. I think this program is just so special, and I love just how much you all care about your customers, the contractors you work with and wanting to provide just this great network of community and support for all of those people. I think that's just awesome.

Brendan McGinnis: That's what makes this all tick, right? Our team is five or six people and we're just doing our best we can to help hundreds of contractors and hundreds of metal manufacturers try to grow in this space, because the cool thing about Metal is that there's a lot of tailwinds with it right now, I mean, just for a litany of different reasons across the United States, but the fact of the matter is that it is a premium product. It is better in every category than your traditional shingle roof. It's just a matter of education and how do we get out there and sell it?

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. How does the program work as a whole?

Brendan McGinnis: Big question. I'll try to make it a little bit more digestible.

Megan Ellsworth: Yes, perfect.

Brendan McGinnis: In the past, MetalVue was this giant ecosystem of things that you had to do and tools that you had to use and really we've turned it into an a la carte menu. What do you need help with? How can we help your business? Because we're not the ones out there selling these roofs, we're not the ones out here installing them, but what can we to make your life easier and to make this more profitable for you? How it works is from a contractor's perspective, you'd talk to me or Junny or someone from our team and we would hook you up, connect you with a metal manufacturer nearby you geographically. Then through that contractor or through that metal manufacturer, you can be offered access to the Roofing Passport. You can be offered access to our full catalog of marketing materials through our portal website. It's going to be launching soon, hopefully in the next few days. We'll give you access to, like I said, making those connections, anything that you might need in your business.
Really it's you reach out to us, tell us what you need. Usually it's Roofing Passport, if we're being perfectly honest, because it's the best thing we got. Then we can help you pick and choose and try to find ways to leverage these tools to increase your sales and profitability.

Megan Ellsworth: That's incredible. To get down to some of the more nitty-gritty, Junny, what is the Roofing Passport and how does it go with the MetalVue portal?

Junny Lee: No, absolutely. I think Brendan really puts it the best. MetalVue is the chassis, the Roofing Passport is the engine and so you can sign up directly for Roofing Passport. You don't need to necessarily sign up for the whole suite of what MetalVue office is, but the resources within it, I mean, the idea was if we have a contractor who is interested in offering metal as a service, putting ourselves in that person's shoes and what do they need? They need sales training, they need installation training, they need network, MetalCoffeeShop, great network and community to be a part of. What would a person need to become successful as a metal roof contractor or installer? You can find all that with MetalVue portal.

We also have connections with [inaudible 00:07:59] resources. We have Grosso University and everything. We've factored in as much as possible. We're still continuously improving it, but anything that a person needs, we factor that in. But within the portal itself, you'll find, especially once you've identified the OEM that you want to work with, you'll find sell sheets, you'll find marketing assets. You'll find information from Sherwin-Williams that can help support your business. We understand that the brand name Sherwin-Williams can help small businesses, and so that is at your disposal. Anything that we can share with the public, especially as long as you are installing Sherwin-Williams coated metal [inaudible 00:08:40], you'll have that readily accessible. You can track all your projects within the new Roofing Passport. The UI/UX is all significantly improved, made it user-friendly. It's a nice clean dashboard. You can manage your jobs, your projects, your quotes much better, much more efficiently than the past. Really, the idea is to help you succeed in metal.

Megan Ellsworth: Incredible. Brendan.

Brendan McGinnis: One thing that Junny touched on that I really wanted to dive into a little bit deeper is this Sherwin-Williams brand. It's one of those things where if you go out and ask 10 people on the street to name a roofing shingle manufacturer, you might get a couple that can name one. If you go out and ask 10 people on the street to name a paint manufacturer, 9 out of 10 of them are probably going to say Sherwin-Williams. The vast majority of them have had positive experiences with us, because that's how you get to be a company as old and as well established as we are by providing great service and great products. This program just goes to support that brand, and the fact that this is what we're here to do, we are here to help you in any way that we can be successful in this space.

This is a space that frankly not a lot of people are familiar that Sherwin-Williams is operating in. How can we take that brand and make it available to our contractors, to our manufacturers in a way that lets them harness that as part of their sales process? The biggest thing we can do just immediately is we can get you hooked up with a logo agreement. That's a pretty easy step that we can take, and then suddenly you're able to use our logo on your products, on your sell sheets, on your leave behinds, on your door hangers. Pretty simple process. You get signed up with us, you get your materials approved, off to the races you go.

