Episode 109 - Window Installation Revolution: Inside Pella’s Steady Set™ Innovation
#109 | Jenn Teutken | Window Installation Revolution: Inside Pella’s Steady Set™ Innovation
From window installs to wellness trends, we’re covering it all. Mark is joined by Jenn Tuetken, the Director of Innovation & Design, who brought you Pella’s innovative Steady Set™ system. They talk R&D, jobsite safety, reducing install times, and how a small insight led to a big industry shift. Plus: IBS trade show stories, cold plunge culture, and the power of storytelling in product design. If you’ve ever wondered how the pros actually innovate—this one’s for you.
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About Pella Corporation
Pella Corporation has been creating a brighter future for its customers, communities, and team members since 1925. Recognized as an industry leader in innovation, Pella designs and manufactures windows and doors for residential homes and commercial applications. The company is headquartered in Pella, Iowa, and employs more than 10,000 team members across 18 manufacturing sites and 250 showrooms across the country.
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Jenn Tuetken 00:04
The only challenges we really ran into were, there was building delays or the rough opening wouldn't be prepped the right way, so we weren't able to test the install at that point in time or so. It was more the challenges you guys deal with daily, which is like, Are my trade lining up? Is the build lining up, and it's just slotting in appropriately in the time time there that was our biggest challenge. But no, it was great, because installers were willing to have conversations with us. Our distribution partners were fantastic at also letting us, kind of go through them to find installers and be on their job sites. And so
Mark D. Williams 00:41
it turns out, if you ask people for their opinion, they're happy to give it to you. The problem is, is when people don't ask for your opinion and you give it. So it's really just the role reversal today. On the careers grow podcast, we had Jen duken from Pella. She's an industrial engineer, and I want to bring her on. I've met her a few times at the International builder show, and just really talk about what four years of innovation looks like for a company. As builders in the industry, we're all partnering with companies that do innovation that we get to utilize to build our lovely homes for our clients. And I really want to understand the process, how a company walks through the innovation and then really how it's how it's marketed to us, but really how it helps us as builders. So without further ado, here's Jen from Pella. Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today, I'm joined with a special guest out of Pella, Iowa. I've got Jen tutkin from the R D department, and we are going to talk about all things innovation today. I'm really excited to have you on Jen,
Jenn Tuetken 01:44
let's do it. I'm so excited. Thank you for having me so we, a year ago,
Mark D. Williams 01:49
you guys, released the study set window, and most builders that listened to this either saw our videos, or Brad Levitt or a number of other builder influencers that have been publishing about it, talking about it, but it's been kind it's kind of a game changer for a lot of reasons. And you guys won, I was, I believe it was product of the show last year at 24 is that
Jenn Tuetken 02:09
right? I would love to have won that product of the show, but we actually won Best of window into our category.
Mark D. Williams 02:15
Okay? I mean, Potato, potato, I think it's the same, yeah. So they still won it. It was, it was really cool, because I think we love interaction. And I think what Pella did was really smart last year is you come off the escalators from the tram, if anyone's been out to the international builder show, and they have the outdoor village, and you had a huge booth set up. And I, and I am, I'm a builder who's not handy. I'm a builder that markets. And I mean, I know building, but I'm not the I didn't grow up put installing Windows or doing roofing, and so it was sort of but I am very competitive. And it was really fun because Jesse Kath, another builder from Minnesota, yeah, and we got to race, and it was, it was so much fun. I came back a second day only because I had to beat Brad Levitt. And it was just a riot. But it just shows how intuitive that you essentially have made the install. And we'll, I think we'll go back to the very beginning. We'll let you announce yourself. But I, I want to just give the audience some preface of how this all came to be, and the reaction at the show obviously best in the window and door category, for a reason. I mean, it was kind of a big game changer. What was your experience? Because I think I met you the first time in person at the show last year. What was when you were gonna walk through like? How this started? 456, however, many years ago, these innovations started happening. But when you're at the show, you've done all the hard work, you're showcasing it. How does it feel to be sort of an inventor, where you're releasing your product to the wild? Oh,
Jenn Tuetken 03:39
I mean, there's nothing as amazing and terrifying at the same time, except maybe having a kid, right? You're like, super excited, but you're also like, we're going into a world of unknowns here. But you've done your research, you've done your work, you've done the hard testing to make sure that, hey, we've got a good product. We feel really good about overall. We know we have something unique. We know there's desire on the installer and also the builder end, and so it was exciting to finally get it into the world and see what the raw reaction was like. Because up until that point, we'd done a lot of research and working with partners to see what their reaction was, but this was truly like an unfiltered like no NDAs were in place anymore, and we got to just see how people were responding. And it was tremendous. Like you were there, the booth was buzzing the entire time, and we were not in on the main show floor, which is inside the convention center. That's the Times Square of international builder show. But if you came out to our booth, you would have thought you were in Times Square. It was crazy busy. People were everywhere. People were hands on, interactive to your point, which is exactly how we designed the booth. Because a lot of booths at IBS, they're great showcases of tremendous capabilities in terms of. Size and shapes and colors right of windows, doors and everything else that they have there. And because we weren't launching just something that looks great and you assume performs well like a normal window and door, but this is where you actually interact with the product at a professional level. We had to do hands on, and people really enjoyed it. Like I we were walking there this year, right at international builder show, and so many people came up to me because I was wearing this shirt that says study set on it, and they're like, where's your booth? Like, that was so much fun. Last year we were doing giveaways, and it was just, it was buzzing. It was, it was such a joy and just a tremendous honor to not only win the award, but also just the general feedback we were getting was so positive.
