Don’t wait to diversify your offerings

By Emma Peterson. 

Why the market is primed for you to expand your portfolio to include coatings. 

In a new Coffee Conversations sponsored by ICP Group, Megan Ellsworth got the chance to sit down with an expert panel to talk about diversifying your offerings to include coatings. This panel included Jonny Walker, who has over 40 years of experience in the roofing industry; Anthony Martin, the territory manager for APOC in the Southwest; Thomas O’Toole, the vice president of Florida-based contractor RMS Orlando; and Howard Piper, the president of the architectural firm PBA Design Group.  

Across the board, all members of this panel emphasized that the current industry's market is primed for coatings. Howard explained, “Coatings really are a great way to go. We encourage our clients not to wait until the roof is worn out to replace the roof, that's expensive, but consider 10 to 15 years out, depending on the condition of the roof, begin putting coatings on there. Maintain the roof rather than replace it.”  

This has a variety of benefits that are especially attractive in today’s market. One of which is the simple fact that restoring and maintaining a roof will save the building owner money in the long run. Johnny elaborated, “The sustainability of the roof system is huge in this market. Roofing materials are not getting any cheaper. Just continually, it's more and more expensive, so tearing it off, putting it in a landfill is not a great option anymore.” Thomas added to that thought, saying, “The conventional roof system, the price increases that we've seen, availability issues, there are multiple components that go into each one of those roof systems. And maybe you have some available, maybe you have some that aren't, and some are increasing in price. So coatings are a great opportunity to provide something with less volatility and offer a similar warranty to help out the building owners.” 

Because of these reasons, coatings have recently experienced a rise in popularity and demand, making it a perfect moment for contractors to consider expanding their offerings to include it. Anthony shared a bit about the value of this diversification for the contractor, saying, “Times are tight now, right? Locally, we hear a lot from our roofing contractor partners about slower schedules and where they used to be out six, seven weeks; they're out six or seven days if they're lucky. If you don't have a fluid applied restoration team or it's something that you're not familiar with, now's the time to learn because now those projects are going to become more available as building owners look for more affordable ways to extend lives of their roofs.” Johnny added, “We're in a volatile climate. We're navigating tariffs, we never know what product shortages there might be, those types of things. We went through that where you couldn't get single ply, you couldn't get ISO board insulation board, resin supplies. And what we saw during the supply chain issues where they couldn't do a re-roof, they couldn't put a single ply on, they went with the restoration and repair options.” 

In addition to being able to take on more projects by entering a new sector of the market and avoiding supply chain issues, these types of coating projects also open up the avenue for roof maintenance programs. Howard explained, “Everybody that has a building has a roof and at some point that roof needs to be repaired. I think repairs are probably one of the higher profit areas of a company. A lot of competition in replacing or putting on new roofs, but repairing, everybody needs that and there's a huge demand for people to maintain the roofs and help them get the most life they can out of those roofs.” 

Read the transcript, Listen to the full episode or Watch the recording to hear more of this expert panel’s insights on diversifying to include coatings.