That's just something that really helps in this world where everything is scattered, there's a million different people doing a million different things. But having that one conscious touch point of Sherwin-Williams, a known brand that, hey, you might not have known we've been in this space, but we've been in it for years, we've done all the research, we've got all of the same great R&D people working behind the scenes there that we do in our paint stores, in our protective and marine coatings, all these different things. We're here to service. Service is the biggest thing of our value proposition, and we want to pass that along to you.

Megan Ellsworth: That's so amazing. I have a follow-up question to that. Who would you say, or what type of contractor would you say is the blueprint for someone that should be using Roofing Passport and to be part of the MetalVue program?

Brendan McGinnis: It's good for everyone, honestly. I mean, that's one of those blanket statements, but really how we've got it set up, the ideal candidate is someone who's not currently doing metal that wants to add metal. Our whole thing is that we've call it a business in a box, and we want to be able to take you from not selling metal to selling metal quickly and as part of your process, because we understand that it's a more expensive product, but there's a million reasons why it's better. I mean, if you're dealing with a standard metal roof that's got a 30 to 40-year warranty on it versus an asphalt roof, yes it's going to cost twice as much, but it's going to last three times as long. Being able to silo all the reasons why it's better and just being able to sell that not only through our contractors but to our customers, it's an education thing and a lot of people might get scared off by price. But really if you sell the value of it, it's a no-brainer, especially in-

Junny Lee: Absolutely.

Brendan McGinnis: ... different areas that are impacted by different weather.

Megan Ellsworth: I would love to let the audience out there know that the chat is open, and I'd love to know who of you in the audience are already doing metal and who of you want to add metal, because this is obviously a great opportunity for you all. I am just curious. Get in the chat and let us know. Okay. Next, there we go. Let's talk about some of the features that the Passport gives. Maybe, Junny, you first.

Junny Lee: Project management, that's the biggest one, streamlined and everything. We took into account a lot of things starting from signing up process. We recognize especially the whole abandonment rate issue. If it takes me a while to figure out how to sign up for an account as simple as it may be, and I just get annoyed by it, I usually decide, "You know what? I'll come back to you later on," or I lose interest. We understood that if you want to link multiple accounts, especially with our strategic partners as EagleView, Roofing Works and SmartBuild, let's bring it all in-house, simplify that process that way folks don't get frustrated that way. We just make it easier.

If we want to simplify metal installing process, then does it make sense for us to complicate the signing on process and such? We took care of that, but the UI/UX within it, the job management is probably the biggest thing that folks will realize, especially any active user and then the new users that come on board, I hope they would appreciate it, it's managing your jobs. You can look at the history of your jobs. You can look at where you've been quoting your jobs. It tracks everything. It sticks in there for quite a period of time. I'm not sure exactly how long it holds the data for, but it's enough where you can look back at the historical information and just track how you're performing. But I mean-

Speaker 4: That's nice.

Junny Lee: ... this presentation really it's a simplified workflow for your project management, and the belief is that folks will be very happy with what's being rolled out at IRA this year for the new Roofing Passport.

Brendan McGinnis: If you're in IRE, please stop by and see us. I'll be there demoing it all day as much as I can. Just to backtrack a little bit. For anybody that's not familiar with this product, I know we're talking a lot about the enhancements that we've made to it, but what Roofing Passport allows you to do is you can go from a EagleView, so you can just enter an address, you can upload blueprints, plans or drawings or you can upload an existing three-dimensional XML file into our program and it'll allow you to go directly to a material takeoff list. I mean, that's a full material takeoff, including all of your panels, your trim, your accessories, screws, everything that you're going to need on that roof and we're usually looking at maybe a two-hour turnaround to get that back to you. Where we see value in that is that a lot of times in selling a metal roof, you can't really go to or couldn't really go to a first call with a quote for metal.

It was always an idea or you were willing to take a phone call from someone that wanted metal, but a lot of contractors weren't actively selling it as part of their first call, because they didn't know. They didn't have a means for acquiring a takeoff or a quote for that roof, going into that first call. With this, you could sit at your desk, pop in 10 addresses for a neighborhood and schedule appointments for 10 houses in a row, going into that house with a quote for metal against a quote for asphalt and we're going to give you all the reasons why it's better and how to make it sell, because we all know that metal is the great next big thing that's coming. It's been around forever, but it's finally starting to get some tailwinds behind it and the beautiful thing that we all love, especially our contractors, that the margins on metal are fantastic.

Being able to go in to that first call is really, in my opinion, your biggest tool here, because historically speaking, to get a quote for a metal roof, someone had to call them up, say, "Hey, I need someone to come out and measure this roof." Then you measure the roof and you take it back to the office and someone had to sit there and draw it in CAD or figure it out and however their process was. It took time and it took someone physically going out to that property measure. Not anymore. Now you can go in and have this available to you to your clients on the first call. To me that's huge, because that gives you the opportunity to make metal a part of your opening statement and not like an afterthought.

