Speaker 1 00:00:05 Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by P G T I University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sherry Connor and I am your host.
Speaker 0 00:00:17 So good
Speaker 1 00:00:17 Morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and today we have another episode in the executive update series and we're talking to two of the smartest people I know and that is saying a lot cuz I know a lot of really smart people. But Dean Rourke, who is back in studio and Dale Rubin. Welcome. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:00:37 Hey, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 00:00:38 So Dale, this is your first time in the studios and Dean, you've come back, you've had many episodes with me last summer, which are still among the favorites and probably some of the most interesting conversations because you're on the lead edge of everything that's happening here. Dean, give us a just a brief recap of your role and responsibilities.
Speaker 2 00:00:56 Oh yeah, sure. So I'm Dean Ruark. My title is the Vice President of Engineering and Innovation. In short Words, I oversee all of our new product development, all of our innovation strategy, a lot of the testing and compliance aspects of, you know, once we invent those products, making sure that they meet and exceed all the regulations and standards that our customers expect and desire.
Speaker 1 00:01:20 Nice. And you do it with a mindset of business, not just tinkering for the fun of it.
Speaker 2 00:01:26 Always. Yeah. So tinkerings fun, but the more you tie that and route that in not only business but also customer needs, the better served it is to have a product out in the marketplace.
Speaker 1 00:01:35 Sure. That's awesome. All right, Dale, tell us a little bit about you.
Speaker 3 00:01:39 Well, not as exciting as Dean. So my role is the sales manager for our WinDor products. I've been around pgt, I now for a little over six years. And so yeah, we needed somebody to kind of focus on our higher end product portfolio that really can give them undivided attention to a higher end dealer base and customer base. And so my whole focus is around the window brand and just bringing the news to the market on any new products that we're able to graduate from Dean's iLab here and have a successful rollout to our customers.
Speaker 1 00:02:11 Nice. Well I know late last year you said, Hey we need to do a podcast about WinDor and I was like, I'm filing that away cuz that sounds like a great idea and I know a lot of like what you just said, a lot of the WinDor products have been birthed in the iLab, which is your playground dean. So I thought it made sense to have you guys both here together. So we talked about Diamond Glass a little bit last year and Bob talks a little bit about Diamond Glass in his podcast that I just recorded with him. But I wanted to bring both of you in together to talk about these things. So Dale, what do you want our dealers to know about the window brand and products just like high level?
Speaker 3 00:02:49 So WinDor is obviously a very different product than our PGT or CGI product line. We have much more customizable options. We have mar much larger sizes than our traditional PGT or CGI product line. And so really WinDor is a brand that if you can dream it, we can build it. And that's always been wind Door's biggest strength. And then to have the partnership with the iLab to really make bigger and more customizable options available to our dealers and to our customers. It's been a fantastic partnership and if you need anything oversized or anything that is just kind of crazy that you're thinking nobody else can do, we'll figure out a way to do it at WinDor. That's our goal.
Speaker 1 00:03:29 And so which products are coming over do we know? Well
Speaker 2 00:03:34 One of the newer products that has graduated from our iLab and is now in full production at WinDor would be our bifold and Pivot doors. So I think, you know, since last time we talked those have made it over. We saw significant demand for them out of our iLab and really successful products and that's the goal. Bring successful products to market and then put 'em in a larger manufacturing facility, uh, where we can meet the demand and needs for a broader customer base.
Speaker 1 00:04:01 And both of those are in our showroom. And so Dean, what would you want to say regarding Diamond Glass? Because that's kind of part of your wheelhouse, right?
Speaker 2 00:04:13 Yeah, so we've talked about Diamond Glass for a while and it's been a pretty interesting journey and it's coming to WinDor very soon featured in all of the WinDor products. And so you know a little bit about diamond glass. So first and foremost this is a partnership with Corning and in building products, a lot of people think of Corning as you know, Owen's Corning, which is building insulation and roof shingles, that's not the Corning. This is the world's leader in display glass Corning developed Gorilla Glass. They developed fantastic glass solutions with tremendous engineering and intellectual property behind it. And they are entering the building product space for the first time as Corning Glass. And they've developed something called a T g Architectural Technical Glazing where they've leveraged their expertise in the world of display in the world of automotive glass to put a product out into the building products industry that is this exceptionally strong, exceptionally clear but very lightweight glass.
Speaker 2 00:05:14 So when Dale talks about hey we do huge sizes at wind Door, well that translates to the customer or our installer in terms of wow it's really heavy. Door panels often weigh 500 pounds. We can take about 45% of the weight out of the glass of any product while still maintaining exceptionally high design pressures on very large sizes. In addition to that weight reduction for the installer, there's also benefits to the consumer. You have much more optically clear glass. This is an iron free display glass and it never needs to be tempered or put through a tempering furnace. And so because of that you get this optically perfect piece of glass that causes less distortion, better views. It's also much, much harder than standard soda lime float glass. So you have three times the scratch resistance and we put that on the interior surface of the home.
