Editor's Message

The Positive Feedback Loop

“The sooner a project is completed, the sooner it can be sold or leased. That’s a real opportunity cost that means something to owners when I sell them on using our products.” Ken Cloyd, chairman of the board of California TrusFrame, said this to me a few years back during an interview for an article focused on innovation in the industry.

 

Labor Pains

“All the builders and framers I talk to out there say the same thing: they can’t find enough guys to do what they want to do.” Those are the thoughts of Jason Blenker, president of Blenker Building Systems. If national surveys and media reports are accurate, the sentiment is shared by most of the construction industry across the country.

Illustrating Value

The worth of one’s efforts is sometimes a difficult thing to communicate to others, whether they be customers, employees or, in SBCA’s case, members. It helps to have a concrete example that illustrates the value your work provides.

 

If You Build It, Promotion Will Follow

In this issue, we take a look at the Framing the American Dream (FAD) project and the value it has for component manufacturers (CMs). This FAD overview lays the foundation for future articles in which we’ll go into greater depth on specific benchmarking data. A comment from Jack Dermer, president of American Truss, sums it up: “Now that the latest study is completed, the next step is for component manufacturers to look at their own markets and find different ways to talk about the study so it’s applicable to their own unique situations.”

 

Quality Trumps Quantity

I recently talked with Gene Frogale (Allied Systems) and Jack Dermer (American Truss Systems) about their experiences at the International Builders Show (IBS) in January. 

Brace Yourself!

Thank you to everyone who took time to comment on the new look and feel of the January/February issue of SBC Magazine.

New Year, New Beginnings

We’ve been kicking around the idea of changing things up in the pages of SBC Magazine for quite a while. The changes you see in this first issue of 2016 are the culmination of countless conversations with component manufacturers, suppliers and the general readership, as well as a lot of strategizing on how we can best help you keep abreast of all that is going on in the structural building components industry. Ultimately, our desire is for this to be your magazine, full of content written collaboratively with your peers.