Junny Lee: Brendan makes some really good points. I mean, could you imagine if you were one of the contractors in a roofing business that you have the quote ready to go even before you show up to the prospect's home? We talked about some of the values of a metal roof. If we look at the three, just base it off of three different buckets, you have the value proposition versus the cost. That's a big alpha in the room, but we know the value of a metal roof will pay off in the long run and then you factor in the sustainability piece of it, especially standing seam, solar panels go hand in hand as perfect compatibility. Then you talk about the resiliency factor, and that's the big one right now. That's the tailwinds that we're seeing too, is knowing that metal... Brendan says it is a superior substrate for what it is capable of doing for a homeowner. Just compared against what's the current rate of asphalt, whatever it may be, the benefits are there.

If you're saving all that time, not having to run quotes, go up onto the roof multiple times for measurements, imagine how much time, excuse me, you can spend educating the homeowner on why they should consider metal roofing for their home.

Brendan McGinnis: Just like everything else, time is the most valuable thing that we all have and I don't think that's really negotiable at all. Time is the most finite resource that any person here has. Why would you use that time doing something that the software can do for you, that you could be cashing checks instead of writing? One of the things I like to say.

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely. I like too that you all are really focusing on having it ready to present to the homeowner on first visit, because a lot of times, we talked about this in the practice, the metal option is the best option, the good, better, best and that takes a second trip or if the homeowner's interested in it. I just love that this streamlines everything. We had a comment from Jerry from Performance Roofing currently doing very little metal but interested in a speedier material takeoff and estimating. I think this is definitely [inaudible 00:19:47].

Brendan McGinnis: Jerry, do I have the tool for you, buddy?

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, Jerry, glad you're here. Absolutely. Okay. We've started to talk about the enhancements and benefits and features, but what are some more of the detailed benefits that people get from Roofing Passport?

Brendan McGinnis: There are several. The reason we've made some of these strategic partnerships specifically with EagleView, we take our integration directly from EagleView, because they have the most accurate measurements on the market and they fly planes instead of using satellite geometry. That much lower altitude allows them to be much more accurate. With asphalt, because you're just dealing with bundles of shingles, it's not a custom fit product. You can just eyeball it and get close, and if you're a little short, you run down to the supply house, you grab another couple bales. If you're a little long on supplies, you take them back and get credit. But metal, it's custom, so you need the most accurate measurements available, which is why we strategically partnered with EagleView.

Beyond that, again, it's so much easier to just pop in an address or we've also partnered with a company called Roofing Works. They're based out of Florida, and they will literally take any drawing that you can give them and that's a properly done blueprint down to a dimension sketch on a bar napkin and they will turn that into an XML file that our program can then ingest and spit out a material takeoff for.
We partnered with them, again, because they're best in class at what they do. Being able to have multiple avenues of bringing in data for our tool to ingest, we really tried to cover all of our bases there and try to cover all of our customer's bases there. The beautiful thing here is we're talking about the residential re-roof market. That's where we see the huge amount of potential for growth in the metal space, but that's not all you can use this tool for.

If you're wanting to bid out a job for a brand new hospital that's coming in down the road, you can upload those blueprints into here and get a material takeoff for that gigantic building the exact same way you could for the 1,200 square foot house down the street. It's really lending itself to be beneficial in more ways than one. Yes, we are focused on the residential re-roof market, because that's where we see the biggest opportunity for growth, but don't think that just because that's where we're focused that's the only way you can use this tool. Any place that you're looking to put metal on a roof, it can be used in some way or another.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I love that. I'm sure there's some commercial roofers on here that were thinking exactly that, "Well, is this for me?" I'm glad you brought that up. I also love that you all work with the best of the best, because you're the best of the best in my opinion. I might be biased, though.

Brendan McGinnis: Thank you, Megan.

Megan Ellsworth: Because you really care about your customers and try to really provide the best service, and so I love that you all are expecting that of your partners as well. I think people that are signing up also should be expecting that, because that's what they're expecting from you all.

Brendan McGinnis: We've definitely done homework.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, it sounds like it.

Junny Lee: I think that starts with leadership at the top. We're all about voice of the customer, continuous improvement, delivering for the end user or the ultimate customer. I think to be the best, [inaudible 00:23:29] the best and Brendan hinted on it. We intentionally selected the best in aerial measurement, EagleView, best in roofing measurements and all that, which is Roofing Works. We want to deliver... If we want to be the best coatings company, if we want the best platform like MetalVue and Roofing Passport, we need to work with the best partners out there.

