New Pod and Stunning Closure
The latest edition of the From the Fabricator podcast is now live! This month I am joined by four very cool people, all with some excellent stories to tell.
- I kick it off with Chris Dolan of Guardian Glass and I love the perspective Chris brings; he is so talented in so many areas of our world, there’s always an angle he brings that gets me, and on this podcast he brings up a few.
- Then Jodi and Dan Martinez of All Star Glass join me, and they blew me away. Talk about a couple that does things the right way. The way they dealt with the pandemic and kept rolling was just one impressive item of many we covered.
- Last I chopped it up with the great Bill Daubmann of MY Shower Door and D3. Bill is an incredible businessman, and also an inspiration as someone who absolutely figures out a way to get it done and then keeps going. Also a great guy too; really cares about our world.
A lot of interesting tidbits on this one―thank you for checking it out!
Elsewhere…
Apogee Restructures
The Apogee news on closing the Statesboro, Georgia, facility and Velocity still has me stunned, especially the Velocity portion. Just did not see that coming at all. I was in Texas for TEXpo and people were raving about Velocity, and I know they had extremely talented people running that organization.
Obviously, there’s new management at the top of Apogee and there’s always that angle where the new have to come in and make their mark and I guess this is it. Plus being a public company, if the shareholders want to see some action, this certainly can goose the stock price. I can grasp the logic on the Georgia plant but on Velocity I am still stunned.
Building Starts Hotspots
Where were the hot spots during the first half of 2021? Dodge broke it all down and some of the metro areas may surprise you. Good read.
Central State Glass Launches
Congrats to Rob Kassabaum for the launch of Central State Glass in Florida. Rob bought the non-auto glass options from K&K Glass and has set out on his own with a nice head start. Rob is a good man, with tons of experience in our industry, and will do a nice job with this business. Happy for him and looking forward to seeing what he does in the marketplace!
Architect Magazine’s Product Showcase
Massive pet peeve of mine… so “Architect” magazine sent out a big email calling for new product entries for a special section they are doing. To submit your product you had to pay $125 for processing. Then in the body of the email it noted that you are not guaranteed to be mentioned or included in the section and no money back.
To me this is filthy. The money is not the issue―that’s tiny, but it really is the scammy hook here. I know space and bandwidth is limited, but if you are charging for it, at the very least have an area of links of those that didn’t make it. To me this is a weak cash grab preying on smaller building product players and startups who don’t have the connections out there or the major budgets to take out full-scale ads (In our current “pay to play” ad world).
And playing this as special editorial section while charging for it, is pitiful, but it’s not surprising. This magazine obviously knows people will pay it and not care because the opportunity to get in front of an architect for many building product folks is the great goal in their life. Throwing any sort of money away for that hope is worth it, I guess.
Today in Trades Podcast
Last this week: Another good podcast to add to your rotation? Jim Evans of Bid Clips hosts one called “Today in Trades” and it’s a great range of subjects on the subcontractor side of things. He does delve into auto glass and some areas that aren’t typical to the reader of this blog, but overall really good stuff. I’ve become a big fan of Jim’s―he’s a GlassNerd ™ through and through!
