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.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: I think the biggest thing is just like any relationship, right? Any successful relationship, you should put the needs of your partner ahead of your own needs. And you should be rooting for their success louder than you're rooting for your own success. And I have that with my family, with my wife. I have it with my team. I want nothing more than for my customers and my vendors to be successful.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and virtually.
We have a very special guest with us today, and he is Joe Altieri with FlexScreen. So the founder and inventor of FlexScreen, welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. And hello everybody out there in podcast world. I'm happy to spend a couple minutes here with everybody today.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yes, thank you for joining me. And so one of the reasons that we're going to talk today is about FlexScreen, obviously, when using that in Milgard C700 fiberglass line. And then also we've been using it in MI windows and doors for a long time. But before we really get into the nitty gritty about the screen, just give us a little background about you, like, how did you get into this?
[00:01:33] Speaker C: I've been in the window and door industry for most of my life now, certainly my entire professional career. When I was in my early 20s, I worked for a aluminum distribution company that primarily sold aluminum to companies that were making window screens, window manufacturers. From there, I became an independent sales rep. So I was selling pieces and parts to companies like MI and other window manufacturers out there. A lot of companies converted from making their own screens to. To outsourcing their window screens. And when I would go in and talk to my customers who I cared deeply about, they always had complaints about window screens. And with aluminum, you know, window screens scratching and denting and damage and corners that break and all of those things that most people know that are challenges with window screens. And it's painted aluminum, right? And it's old technology. It was invented in 1907. A metal window screen with rubber spline was invented in 1907. It's crazy.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: It's well over 100 years old. Hasn't changed. So I would go in and they would be complaining about window screens. And I just, I'm like, oh, my gosh, there has to be some better way. There has to be something different. And I couldn't find anything. There just wasn't anything out on the market. And so my wife had a Yukon XL and that's what we were driving at the time. I had four kids, so we had a big family. And she used to park it in the garage and said, honey, I'm going to turn the garage into like a little workshop. I'm going to display, you know, just a little hobby thing for just for a couple of weeks. And I'm going to try to come up with a better mousetrap, a better type of window screen. And two years later, my wife's Yukon was still sitting out in the driveway. But I had this, what I call this bubble gum and duct tape prototype. It was ugly, it was barely functional. It doesn't look like what FlexScreen looks like today, but it kind of got people to understand the concept. And I showed it off to some of my contacts there and they said, this is fantastic. If you figure out a way to build it, we're interested. And that was kind of the beginning of the FlexScreen story. I showed it off to some people that were interested in investing and got a few partners together and we opened up a manufacturing facility. Oh my gosh, that has to be 15 years ago now. And that's kind of how we started.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Oh, that's such a cool thing. I love that. Like a literal garage, like that's where the best literal garage. That's awesome. That's awesome. And so I'm more familiar with the journey that you've had since then. Right. So FlexScreen, you know, the big thing is you were on Shark Tank multiple times and partnered up with Lori and then eventually sold it right to right screen. And so now it's right screen and Flex Screen together.
And so with all of that, like that's a huge swath of time. I don't even know the timeline for all of that.
But what I'm curious about, and this is kind of the focus of our, of our conversation today, is about partnerships. And so from your perspective, what do you think the defining moments were that really helped elevate the brand within the industry?
[00:04:34] Speaker C: So in my opinion, there were two big moments for us at flexstreet. The first is our first sale, right? There was a little local company, little window manufacturer, and they took a chance on us. I mean, when you bring something that is challenging 100 year old technology, getting that first company to come on and do anything with you, that's a huge lift. You know, we had a product that performed better, we had a product that consumers were intrigued by. And there were a lot of nights where we had spent well over a million dollars in development getting the manufacturing, all that stuff, and we had zero sales.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Oh, gosh.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. So get all these companies that said, yes, build it and we will come. You know, all of a sudden I started getting what I call the slow yeses. Right? So none of them said no. Like, I would go back, hey, look, it's done. Here's the finished product. And they're like, yeah, we're interested, but our customers don't know what it is. So that was a big thing, getting that first customer and then the second one. And I know this sounds a little self serving since I'm on your podcast, but when the DeSotos came into our facility for the first time and came in mass, like, even Pete came, okay. And they came in because they were evaluating whether or not they were going to bring FlexScreen into the Mi family of products.
