The Convergence of the Roofing and Solar Industries
Tell us a little bit about CertainTeed and your position with the organization.
CertainTeed®, headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, has helped form the building merchandise industry for over 110 years. Founded in 1904 as General Roofing Manufacturing Company, the organization receives its call, CertainTeed, from its unique slogan, “Quality Made Certain, Satisfaction Guaranteed.” Today, CertainTeed is a leading North American logo of outdoor and indoor building merchandise, including roofing, siding, fence, decking, railing, trim, insulation, drywall, ceilings, and sun.
CertainTeed is a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain®, one of the world’s largest and oldest building products corporations. It has 6,900 employees and more than 60 manufacturing facilities at some stage in the USA and Canada. CertainTeed had approximately $ 4 billion in overall sales in 2018. As Product Manager, I serve in both an R&D and marketing function, chargeable for new product improvement activities and the commercialization of CertainTeed’s sun products.
Recently, we have seen more big roofing companies become more involved in the sun. Why do you observe this?
First, there’s the essential recognition that residential solar can be a sizeable part of electricity’s destiny. Building from there, there’s a natural alignment and synergy between sun and roofing for the value chain’s duration, organically pulling the two industries collectively. As the sun industry matures, merchandise is getting less difficult to install, and software has simplified the gadget layout and income technique, both of which have enabled greater roofing contractors to participate in the sun marketplace. At the same time, we see solar installers adopting roofing, particularly in extra-advanced solar markets. I suppose there’s also the belief that as solar expenses come down, there’s a greater possibility for a sun roofing product to succeed. Add all this up, and it makes sense for roofing businesses to get involved in the sun in some manner, shape, or form.
Does it feel like a new roof and solar panels can be mounted simultaneously using the same contractor?
It makes perfect sense. Since sun products are usually warranted for 25 years, the quality time to install solar panels is a while, or as soon as it is viable, a new roof is hooked up. From the patron’s attitude, finding one contractor who can install simplify simplifies the hoppingthe experience. Note that I’m defining “purchasing enjoy” to increase from setting up through the roofing and solar systems’ service life because if there are any issues down the road, there’s no finger-pointing between the two contractors. Better, but if each roofing and solar structure is furnished and warranted with the aid of a single manufacturer and hooked up by an unmarried contractor, there’s even greater value to the client. And from an installer’s perspective, promoting two merchandise rather than one now improves the generation of their sales. It affects price efficiencies, which they can use to enhance their profitability and pass to the consumer. In this scenario, everybody wins.
What are the blessings and disadvantages of installing sun and roofing collectively?
The blessings of putting in sun and roofing collectively are better assurance protections, greater constant supply chains, product innovation, cheaper pricing, and more client satisfaction. The handiest downside is that because roofing contractors and sun installers have worked in distinct silos for seeing you later, there may be gaining knowledge of the curve in terms of the expertise of each product itself and the sales and setting up the method for each. The purchaser expects whoever they talk to about their home challenge to be knowledgeable about and ready for the products being hooked up.
We are in the early stages of solar roofing materials, such as solar shingles. How do you see this gambling out for roofers and solar installers?
Solar roofing merchandise has, undoubtedly, been around for many years, and while beyond forecasts have proven them becoming a sizeable share of the sun product marketplace, that hasn’t materialized for some of the motives. With the movement inside the trades coming together, one of the obstacles to wider adoption of sun roofing merchandise is disappearing. There’s sincerely a client hobby in sun roofing, and contractors with solar and roofing talents are nicely positioned to capitalize on this hobby. Even though the attention to solar roofing has elevated appreciably in the last few years, it will take hard paintings, innovation, and time to grow to be a widespread part of the solar marketplace. With that said, I wouldn’t ignore sun roofing proper now – masses of possibilities are obtainable in modern affairs.