Mark D. Williams 05:46
I think the thing that was so brilliant about the design of even the booth itself, was, anytime you invite interaction, people want people want to be invited. Now, some people walk up to a store window. They just want to look at it. They people don't like to be sold, if you will. But people like to try stuff on. People like to touch it and feel it, and especially at a build a show, like people are there to learn new things. And so what was so wise on top of it was having was it rusty? Cath, he's in a Minnesota announcer, actually, for the wild. I actually had him sign my hat, which is hilarious. And he was like an announcer. It was almost like a boxing fight, like weighing in at 191 pounds out of Excelsior, Minnesota. So it was like you had kind of this cool theatrical vibe to it. But anytime you have a competition, and there's lots of builders that know what they're doing and know how to install and then you have a lot of people are just competitive, like me. But the genius behind this study set is it kind of, you don't have to be a genius to install it, and you can install it fast. And like some of the stats, if I recall was like, an average window is usually a two to three person team out in the field. You've got lifts. It might take 20 minutes, I think the average time is nine minutes and 40 seconds to completely install a window from the inside of the house. That was kind of the game changer. Yes,
Jenn Tuetken 06:57
it's incredibly fast, and international builder show, we we didn't necessarily ask everyone to tape the rough openings right, or like to do all the tape on the outside for flashing for the true time, but head to head, people were going and finishing in like minutes. It was like we had our own internal records of, hey, we installed it four or five minutes. Like we were really beating our chest that we were the pros because we'd done it so many times, but they were kicking our butt, yes, and it was so much fun to watch. And like, to your point, the head to head made it super fun. It also it allowed us a really great platform to amplify, kind of through social channels too, because people were kind of rooting for people, like, hey, I really want this person to win. Or, like, they knew another show was coming up, say, JLC live or build show down in Austin. And people were coming just to basically, well,
Mark D. Williams 07:54
it's so funny to say that. So like, I'm good friends with Brad and he, I think I because you sent us the window ahead of time. So we, I had the window, like, two months before IBS, a little small one, to do some, you know, digital content and do some stuff in our show homes. And I know Brad had the same one, so we at least got to see it. See the flip down fins. We'll go into some of this maybe a little bit later in the podcast. But then when we get out there, I just happened on day one, I went and did it. I sent the video to Brad. Of course, Brad one upped me, and I was like, Okay, I can't let that stand. So to your point, it's like it created this competition. But again, that buzz is kind of viral, like most products don't have something like that, and so anyways, or kudos to the marketing team and sort of the innovation to draw people, and it's no different than, like on a stage, if you hear someone speak, that's great, and it could be wonderful, but if that person can engage the audience like ask questions, it just makes the audience feel like they're part of the performance. And I feel you guys did a phenomenal job in Stadium Village. In fact, I walked through this year and it felt just kind of lonely. It didn't have the same buzz that it had the year before. But obviously I'm a bit biased too, so yeah,
Jenn Tuetken 08:57
totally fair. It was great having anyone and everyone come through there. And, yeah, we'll do it again sometime.