Megan Ellsworth: Exactly, exactly. Also, just one more time in the chat, if people do have questions, please pop them in. There's the Q&A option, there's also the chat option, so if people have questions, we will have time at the end for question and answer time with Brendan and Junny. Okay. Next, can we talk about what the estimating process looks like with Roofing Passport?

Brendan McGinnis: Yeah. Like I said, there's a couple different ways that we go through it, but you essentially open up the webpage and you click new job. Then you're prompted with three options, the first of which is EagleView, which allows you to just pop in an address. It's going to pull up an overhead view of that address. There's a pin that you can drop if it accidentally hits the house next door, just drop the correct house. If you just want the shed out back, you can move the pin to the shed out back. There's a little comment section, we just need mentions for the shed. They're going to take care of that. Your second option is to upload blueprints, plans or drawings. I've said those three words together a thousand times and it never gets easier to say, blueprints, plans and drawings. Try it. Not kidding. It's difficult.

Megan Ellsworth: Say five times.

Brendan McGinnis: No, I'll not. Irish wristwatch. You can upload blueprints plans or drawings, and like I said, a minute ago, that's everything from a proper blueprint to you drew something up on a napkin and sent it to them. It's going to take a little more time for them to translate that napkin and there might be some back and forth there, but they're going to get there. I've literally seen them take it from a napkin to a roof.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow.

Brendan McGinnis: Best in class there. The third option is to upload an existing XML. Say you're using another aerial geometry company and they have an option to export a three-dimensional XML file. You can go ahead and upload that as well. We don't want to limit you to our two options. We are obviously biased against our best two options, because we feel like they're best in class for their accuracy. But if you've got another one that you prefer to deal with, or if you're in an area of the world where Eagleview doesn't have great coverage, there might be some spots out in the Pacific Northwest where it's just a few houses out by themselves. You might need a different way to get aerial geometry in there. That's an option. We didn't want to be a closed system to that, right?

Megan Ellsworth: That's correct.

Brendan McGinnis: You've got multiple avenues to get what you need.

Megan Ellsworth: That's awesome.

Brendan McGinnis: Furthermore, so it's also paired up with different manufacturers. We've got a couple of different ways that we do this. Each manufacturer that we're paired up with, if you're using their instance of Roofing Passport, it will have their materials, their pricing, their terminology, everything in there as it sits. We also have the opportunity of what we call the standard database, and that's just going to be your generic parts and pieces. That's going to be like inch and a half mechanical standing scene. It's still going to pull you a material takeoff for that, and we still want you to purchase it from somewhere that carries Sherwin-Williams-coated materials, but it's all within there. You have multiple different avenues. That's going all the way from your standard ag panels, which are pretty big in my part of the world, standing seam is getting bigger and the biggest growing segment I think we're going to see this year is probably the stamp metal shingle.

There's a lot of tailwinds there, and more and more people are starting to manufacture those. More and more people are starting to install them. I think, and Junny can probably speak on this a little more, I know we're segueing ahead, but I always find a way to do that. HOAs are a thing in this part of the world, and they like to have really stringent rules about things. We've had some success getting around HOAs by implementing those stamp metal shingles.

Megan Ellsworth: That's awesome.

Brendan McGinnis: Then once in an HOA, once you get one sold in there, then everybody's keeping up with Joneses. It's a quick maneuver to start going all the way down the street. I mean, real talk, a metal roof, a well-done, well-installed, good-coated metal roof looks fantastic. I know that there's this connotation that it's very ag-oriented, and for a long time it was. That was a huge thing that still is in parts of the world. This is just a personal opinion, but I think we may have done a disservice when we called it a barn dominium, because it has this country aesthetic or this rural connotation to it. But if you look at the way modern metal roofing and siding looks these days, it looks like a very well-put-together modern house. Nothing has to be farm style about it unless that's something that you want.

It is becoming a more flexible space. Just speaking from personal experience here, I was in Bowling Green, Kentucky in December 11th, I think, 2021. We had some pretty gnarly tornadoes come through here. In my neighborhood there's a lot of old craftsmen homes, nice-looking early ranches, some of that nice mid-American architecture and it got tore up really bad through those spots and a lot of people back there have come back in with metal roofing and metal siding and it looks fantastic. Not only did they keep the integrity of the original home there and the aesthetics of that original home. They've essentially wrapped in armor now, so that next time a tornado comes through or hail comes through, it's not nearly as big of a worry as it was.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. We actually just did a coffee conversation last week, the first coffee conversation on MetalCoffeeShop, so everyone should go check it out, but we did it with the Metal Roofing Alliance.