And that was a big deal. We had started to see some success with some smaller manufacturers, but MI was the first company that kind of brought it on, that had a national presence and is really a big deal in the industry. It elevates your brand mainly just because of the sheer power of your company. Right. And the presence that you have and the infrastructure that you have. Even your sales guys out there telling the Flex Screen story that I don't know how to tell, that made a big difference. And one other note. I have an email from Pete that is taped up on my wall. If you come into my office at Flexer, you can see it there. He sent me the most encouraging note. It just said, you know, kind of thank you for your time, you know, all of those types of things. And he said, FlexScreen is the most innovative thing that I have seen in the screen industry in my entire time of being part of the window and door industry. That meant so much to me. It really did. When you're talking about partnerships for a fledgling company and a fledgling founder to get an encouragement like that from somebody like Pete, my gosh, I lived off of that for a long time, you know, in the down days of like. But Pete, he thinks it's good, so it must be good. So I'm going to live to fight another day. So, yeah, it was really, it was really fantastic.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: That's an amazing story. And, you know, they started as screens. That's where he got his grounding as well.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: It certainly made an impression on me. So there's people through the years that probably have no idea how much of an impact they had on me and our company's Success, but just little things like that is just again, when you talk about partnerships, that's a partner, you know what I mean? That does something like that. And for him, he probably never, he probably doesn't even remember doing it.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:28] Speaker C: But just to take the time to drop a little encouraging note to somebody that's a partner, that isn't a vendor customer relation type of thing, that's next level.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Yeah. With MI really getting you the first big national company. And then Obviously we've incorporated FlexScreen into the Milgard brand as well with the C700.
Now that we've got products in these larger portfolios. What have you learned about collaborating with large multi brand organizations that might have a different strategy and customer need than say some of the other ones?
[00:08:02] Speaker C: So there's a couple things. The first, and I'm not going to make this specific about Mitre Brands, however, of course you guys are a juggernaut, right. But that the large organizations, they think and act much different because they have to. Right. They have no choice. Like a small change impacts more than just their customers or just engineering or just operations. There's a collaboration there that is cross functional that is really hard to get through if you're not used to that type of organization. So for me as a small organization, what I found was we needed to have a champion within some of these large organizations that can help to navigate how a project needs to move through an organization like Mitre Brands or any of the other large ones and can really bring all the stakeholders and get alignment on them. But as a general statement, you simply have to treat and understand the difference between a company that is making 200 windows a day compared to you guys are making that, I don't know, every four seconds. You know what I mean? It's just a completely different beast. And having relationships is a lot of times more important than even with the smaller organizations. You have to have that access to people within the organizations so that the project can continue moving through. Now from the other side, once something moves through, it completely changes companies. Right. Anything that Miter Brands does is big. There's no small projects with you guys.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: So that's the benefit of it, right. When you guys took on FlexStream, our volume went up dramatically. So we have to be prepared for that as well. Everybody can dream about being a supplier to a Hot5 manufacture, but very few companies that are unprepared will be successful with that once it does happen.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Because you can't over promise and under deliver because you know, we're Only as good as our supply chain.
And I've had this conversation with others in the organization about the screens at the end. You know, it's the last thing that goes in.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: And, you know, the screens, unfortunately, are most times the least expensive part of the window, but they are the most problematic when it comes to the customer experience. Right. And the industry is still very much. Aluminum screen is the dominant product out there. But we want to improve the experience that people have with their windows through the most problematic part of that window.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's solving a huge problem for people. And, you know, kudos to you. That's amazing. And kudos to your wife for being willing to park outside for two years. That's good too.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: No kidding. Oh, there's so many stories here. We could do a whole podcast on the support of family. My wife, she was the biggest cheerleader for flexscreen and we certainly would not be successful without her support.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: That's amazing. I love that.