Mark D. Williams 09:05
Well, and one last IBS thing, and you so we have to tell the train story to the audience, because I think this is just hilarious. So I'm I have custom made Pella shoes, which I'm telling still. They are, they're pretty. They're like, I think there's only two ever made. And Jesse Cath has the other pair, another Minnesota builder, and they were a gift from our owner up here, from Peter Martin up at Pella Northland for a couple years ago. Anyway, the amount, by the way, from a complete marketing aside, anyone who wants marketing advice like make your best clients like a pair of custom Jordans in your company's colors, I cannot possibly tell you. I mean, we're talking in the hundreds, if not 1000s, of people that comment on those silly shoes whenever I wear them. It's it's better than a bolt billboard. It's better than paid marketing. I mean, that the organic traffic of those shoes around the world is amazing. So I'm wearing it on day one of IBS this year, 25 and I'm in the. I'm in the train and I'm talking to camera, if I was talking to some builders from Montana, or if I was with the college kids I was, I was talking to somebody, so it's kind of distracted, and somebody came up behind me, and they're like, nice pellet shoes. And someone had actually done that to me the day before and asked to buy them, and, and, and I said, Sorry, they're one of one. I'm not selling them. And, and I sent a text to Peter later, just kind of laughing about it. But so then day two, someone comments like, nice pillow shoes or something like that. I made some flippant remark. I can't remember what, exactly what I said, you were just really nice. You were like, thanks, yeah. I was like, thanks. But I remember coming up to you after so it was you. So the the moral of the story is, like I did not recognize you at in your in the second year that you that, that you were from Pella, commenting on your own Pella shoes. And I don't know if you you can tell your side of the story, then I walk up to you, and then later you're like, Oh, hey, it's Jen took it. And I'm like, No way. Like, I had no idea. And so it was just, it is this really funny moment when it wasn't expected. So totally,
Jenn Tuetken 10:56
totally, yeah. I mean, my my story was like, I knew who you were. Obviously I was on the inside there and saw the pile of shoes. And so yeah, you were, I rudely interrupted, admittedly, because you were in a good conversation. And I was just like, hey, nice pile of shoes. And you're like, hey, thanks. And then you, like, kept talking to your friends. And I was like, that's cool. No big deal. And then I was like, I'm gonna make this really awkward now. And, you know, you maybe don't recognize me, but I'm Jen from Bella, like, we launched study set last year, and you were like, Oh my gosh, you guys are so sorry. And I felt bad because I was like, I kind of put him on the spot, and you were such a trooper about it. But no, it was, it's great. And that's kind of the right, that's the cool part of IBS is like, you just get to network and see everybody time and time again, you
Mark D. Williams 11:46
bump into people between the podcast and just social media sometimes, actually, I've talked to other podcasters as well, but other just people in the social media game and just anybody. Frankly, we spend so much time admiring work from builders from around the country. Some of us are paid to do it, but even if you're not, you're still admiring people's work. And now I have a really hard time figuring out if I've met people in real life, or if I No, I'm serious, or if I've or if I've interacted with their social media so often that I then think I have met them in real life. And so sometimes they'll be like, hey, it's great to meet you, Joe. Like, Man, I'm a big fan of your work. And like, Have we met before in person? I can't remember if we have or not. Like, we both are aware of who each other are, but it's, it's becoming this, this world is getting a lot smaller through social media. And I know there's lots of I have young kids, and so my plan is to keep them off social media until they're 40. But anyway, my point is is, like, there's a lot of negatives in social media, but there's a lot of huge positives, especially in the business world, of how it used to be for ideas back in that let's call it 70s, 80s, whenever Architectural Digest or some big magazines, and they're still big, but you'd get the magazine, you rip it out, and it would take a while for, let's say, ideas from the coast to make their way into the Midwest. Right now, somebody posts something cool in Japan or Sweden or war ever, and man, in 24 hours, it could be like the new hottest thing in, like, Minnesota. Like, Great, let's roll with it. And so the speed of the speed of transformation is stylistically, and what, how it's evolving. Building is pretty wild, 110%
Jenn Tuetken 13:14
and both on like, it's cool to watch builders evolve in their styles, right, and the products they're using. The other selfish part, from an innovation perspective, is we're always looking to see, what are the new trends? How are people using our product differently? And so many people are putting up great content now that you can just kind of peer into a day in the life and kind of what we did with install in certain ways, where you we kept seeing same problems over and over again, both online and in person, and it was like someone has to take a stand, someone has to take a risk and say, We can do things differently for the installer, right? And that's really where study set came from. But what's cool is a lot of those insights, and we get feedback too after we launched on the innovation like, what questions do people have? How do they need help? What, where isn't stuff working like that? Feedback is super valuable for an innovation team, because I'd love to say that I'm the smartest person in the world, but it's not realistic, and it's not right, and honestly, like, we have to learn from our customers, and that's exactly what we're doing all day. We just have our listening ears on. Let's