Brendan McGinnis: Oh, nice.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. We were talking about all things metal shingles, and they had some really beautiful photos of the metal shingles that are out in the market right now. I think, Jerry, if you are getting into, want to do more metal looking into the metal shingles, I was blown away. They're beautiful.

Brendan McGinnis: They're absolutely gorgeous. Our buddy Travis was on that coffee conversation-

Megan Ellsworth: Yes, he was.

Brendan McGinnis: ... with you last week, wasn't he? Travis Sliger owns 4Ever Metal Roofing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana and is really becoming a force in this metal shingle space. Really knows his stuff. If you want to go look him up, look at some of the jobs he's done, they look fantastic. It just speaks for itself. It's one of those things that I feel like as more and more people start getting educated and more and more people in certain parts of the world get tired of replacing their roof every time a storm comes through, then we've really got a good option there, especially if you want that more traditional look of a shingle.

Junny Lee: Shout out to Travis.

Brendan McGinnis: Shout out, Travis.

Megan Ellsworth: Shout out. Is there anything else people should know about how the estimating process works with Roofing Passport?

Brendan McGinnis: Not really. I mean, we simplified it.

Megan Ellsworth: Perfect.

Brendan McGinnis: If you're working with our standard database, you get your cut sheet, which is available online and an exportable PDF and that comes with the full roof layout, plane by plane and a full material list of everything you need, walk that up to the service counter. Or if you're paired with one of our manufacturers that's already got all their parts and pieces uploaded, it's literally just click and you're off for the races.

Megan Ellsworth: Cool.

Brendan McGinnis: You could literally go from that click to a sales meeting, and it's probably going to be there by the time you get that.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. Dang. Okay. Okay.

Junny Lee: That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Megan Ellsworth: That's so cool. Let's talk about those featured integrations and the partners that you work with. Brendan, what are these integrations that Roofing Passport has?

Brendan McGinnis: EagleView, best aerial imagery on the market far and away. Like I said, they fly planes, much lower altitude, they crosshatch. It's not like they're just flying over once. They get it from all sides, all angles. Roofing Works, best in class at processing drawings of any kind. Then SmartBuild is... A lot of people are probably familiar with them as... They're mostly known for their post-frame software, but they're actually the backend of our program. All of this stuff, all of these measurements end up landing in SmartBuild, which allows you to manipulate that roof in any way that you might need within it.

The most beautiful part of that is it allows you to, say, if you're using our standard database, for example, if you want to pull a material takeoff for AG Panel and one for mechanical standing seam, you don't have to redo anything. You can just select AG Panel from the dropdown menu, run your takeoff report and go back, select inch and a half mechanical standing Seam from your dropdown thing, run another report and guess what? Now you've got one of each for the customer. Once your data has crossed over, you can do that instantly. There's no waiting on that. You could quote them for every single panel that's in there if you wanted.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. I know you all mentioned you can integrate the manufacturer that you work with. What manufacturers or distributors do you have?

Brendan McGinnis: We have several. Right now, honestly, too many to list.

Megan Ellsworth: Got it.

Brendan McGinnis: But we're nationwide, and we're always trying to grow. Really, it's being a little farther up the value stream. It's more about us finding people who are around you and giving you options. We don't want to direct anybody to one particular place or another, because we have a lot of fingers in the pot. We don't want to be play favorites. We don't want to steer somebody one way or the other, but we want to give you those options.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, absolutely.

Junny Lee: Kristen [inaudible 00:34:03].

Brendan McGinnis: We link good contractors up with manufacturers. Absolutely, we do. That is a big part of my job and a big part of me doing what I do. With Sherwin-Williams coil coatings, which I didn't get to them on the featured integrations, we're best in class for all of our coil coatings. We have sales representatives and technical service representatives nationwide, most of them serving in multiple state territories with some states that are bigger markets, Florida, Texas, having multiple reps in them. But this team serves everybody, and we wouldn't be able to succeed except we have great relationships that our commercial team has already put into place, some going back as far as 40 years. We've been in this space for a long time, and we really want to utilize those connections that we've made.

Now that we're working in this contractor space, which we've never done before, this was always out of our purview, now that we're working in this space, we want to utilize our ability to make those connections any way that we can, because we've already got great partnerships across the continental United States, Canada and Mexico with people that've been partners of ours for many, many years. What we want to do is give you options, lead you in the direction of where you can go and just make life as easy as possible for you without telling you what to do. That's the whole whole thing here. We don't want to run your business, we just want to help you be successful in any way we can.