Speaker 2 00:06:09 So pets, kids, you know, anything that's kind of beaten up the glass, you have a lot more durability out of it. So those are just a few of the features. In addition, you have some operational benefits because once those are installed, big sliders, WinDor has phenomenal engineering so it has a great roller system, it's one of the easier doors to operate even with these very heavy panels. However, if we can reduce the weight by 45%, it gets even easier to operate. So we're just continuously improving the value proposition of that product. And we're doing that with Diamond Glass.
Speaker 1 00:06:40 Be sure to tune in for upcoming episodes to help you understand the fenestration industry, what you need to know when buying windows and doors and other related topics. You can find out more about
[email protected]. You can also find us on Facebook and LinkedIn. That's amazing.
Speaker 3 00:06:59 It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 00:07:00 I love this company <laugh>. I love that we're on the leading edge of things and just always working towards, you know, yes we want things to be profitable and yes we want things to look nice but also just to keep in mind the weight and you know, the user friendliness of the products. That's fabulous.
Speaker 3 00:07:19 Yeah, you know, Dean talked about the roller system and I would say from wind's inception, we don't really replace a lot of rollers with wind door because of the design of the rollers and you factor in a 45% weight reduction. And I think about that in a large condo building or a hotel where those doors are operated continuously all the time and the weight reduction in the less load put on those rollers, maybe something that you almost never have to replace rollers on a condo cuz it's not an easy process, right? You gotta rip out door panels, you've gotta put it up on, saw horses, take 'em out, put 'em back in. And so the ease of business with wind door due to some of these weight reductions alone will be huge benefits long term.
Speaker 1 00:08:03 And so do we have a timeframe for the new glass going into WinDor?
Speaker 2 00:08:09 Yeah, so very early q3, all of our equipment is coming in. We're outfitting the glass plant with new cutters and new handling devices for this ultra thin glass. We have almost all of it in place. Uh, we'll be trialing it out over the next month or two. It's May right now in June we'll be definitely up and running at a small scale. And then in early quarter three we'll be launching it within the wind brand.
Speaker 1 00:08:33 So cost wise it'll probably change the pricing I would imagine. I don't really deal with pricing so I don't know. Dale, that's your playhouse.
Speaker 3 00:08:41 Uh, I mean really I would defer that one to Dean because he's heading it all up. So
Speaker 2 00:08:45 Yeah, so that piece is in discussion right now and there's certainly some value in this product that is captured by both the installer and the end user. Uh, however, wind doors are high end product line. We have very good glass technology and are developing the processes to be very efficient and we plan to be at a very similar price point or the same price point. So it might be a few percent, but we're not talking about this huge percentage ad to move to this benefit. Wind indoors are high-end luxury brand and we wanna continue to stack value into that brand for the end user as it scales to other products or other products that are more of a price play. This is a more expensive glass and there may be some price increases there.
Speaker 1 00:09:26 Well that's to be expected I would imagine. I mean that's, you know, when you see these doors like in the showroom, you're like wow, this is a massive 10 foot corner meet seven panel. Like wow <laugh>, this is an impressive door. But you know, you're not budget shopping when you're getting products like that. So
Speaker 3 00:09:43 No, you want reliability, you want dependability and that just screams that everything wind door is,
Speaker 1 00:09:48 That's awesome. All right, anything else?
Speaker 3 00:09:50 No, I think, you know, with Wind Door, I just hope that the customer base knows, you know, we're, we're back, we're strong and we're very excited to rekindle the wind door relationship with our customers, our builders, our dealers, and um, very proud of where we're at today and what we've accomplished. And uh, very happy to have Dean focusing on some of our innovative products that are gonna roll to Wind Door. You know, we um, have a really incredible product base and product line and Dean's only adding to that, so,
Speaker 1 00:10:17 So Dean, can you tell us about anything that will be happening in the iLab with the Bifold and Pivot door moving over to Wind Door? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:10:24 Sure. So those graduations make way for the next great thing or the next idea that we're going to try in the marketplace. So immediately upon graduating those doors, both the bifold and Pivot, we've backfilled with a garage door and very large sizes, very highly customizable, gaining a lot of traction in the marketplace. However, those sell through a different channel than our current dealer base window folks and garage door folk are very different businesses, but it's been met with a lot of success and we're just seeing it ramp up very quickly, which is great. We've also launched what we call invista, which is a impact but glazed system. And so, you know, we talk about more glass less frame. Well this is a true all glass window wall where you have no framing member whatsoever at the meeting points of this product. And so we're able to do two things with that which are really special.
Speaker 2 00:11:19 We have a smaller, more value engineered version. And if you think about a lot of the Florida homes that were built in the, you know, mid nineties to early two thousands before a lot of impact glass was around, there's always these breakfast nooks and that's a but glass clay application and you see them all over, but there's no impact product that can really fill those holes. This one will do that and it'll do that with an economical butt glass system that meets all of the impact requirements. Then we have a much more monumental system. That one goes to 24 square feet, four by six panels to do those breakfast nooks. Then we have a 40 square foot system that would be opening up the whole wall of a home. You know, whether you want corners or just a big glass wall for a beautiful view.