So FlexScreen, originally you were supplying the finished products, and now you're offering licensed manufacturing so that companies like ours can actually produce our own flexscreens in house and not purchase them from you. And so I'm curious, what drove that shift and what advantages does that create for the partners?
[00:11:13] Speaker C: Believe it or not, that was the business model that my partners and I put together. So my partners are mainly money guys. So this is prior to the merger and when we put together the business model, essentially having a Flex Screen plant in a box type of thing, that was our goal. But we had to do a couple things to get there. Right. The first is we had to create demand for our product. Right. No one's going to go and spend all kind of money on equipment and all of those types of things without having consumers want it on their windows or solving a lot of problems or whatever the case may be. The second thing that we had to do was we had to create that manufacturing line in a box type of thing. So when we partnered with Erdman Automation, that was another big defining moment for us because frankly, those guys are just geniuses. They just are. They came in, looked at our process, looked at regular screen processes that they had studied in the past. You know, they had looked at trying to automate aluminum screen production and they just simply couldn't do it. It's too problematic. It's not automation friendly. So when they looked at what we were doing, it's just the way that their minds work, right. These guys, they're just brilliant engineers.
And they came in, they're like, oh, yeah, we Know how to automate that. They came in, they sent a team in, they had their stopwatches. They were looking at all of our processes and everything. We went to dinner that evening with them. And truly, back of the napkin, like, literally took the placemat, the paper placemat, and started drawing stuff up. And Morgan, who's the owner of Erdman Automation, said, we can do this, and we can get a cycle time of 15 seconds or less, and we can do it with four people. And we're like, no way. And he's like, I know that we can.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:12:47] Speaker C: And when you take a product that has a lot of advantages out in the marketplace, right. And then you start automating it to the point where it is now less expensive for somebody to make themselves than the old way of doing things, you kind of have this perfect storm of opportunity. Now it's just a matter of going out and showing people that you know what that opportunity is. And again, kudos to the MI team. They saw this very, very early on. Mike and Matt are the ones who made the introductions to the Erdman team. Our success is tied so much into how Mitre helped us, it's not even funny. When we went through the merger, we went through the sale to Rightscreen, I actually called Mike and Matt and thanked them because we would not have gotten there without their support, because, again, they were the first national that came on. They made the introductions to Erdman that really created the automation for us to go into licensing. So we have a lot of gratitude and a lot of appreciation for who those guys are and who the Mitre team is. But the big thing, you know, when we looked at making the shift from manufacturing to licensing, the big thing was scale, Right? The product could only scale as fast as I could build manufacturing and as fast as I could build capacity. When we went into licensing, scaling no longer became a problem.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:05] Speaker C: Right now it's just, how fast can the equipment be built? You know, we could get more units out. The brand grew faster as well through that process.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: And the licensees got the benefits. Right. They can do this in house. They can do it cheaper than they could buy or make traditional screens. And they have the manufacturing on their floor. Compared to outsourcing to us or to, you know, Right. Screen or Quantics or one of the other companies
[00:14:30] Speaker B: we are sharing our expertise around all topics relating to the window and door industry. Whether you are a customer selling our products or a homeowner doing research, the Clear Impact podcast provides helpful content that makes an impact. Subscribe today wherever you Listen to podcasts.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. I think everybody likes to control their own destiny to some extent, right? And if you've got the floor space and you've got the manpower, and you know, like you said, they were able to reduce the manpower to produce these.
[00:14:59] Speaker C: We could not be more thankful to the Erdman team and the Mitre team if I had to drill down what made us successful. It's those two partnerships. 100%.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: That's amazing. That's so impressive. So we've talked a little bit about partnerships and the partnerships with MI and the partnerships with Erdman.
What mindsets and behaviors do you think consistently show up when you have partnerships that are successful like those?