Megan Ellsworth: This is a great question from Nick. "With having several manufacturers in your database, does that mean your takeoff would have all the specific manufacturer parts and pieces listed on your estimate if they're in your database?"

Brendan McGinnis: Yes, it does, if you're utilizing a specific manufacturer. Just for an example, let's talk about Indiana Metals in Northern Indiana. They have all of their parts and pieces and every panel profile that they have loaded into Roofing Passport. If you are connected with Indiana Metals and you can access their database, all of their parts, pieces and pricing are there. That goes for everyone that's been a part of us nationwide, and we're growing. This is something that we haven't... This is relatively new and it does take time to cross the entire continental US, but we're working on it. We've got people everywhere, and it's just a matter of making that connection for you and getting you the correct parts and pieces and getting you paired up with a manufacturer.

Megan Ellsworth: Incredible.

Brendan McGinnis: Like I said, there are 1,700 minimum different places that you could go by roll-forming metal nationwide. We'll find you one.

Megan Ellsworth: That's awesome. Okay. How do people get started, getting plugged into Roofing Passport and joining this great MetalVue Program?

Brendan McGinnis: Lots of different ways. Contact Sherwin-Williams. If you just go to Google and type in MetalVue, M-E-T-A-L-V-U-E, we'll literally be the first thing that comes up, because nobody else spells it like we do. But if you go down to the bottom of that page, there's a get started form and that will send an email directly to my inbox with everything I need to do. I'll reach out to you and try to get some time on your calendar that works for you and me and we can talk through it. I can demo the program for you, show it to you, tell you everything you need to know about it and then we can start the process of getting you paired up. Again, like Junny said earlier, we're going to be at IRE next week. That's the Super Bowl team of roofing shows for the year. We'll be there. Junny, where else are we going to be this year?

Junny Lee: Oh, we got Metal Con, for sure. We'll be at ArtiCAD. That's a new one for us. I think it's called NFBA, I believe it is.

Brendan McGinnis: NFBA, that in Knoxville this year.

Junny Lee: Knoxville. Yes, sir. Those are the main ones.

Brendan McGinnis: FRSA [inaudible 00:38:06] later in the year.

Junny Lee: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Brendan McGinnis: Even if this isn't for you right now, and this is not something you're chomping at the bit for, but it's something that's on your radar, come see us at one of these shows. Holler at me. My information is going to be available on the back end of this. I'm happy to talk, and we can just see what works for you, because honestly, like I said, I just want to be a good partner to you. I'm not doing this for any selfish reason. I'm not trying to be big, bad Sherwin walking around. I just want to help you grow and do whatever we can to be good partners.

Megan Ellsworth: That is why I love you guys, that it's just such a genuine wanting to help the contractors. Then we had a great question here from Kristen. "As a manufacturer, do we need to bring our own contractors?"

Brendan McGinnis: Can go both ways. Yes, ideally, you can teach man to fish or you can give them fish. It goes both ways, to be perfectly honest with you. We're about to launch something called MetalVue U, which is going to be a platform for manufacturers to learn how to bring in contractors and who you're going to target, what you're going to look at. Just a really interesting thing that we found. Windows contractors that are installing Windows are great targets for metal roof installation. Why? They can sell, and they're always looking for a new vertical. Junny, can you look up that booth number? We're right in the middle. I don't remember exactly [inaudible 00:39:36].

Megan Ellsworth: I have it.

Junny Lee: We're [inaudible 00:39:36].

Megan Ellsworth: You got it, Junny?

Junny Lee: 20089.

Megan Ellsworth: Yep. 20089 as well as 19089.

Brendan McGinnis: Okay. MetalVue will have a booth, and then Sherwin-Williams "coiled coatings" right across the street from us. I think we're [inaudible 00:39:58] in the middle too.

Junny Lee: Yeah.

Megan Ellsworth: Perfect, perfect. Okay. Do you offer any training sources through MetalVue and Roofing Passport?

Brendan McGinnis: We have two primary options. First one is sales training that we have created with Grosso University. It is metal-specific. It is how to sell metal against asphalt, how to sell metal alongside asphalt, all the reasons that we alluded to here, why metal is better and how to pass that along with the customer. The other thing that we have in there is very basic install training for several different panel profiles, because we know that labor in this market is tough to come by and not every crew that it can install asphalt can install metal. We have the option there of, you can get base level training for installation, but we can also partner you up with John Sheridan who is the GOAT of metal install training.

