Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by Mitre Brands University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sheri Conner and I am your host.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: So, good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and we are recording from Tacoma, Washington. I am at the Mill Guard Support center. And so joining me at the moment is Tim Large. Welcome.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for being here. And so, Tim, I met you about three and a half minutes ago, so thanks for taking some time this morning to record with me. Tell us a little bit about your role and responsibilities and maybe a little bit of your history here.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: So my current role is pricing manager for Mitre Brands. I actually started in inside sales in Portland at the Milgard plant there and transferred to Chicago, lived there for about seven years and. And was the inside sales supervisor there, the location marketing rep. But they closed the Chicago plant down back in 2011, but was lucky enough to move back to Tacoma and worked on some ctb, which are quoting software projects and ERP projects. And then I transferred into a pricing manager role for Milgard, and then when Mitre purchased the Milgard brand, I moved into that role.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: So when did you start with the company?
[00:01:30] Speaker C: 2003.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Okay. Wow.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: So 22 years in.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing. Thank you. Congratulations. And so, yeah, Chicago, those winners are brutal.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Yeah. My daughter just left Chicago.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:42] Speaker C: And that part of the family's now gone, so it's a great place to visit. Love visiting there. Don't want to live there again.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Yeah. June, July, August, those are nice times.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: June, July, August. Gets a little sticky, but, yeah. I do not miss the last winter of 2011.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: No, no. Yeah. I grew up on the same latitude as Chicago.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Right. Iowa. Right.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah. In Iowa. It was pretty brut. Yeah, it was. Not for me. I've been in Florida for 30 plus years now.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: Now you're talking.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Now I have the opposite problem. I hate summer.
It's. So we hibernate in the summer instead of in the winter.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Well, then welcome to the Northwest. It's beautiful here in the summer.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: I know. I was standing outside this morning waiting for my uber. It was 65 degrees and sunny and not humid. And I was like, this is amazing. So, anyway, so you've had a number of different roles within the company. If you had to put those into one of the letters in the Mitre acronym, which letter would you think it would best fit with?
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Well, as much as I'd like to say relationships, it really has to go to experience.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: I've met a lot of very Great, incredible, talented, smart people in my 22 years here. But with those different roles, I've gained a lot of different experience in working in sales, working in marketing, working in it, and now in product management. So I've been exposed to many different aspects of the business.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Okay. And so as a pricing manager, I guess I can't think of who would be a pricing manager at PGT that would actually be.
Oh, okay. So you're the equivalent of Donna.
[00:03:06] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Okay. That's a big job.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: Yes, ma'.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Am. Okay. So you know all of the products, all the components, all the vendors, and then you also know competitors and what they're charging and multiply that times a billion different combinations of size and glass and color.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: You can blink now.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. It's a very.
Oh, my gosh. That's a very complex role.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: But you enjoy it?
[00:03:32] Speaker C: I do, actually. It's one of those roles that I think that Milgard didn't have a specific person for that position for many, many years. And they saw my passion in that back in. I guess that was 2018, when that was coming around. So they saw that I really enjoyed that part of my job, and they carved out a role for me, and it took off, and it's been great ever since.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: And so with the acquisition, how has it changed?
[00:03:56] Speaker C: I'm learning a lot more about east coast products.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Sunrise, MI and now PGTI Products. So that's been a big, big learning curve. I still work with some other folks at MI that do that type of thing in Pennsylvania, But a really big piece of it is that there are numerous quoting software systems and ordering systems and configuration systems that you have to deal with, not just in making Windows, but making pricing for Windows.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: So there's lots of different ways to create a list price for a product, but you also got to think of the different aspects and the different customers and the different special pricing that's out there for this particular option. That's out. So. And that option may or may not exist in all product lines, and it goes on and on.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. There's just a ton of different ways to do it. I think I heard something like 47,000 different combinations.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Oh, I bet you it's a lot more than that.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure there is. That's just on the PGT side, like, of what we can build. So are you involved with Western and Anlin at all?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Are you?
[00:04:52] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: Okay. On the Western side?
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Just working on a Western project just before I walked in the door.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Oh, Nice. So, because we're part of the education team, I always like to kind of talk about what people are learning. And, you know, this can be professional or personal or, you know, what is something fun or interesting or weird that you're learning about these days?
[00:05:10] Speaker C: A couple different things. I'm learning more and more about the Mitre Foundation. I've been doing a lot with them since the acquisition, and that's been fantastic. The Mitre foundation is so well organized. The people who are running that, both at individual plant locations and in Harrisburg, they're fantastic. We have a great team with that. You know, Milgard had a great volunteerism attitude for decades before the acquisition, and it's been taken to another level with the Mitre foundation, and so that's been learning a lot with that in the last five years since the acquisition. That's been fantastic. Personal level. Bought a new barbecue a couple months ago. It was a good Father's Day, and got me a pellet grill, and I'm learning different ways to grill chicken. I did three racks of ribs a couple weeks ago, and so I'm doing a lot more barbecuing these days. My old barbecue really needed to go, so it was nice to get a new pellet one and learn how that works and how it's different.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: So is it a smoker?
[00:05:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Okay, so you put different kinds of flavored chips in it or whatever?
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Yes, ma'.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Am. Ah, that's fun.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: So I'm learning different ways of cooking first, not necessarily the flavoring yet.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Okay, so baby steps.
[00:06:08] Speaker C: Baby steps.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Right. Okay. Well, that's fun.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: That is fun.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, Tim, thank you so much for your time this morning. I appreciate your willingness to come and record and helps me understand a little bit more about what you do. I have invited Donna to be on the podcast. She's declined, so. Aw, she's. I know, but she's a great one.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: She is fantastic. I love working with her.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. She knows so much about the PGT product, and she doesn't play around. She's very studious and knows her stuff, so.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: I completely agree.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Big respect for Donna Saladini.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Say hi to her for me.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, she'll hear this.
Awesome. Well, have an amazing day.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: All right, thanks. Bye.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: The Clear Impact podcast is brought to you by Mitre Brands University. We are a part of Mitre Brands, a family of leading window and door brands united by our passion for quality and relentless pursuit of 100%.
At Mitre Brands, our common purpose is to deliver value by manufacturing the finest products, services and customer experience every day, everywhere. Our window and door brands deliver regionalized expertise, products and services, all backed by a national company.
Mitre Brands University is here to educate you, our listener, so that you can be a more informed consumer of window and door products.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Sam.