[00:15:24] Speaker C: You know, I think the biggest thing is just like any relationship, right? Any successful relationship, you should put the needs of your partner ahead of your own needs, and you should be rooting for their success louder than you're rooting for your own success. And I have that with my family, with my wife, I have it with my team. I want nothing more than for my customers and my vendors to be successful. And I'm there to help. And that's very rare. Again, it's not self serving because if you do it for selfish reasons, it's manipulation. Right? That isn't a good partnership. Like, I've gone into some of your vendor meetings and they're like, look, what can we do to help you? A company that says that to their vendors, that's a different type of relationship than, hey, I need you to cut your margins down to, you know, razor thin. Because we want to save half a penny on every unit. It's a completely different mindset, and it's a completely different type of partnership, and it makes people want to go out of their way to help you, and it gives you grace when things don't go well. Right?
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: That's the other thing is, if I truly have your best interest in mind, and you have my best interest in mind, and something goes wrong, we're going to work together to solve that problem. It's not me versus you. It's like, how do we fix this? Whatever that takes.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: Right?
[00:16:38] Speaker C: And again, that's my DNA.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it lines up nicely with what we have. So Mitre has a list of guiding principles.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: And.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: And one of those main principles is profitable partnerships. You know, we want our customers to have margin so that they can be successful in their businesses, to sell to homeowners, and we want our vendors to be profitable so that we can continue to develop those great connections and those great relationships with Them. So a lot of companies talk about innovation, but not very many actually create that culture that allows for it. And so what do you think an innovation minded organization looks like?
[00:17:19] Speaker C: So I can only speak of my experience. Right. But we've been told that we're one of the most innovative companies in the industry. Right. So I think there's two things that I think are key to it. The first is we had a culture of failure. And what I mean by that is we encouraged our team to go out there and take risks and take chances. And not only do we encourage it, we insisted on it. And so of course, you know, we had our weekly staff meetings. You go through metrics and you go through all those types of things, but we talked about what did we do that didn't work this week, what did we try that we failed at, what is the risk that we took? And you know, whether it paid off or not. And again, from my experience, that's really rare. And I'm the biggest risk taker. Again, I'm not a gambler. Right. These are all intelligent risks. You know, if somebody takes a risk for the right reasons, again, it's not self serving. It's not something that they're doing to get over on somebody and it doesn't work out, they should still be applauded for taking that risk. Then we have to figure out what we learned from it. Then we make sure that the next time we do it, we're a little bit better educated. That's the first thing. The second thing is I made sure that we did not have a bunch of yes men sitting around the table. And again, that's a disease within corporate structure that I've seen over and over again. Sure, because you don't get anything done. Right. You just don't. Like, if everybody agrees with me sitting around our conference table, I don't need any of them. And I don't say that it's not being flippant, it's legitimate. And it's like, look, if you don't have a unique set of experiences and a lens that you're looking through that is different than mine, then you shouldn't be sitting at the table. I need people that don't think like me. I want to be the least intelligent person in that room of people that work with me. Like, I really feel that way. And I surrounded myself with people that were willing to speak up to the point where we actually had something that I took from. I was listening to a podcast and it was a gentleman who is on the special Forces. And they have this thing called the 10th man, which is essentially when they go and they put a plan together to go storm this fortress or whatever. Right. And they would do, you know, all this research and all these things, and everybody's sitting around the room nodding their heads up and down, going, yep, that's it. One person was assigned to argue the opposite. Even if they didn't feel that way, they were assigned to argue the opposite because what it did was it made everybody think. And now you have to defend your position.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: And so we instituted that we would go into meetings, especially planning meetings, when we're talking about taking risks and everybody's heads are nodding up and down, going, yep, yep, yep. We think that's a good idea. Okay, great. You are now the 10th man. And they all knew what that meant. And so they would just start pushing back against every assumption that we made. And there's so many times that just that exercise brought new ideas to the table that we hadn't thought of before. But then the other thing that it did, even prior to those meetings, was we all knew that somebody was going to be challenging our assumptions. So we came in better prepared. And so that preparation that was done ahead of time actually helped the ideas to flow better as well. And so I think those two things were really the keys to our innovation success. Having people that are willing to take chances and take risks, and we celebrate it. And then, you know, making sure that everybody had a voice and everybody had not only the ability, but was encouraged to bring tension to the conversations. Right. Healthy tension. I love healthy tension in an organization.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I love that. And I think that there are probably people that will disagree privately, but publicly not feel like they can vocalize that or their neck is on the line if they push back too often. So that's definitely creating that culture where people feel safe enough to disagree and to challenge.