Megan Ellsworth: He is.

Brendan McGinnis: If you want to, John will fly out to you and he will host you and your crews and teach you how to put on metal the right way, because that's a huge part of this. Metal is a superior substrate in every single way possible if you install it correctly. If you don't, it's going to leak. Installation and... That's a huge part of the quality job. You can warranty it for as long as you want to. You can put on as heavy gauge of steel as you want to. You can put the fanciest coating on there if you want to. But if you don't install it correctly, none of that matters. We wanted to make sure that we had the resources there for you to get A1+ metal installation training. If you've got your own training, awesome. If you're already comfortable, awesome. We're not going to tell you how to install it, but we want you to have that option. We want have that resource there and available to you.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. I think also, like you said, Brendan, if a contractor already has training systems in place, I mean why not add to it? See what John Sheridan's offering. I know that Sheridan Metal Resources, they always do a training zone, I believe sponsored by MetalVue at MetalCon.

Brendan McGinnis: Yep.

Megan Ellsworth: If you're going to MetalCon in, I believe it's October this year, go check that out, especially if you're bringing some crew members, pick them over to the training zone. It is really, really honestly fun. It's a fun vibe over there, and they have some really great trainings going on. Then I believe John Sheridan will be at IRE as well with some training opportunities, I'm pretty sure.

Junny Lee: Awesome, awesome.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. I love the chat right now. If you have any more questions, please keep popping them into the chat. Okay. We've talked about training, we've talked about how to get started. Let's just round this out with where to find MetalVue. We already talked about tradeshows, but what other information and setup advice do you all have for everyone out there?

Brendan McGinnis: Like I said, just Google MetalVue, because it's a long website for me to tell you exactly how to do it, Industrial.SheridanWilliams.com/NA. Just Google MetalVue and it'll come up first thing. Everything we talked about today will be there. You can get a little bit more information, but the big one is the contact form that comes to me. It doesn't have to get filtered through 1,000 different things that come straight to me. Please don't blow up my inbox with stuff, but keep it honest out here. Then we're always trying to do stuff with the Coffee Shop. We realized very early on in this process how invaluable a resource they are for connections and networking and getting to know people. Y'all are in this space way longer than we've been, just to be perfectly clear with you. Making those connections and being able to work with people is just paramount. Again, thank you very much for letting us be here today and giving us this platform to talk with everybody, but again, just being good partners, being good stewards of our brands and of our businesses and where we can do to help you.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. Wow. I swear I didn't pay him to say that. Thank you. We really appreciate that. Like I've said before, we love working with Sherwin-Williams and the MetalVue Program. Like we were talking about earlier about Sheridan Metal Resources, you can find all of their information on metalcoffeeshop.com on their directory. Truly, John Sheridan is such a wealth of knowledge. We have some training videos already up on his directory that you can share with your crew members, share with your team. I highly recommend checking out their offerings as well, obviously as the Roofing Passport and MetalVue programs. Okay. Do we have any more questions from the audience? If so, please keep sending them. If you think of one in the middle of the night tonight, we have the contact info for the MetalVue program people, Junny and Brendan on their directory on metalcoffeeshop.com. I'll also put the MetalVue website link in the chat, so everyone can go check that out. We just want to thank you. Thank you Sherwin-Williams. Thank you, Brendan. Thank you, Junny, for sharing all this knowledge today.

Brendan McGinnis: Thank you for having us. It's great to have a forum. It's great to be talking to people that want to hear us. Honestly, you all took the time out of your day to sign up for this and remember to go sit down at your desk at one o'clock central and listen to us talk for 45 minutes. Thank you very much for that. I mean, that's huge, right?

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely. We have one question here from Kristen. Can you finish explaining the MetalVue U Program, Brendan?

Brendan McGinnis: Yeah. It's work in progress, again, one of those things that's going to be done soon and we'll be on our dealer portal, but essentially what it's going to do is help create a connection between manufacturers and contractors, because something that we really want to do and I'm sure metal manufacturers want to do as well, is become sticky with contractors. The way that you can do that is by providing them resources and providing them training, providing them quick turnaround on quotes through a Roofing Passport. It's just how to be a good servant to them, how to be a good steward to them and how to keep them sticky with you. It's a multiple chaptered training that if you so desire, we can go through it with you, but it's also meant to be customizable for you to be outward-facing toward contractors. That makes sense?

Junny Lee: Yeah.

Brendan McGinnis: Yeah.

Megan Ellsworth: Could you ask-

Junny Lee: The last I checked, we have over a hundred slides in it, so it's getting pretty [inaudible 00:46:59].

