(Mallory) Today I am sitting down with Paul Conners, President of Conners Sales Group to learn more about his partnership as a sales agent with Elemex. Thank you for joining me today Paul.
(Paul) A pleasure to be with you here today. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about Elemex.
(M) How would you describe your relationship with the Elemex team?
(P) The experience that I have had with Elemex so far is the fact that you have very seasoned young professional people. They are trained by an older generation of Elemex staff and mentored and that translates really well to sales people. We are actually hundreds of miles away from the plant and so when you are talking to the Elemex people, you are requesting things from them, it is important to have a professional detailed approach as you have from the Elemex staff.
(M) How has your partnership with Elemex enabled you and your company to better service the architecture & design community?
(P) The design community deals with hundreds if not thousands of different products and so their knowledge, their deep dive knowledge of each product is pretty overwhelming and this is where they come to rely on people like myself and the team at Elemex. Elemex has done their homework, they have put together tested product data; they have put together professional brochures. They’ve put together the service on the front end to help the architect with their design details and engineering and this all translates into better drawings for the architectural and design community.
(M) What has been the most fun and rewarding aspect for you and your company in partnering with the Elemex team?
I think one of the fun and rewarding things about Elemex is the fact that they have a young and vibrant staff and that energy is translated in our direction. It is contagious, and also, you know, the Canadians, they know how to drink beer and so we could learn something from all of that. I think it has been fun to work with Elemex. They have an edge to them that really is contagious as I said earlier so it has been fun.
(M) What kind of success have you seen in the market with Ceramitex and what has been the response of the architecture and design community?
(P) The A & D community has been extremely receptive to Ceramitex. They are looking for an innovative product. They are looking for something that is cutting edge and Ceramitex meets the criteria. It is as close to natural stone as you can get. What Elemex has done is to attach it to what they call a Unity system which is the chassis and anchors back into the building. And when you show the details, those complete details to the A & D community, they perk up right away and notice that this thing has been thought through very well. The most important thing though is this has long-term durability, and that long-term durability translates well to the owners or the people who will occupy and maintain that building. If they go with products that aren’t as durable, and have to be maintained continuously, that presents a problem both to the design community and as well as the owners. They are not going to get that with Ceramitex.
(M) What are your thoughts about future opportunities for you and your company with the Ceramitex Facade System?
(P) We think the future opportunities for Ceramitex facades is tremendous. The market is really going toward a more organic look. Also, unlike 20 years ago where most buildings were built of curtain wall and glass, today it is a hybrid approach of curtain wall, window systems and cladding. And a majority of the wall systems today are probably equally cladding as they are compared to glass. So that puts us in a good position to supply a Ceramitex facade. The other thing is that we are here, I can’t speak for other areas of the country, but we are here in the Washington DC area where many of the buildings are government buildings, owned and occupied by the government. From day one they are expecting a durable material and they want that look to maintain and to look as good as it did from the first time it was installed and through the decades that they will have that building.
(M) Paul, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak with me. Keep up the great work!