Speaker 2 00:12:05 And we can do really unlimited spans of four foot by 10 foot panels all throughout the home with a very high end structural glass application. Our system comes unitized, so it's much more friendly to install. There's only a couple of other systems out on the market, but those usually require like a contract glazer and field glazing and really building it out as a field assembly. We took a unitized approach where we're sending you the product pre glaze, top and bottom along with a lot of installation guides, clips, everything else. Uh, and you really install these just like a picture window and then just glaze the seam of the product. So again, it's done with customers in mind, uh, ease of installation for residential applications and we're very excited about the product. That one's growing fast as well.
Speaker 1 00:12:49 So if you wanted a glass wall in your house, you could do that.
Speaker 2 00:12:53 Absolutely. Yep.
Speaker 1 00:12:54 And its impact.
Speaker 2 00:12:56 All impact.
Speaker 1 00:12:57 Yeah. Whoa. Yeah cuz how do you put shutters on a wall? Like that's,
Speaker 2 00:13:01 You don't need to. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:13:02 <laugh> that's awesome. And I know you probably can't talk about anything else cuz it's still an r and d, right?
Speaker 2 00:13:06 Yeah, I mean there's always lots. So those are our two launches. We're also working on a, a little pilot program with a gas strut awning window. Another way for indoor outdoor living in days past, a lot of our dealers remember the pass through single hung windows and it was a way to have my kitchen and I want to pass it out through to the lanai. Well this gastro awning is the kind of new modern contemporary version to do something like that where you have this bar top that you wanna extend to the outdoors and you can open up a big portion of that wall, have an awning overhead and a really beautiful product. So that's coming soon for my lab too then lots of others. But that's the one I'm comfortable talking about,
Speaker 1 00:13:43 Right? Yeah, we don't wanna get in trouble <laugh>, it's
Speaker 3 00:13:46 Like, it's like working with somebody from the cia, you know, I can't talk about it. It's uh, can't
Speaker 1 00:13:49 Talk about it.
Speaker 3 00:13:50 I kind of like it, you know?
Speaker 2 00:13:52 Yeah. Some of 'em are bad ideas. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:13:54 <laugh>. You don't wanna talk about it.
Speaker 1 00:13:56 Not, not very many though. No, I know. I bumped into Kenny in the showroom not too long ago and I was like, how does it feel to finally have this out here? Like you guys have been working on this for what, four years or something
Speaker 2 00:14:07 For uh, diamond Glass.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 For Diamond Glass. Yeah. You've been
Speaker 2 00:14:10 Working on it? Yes. Yeah, it's been a long journey. It's one of those things where, you know, you stay close to a great company and partner. At the time we started talking, they could only do small sizes and so it wasn't that big of a benefit to make your small products lighter weight. They just make your big products feel heavier. And we kind of said, Hey, like we're doing six foot by 12 foot door panels. Talk to us when you're close and they're mighty close. You know, we can do up to 10 and a half feet tall up to eight feet wide. I mean, so it's getting pretty big and it'll continue to grow, so that's
Speaker 1 00:14:42 Exciting. That's fantastic. That's
Speaker 3 00:14:43 Wild. Well, and so I did want to add, you know, recently we updated our Florida product approval on the 8,100 series. And so we went from I think it was 15 or 19 Florida product approvals or approvals on the 8,100 down to four. And with the latest approval we've made it so you don't need job specific requests for some of the larger panel sizes. And so with the 8,100 series we're able to go five by 12 on a panel size or six by 10, and we can even do seven feet wide by 102 inches tall. So you think about a 70 foot span, roughly with a 10 panel door, it'd be pretty incredible to match that with an invista system on the other side of the house and just have a beautiful view. All that natural light coming in. And then some added benefits to our dealer base and the installers would be, we've actually reduced the Anchorage load needed for the 8,100 series. So in some cases up to 40, 42%, we've reduced the amount of anchors required on the 8,100 series. So pretty incredible stuff we've been able to accomplish.
Speaker 1 00:15:46 See, I told you you guys were smart ones. I knew. I knew.
Speaker 3 00:15:49 Hey, I just sell it <laugh>. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:15:52 Yeah. But you're throwing out some pretty technical information, so that's amazing. I
Speaker 3 00:15:55 Gotta pull it out when I can, you know?
Speaker 1 00:15:57 Yeah, good job. All right gentlemen, well thank you. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for your time, appreciate your expertise and uh, Dean, keep me posted if you've got anything else you wanna talk about sometime. All right. All right. Thanks Sherry. Thanks. Take care.
Speaker 1 00:16:10 P G T I University is the customer education team for an entire family of brands. We began with the original Easy Breeze, porch enclosure line then became P G t, America's leading brand of impact-resistant windows and doors. We then added cgi, CGI I c Window, Western Windows Systems, new South Windows, echo windows and doors, and lin windows and doors, and our latest acquisition Martin Garage doors. We create products built to withstand major storms, keeping people safe, secure, and prepared. Our exceptional brands give you the protection you need without compromising design or functionality. P G T I University is here to educate you, our listener, so that you can be a more informed consumer of window and door products.