Brendan McGinnis: It's in-depth when it goes a lot into market analysis and why we feel like there's such a room to grow in the residential re-roof market. I'll just touch on that real quick, because it's something I like to spiel.

Junny Lee: Yeah, absolutely.

Brendan McGinnis: The entire of the re-roof market, 81% of it is residential. Residential re-roofing makes up 80-ish % of the entire roofing market. Over the last few years, depending on whose numbers you look at, metal has only accounted for 12 to 15% of that re-roof market.

Megan Ellsworth: Oh, wow.

Brendan McGinnis: We want to get it to 20. We want to get to 25. Any headway that you get to make and cutting into that number gets to put money in everybody's pocket from contractor level all the way up to steel manufacturers. We're just trying to grow the market by growing demand. I don't think it's going to be difficult to grow demand, because the need for it is there. We've seen a lot of frustrations with asphalt in the past few years, especially with all these different weather events that we're having. We just want to utilize what we've got, which is a best-in-class product across the metal space as a means of selling, as a means of delivering value to our end user customers.

Megan Ellsworth: Could you explain what the dealer portal is a little bit before we end?

Brendan McGinnis: Yeah. It's basically a repository website. It's going to have access to all those marketing materials that are there. There'll be stock photographs that you can use for your materials. You can find logo agreements and stuff there. You can also find the training center there. That's where you'll be able to watch the videos from Grosso University, watch those videos from John Sheridan and make a million different connections, one pagers from all of our partners. Then manufacturers will be able to upload their own specific stuff into their specific instances of the portal, and we're hoping to launch that next week.

Megan Ellsworth: Oh, awesome. Okay.

Junny Lee: We refer to it different names. The dealer portal is the MetalVue Portal. Yeah.

Brendan McGinnis: It's a web-based repository of information that will be available to all of our users.

Megan Ellsworth: Okay. Okay. Very cool. Well, again, if anyone has any questions and you think of them later, we can connect you with Brendan and Junny and you can find them at IRE also. Their booth numbers for everyone just one more time are 19089 and 20089. You can find the MetalCoffeeShop booth in the lobby at IRE in San Antonio as well. Come say hi. We're going to give out lots of swag and prizes, and we'll get Brendan and Junny on the soundstage maybe as well.

Brendan McGinnis: Perhaps. I guess, this is as good a time as they need to announce something that we're doing at IRE. Sticking with the theme of... San Antonio is a big music town, right?

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah.

Brendan McGinnis: One of our giveaways, we're giving away guitar picks. Just come through and grab you a Sherwin guitar pick. But if you stop by the booth and let us scan your badge, you can be entered to win a Squier Stratocaster with the MetalVue logo on, a nice brand new guitar. It looks [inaudible 00:50:26] too.

Megan Ellsworth: I'm going to need that.

Junny Lee: We'll ship it to you. I don't think we're going to make you carry it on or check it in at the airport, but [inaudible 00:50:35].

Brendan McGinnis: Unless you're local. Or you can just give it back to me, I would give it a good home.

Junny Lee: Yeah. By the way, [inaudible 00:50:44].

Brendan McGinnis: I'll send you monthly updates, pictures.

Junny Lee: Shout out to [inaudible 00:50:48], by the way.

Megan Ellsworth: Yes. Oh my gosh.

Junny Lee: Fellow politics fan.

Brendan McGinnis: [inaudible 00:50:53].

Junny Lee: Yeah.

Megan Ellsworth: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Everyone, definitely go to their booth and get your badge scanned so you can win a guitar. That's so fun.

Junny Lee: Yes, ma'am.

Megan Ellsworth: Thank you. Metalcoffeeshop.com. Go to the MetalVue Sherwin-Williams directory to learn more. Find contact info. See you at IRE. Brendan, Junny, thank you so much. This has been so informational.

Brendan McGinnis: Thank you so much for having us.

Junny Lee: Thank you, Megan. It was a ton of fun. Thank you so much.

Outro: Absolutely. Anytime. We love working with you all. Everyone, we will see you next month on the next MetalTalk and we'll see you for the live Coffee Conversations from the Roofers Coffer Shop soundstage next week at IRE. If you're not able to attend IRE, please make sure to tune into our YouTube channel on Wednesday and Thursday of next week to watch the live Coffee Conversation. We will be talking about a little bit of metal. It is Roofers Coffer Shop, but it'll be a little metal-oriented as well. We'll see you then. This will be up on the site within 24 to 48 hours. We'll see you next month on the next MetalTalk. Thank you so much for tuning in.