[00:20:56] Speaker C: There's one caveat to all of that. You know, that the disagreement is when we're in the meetings, feel free to disagree. Once we make a decision, though, sure. We were all on board.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:05] Speaker C: And again, that's part of our DNA, is you and I might disagree, but at the end of the day, whatever decision comes from that room, we are all on board. Like, again, that disease of gossip and all of that stuff is just something that can. We had a much smaller organization, but that can ruin a culture of innovation. You know, you leave and all of a sudden you had three people that were in or gone. I can't believe we're doing this. You know what a mistake this is. You know that those type of things.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: Innovation gets stifled pretty quick when that happens.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Yeah. The principle, I think, is disagree and commit.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: Yes, Disagree and commit.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: I've heard that said.
So what advice would you give to organizations that are trying to build stronger supplier manufacturing relationships in today's market?
[00:21:50] Speaker C: So I think that we already touched on one.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:53] Speaker C: Is actually develop mutually beneficial relationships. Right. So it's not all one.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: And so making sure that one isn't taking advantage of the other is really important. And you had mentioned this. It's part of mitre's culture to make sure that everybody's successful. But I do think that that's really important. But then collaboration is another thing that I feel like there's not enough of it, where a customer goes to a vendor and says, hey, let's sit down and figure something out that, you know, we're going to benefit from and that's fantastic. But then you can take over to your other customers as well. And we understand that you're going to do that. We just want to make sure that we' get a little head start or something like that. Yeah, that collaboration is certainly important and again, you just don't see enough of it. You guys have some really smart people that work for you. You know, we have some really smart people that work with us. You know, what happens if we get them all in the same room and we tackle a problem that maybe has nothing to do with screens, but just we have a different viewpoint and us being willing to let you use those resources in whatever way you want to help you be successful, things like that will really propel our industry as well as our companies.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I love that. What do you see the next wave of innovation happening in the window and screen industry? Like, do you think it'll be around product or manufacturing or sustainability or automation or like. I don't know. Any thoughts on that?
[00:23:15] Speaker C: Now, again, I'm a little bit biased. Right. But I think in the short term, when I say short term, I'm talking about the next five years. I think automation is going to be a make or break moments for manufacturers in our industry. And when I say automation, I'm not just talking about machines. Right. AI is changing the world. It is really, really changing the world and it's going to change the way that we do business, whether companies want to admit it or not. And so again, those are two very general statements, but I think that there's going to be companies that die because they're not willing to invest in automation, that they're not willing to expand their use of the tools that are out there and that are growing faster than any of us realize.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think we're just on the cusp. Right. I think there's so much that we're to learn from AI.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: It is, but we've just scratched the surface. It's still fledgling, and the companies that go in strong with it and are willing to take the risks with it. Right. It's new, and so you have. There are some risks involved in it, but I've talked to some of our customers and they're like, nah, we're not going to have anything to do with AI. And I'm like, oh, man, you guys are going to get left behind.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:17] Speaker C: And so I'm sure that some of their employees behind the scenes are using it, but from the leadership side, they're not embracing it. And I think that that's a big mistake.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Yeah. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, we're just gonna keep riding our horses. We're not gonna get a car.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: Yes, that's exactly it.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: We just need to keep our eyes open and try to keep using the tools that are available to us.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, Joe, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your experience today. I love all the stories that you shared and wish we had time for more. I'm thankful that we could spend some time together today.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: I am, too. Thanks so much for the.
And I hope that we brought a little bit of value to the Mitre team. That's why we do stuff like this. And I really appreciate the partnerships that we have with all of the Mitre brands.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: That's awesome. Have an amazing afternoon.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
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