Mark D. Williams 14:27
go back to the beginning. How long you've been at Pella, where you came from, your background, and so, I mean, the main reason I wanted to have you on is just, I, I'm just, I'm sort of enamored with engineering and innovation, and as a builder, certainly, we're creative people, and we align ourselves with architects and designers. And so I think as a field, we're more creative maybe than sometimes we give ourselves credit for maybe not obviously ourselves as a team approach. It's that we assemble a team to create a beautiful home in many different facets, form and function. We're constantly at one. With each other and budget, but then we're aligning ourselves with technologies and products that are innovative. Someone has to create them, and I have not in my 20 year career given a lot of thought to sometimes someone will release a really cool product, like, well, that's awesome, but I've never asked the question, like, how did that come to be? And I've never had the platform of the microphone, in this case, to really ask the question. And so I was really excited to have you on, because I really want to dive deep on, how does a company like Pella, it's been around as long as you guys have. How does innovation happen a big company? I'm a small company. So I like to think of like NASA coming up with some really cool to land on the moon or duct tape. You get all these offshoots, like on your way to solving one thing, you solve five other problems. And so I'd love to hear. I really want to dive deep on how do these ideas even come up in a corporation? How do they get listened to? What is the process that you have to go through to innovate? And just, I kind of want to walk the audience through that, because I think it's really interesting. Our field, like all fields, are radically changing, and who we partner with is a big part of it. This episode is brought to you by adaptive. For over two years now, I've been using adaptive. It's an incredible game changer. It's AI technology based. It helps you with bill pay. And as a builder, there's very few things at Angular subs, more than not being paid on time. Well, those days are gone. Not only do you know exactly where you are, but you can pay people through your ACH channels, making draws extremely quick with one click of a button, which used to take hours, my office staff is now able to generate a draw to the bank or to the client in literally seconds. The thing that I appreciate the most about adaptive is their ability to keep changing. We've given them three or four feedbacks on things that we need as builders, and within just a few months those they're rolling those things out. This is saving us hours per week and days per month in terms of our efficiency. If you're looking to upgrade your business, I'd highly recommend adaptive. You can reach out to them@adaptive.com or listen to the curious builder podcast episode 15 or episode 80, where we dive into their origin story. Let's start at the beginning. How long you've been at Pella, and how'd you get
Jenn Tuetken 17:11
there? Yeah, I've been at hella eight and a half years now, and time has totally flown. So my background is industrial design, which is what I like to think of, sort of a blend between art and engineering. So it's grounded in solving customer problems, human problems, doing deep research to understand them, but then coming up with a new solution that solves that problem, that's innovative, different, easier to use, looks better, right? There's a variety of things, and by no means is that a discipline that can do it all on its own. It's a discipline that really brings together research and marketing and engineering and manufacturing knowledge. And so I joined Pella eight years ago as an industrial designer on the innovation team, and at the time it was newly formed as a centralized focus area before that. I mean, Pella just celebrated its 100 year anniversary, and innovation has been a cornerstone of the brand. From the very beginning, we were the first ones to launch the role screen, which is really how the company was founded. We had the deluxe casement come after that. We had blinds between the glass fold away cranks Impervia, which is a fiberglass material This proprietary to Pella. So we have a long history of innovation, but about eight, nine years ago, actually, probably nine years ago now, the leadership team took a step back and said, How do we double down on innovation and make it more of a consistent cadence that we launch on regularly, rather than kind of relying on our Corporate Engineering team who are doing tremendous work on the existing product lines and optimizing them and expanding sizes and stuff like that. How do we start to get a team that introduces kind of the wild and crazy ideas? Honestly, you think of these big blue sky disruptors type stuff, and that's part of our responsibility. It's not all of our responsibility. But eight years ago, we formed the team, and the team was comprised of consumer insights, industrial design, marketing that was kind of the front wheel of the corporate team. And then we had technical experts. So we have, it's called The Pella Innovation Incubator. It's our own innovation lab that's housed in the original manufacturing plant at Pella. And we have a team of engineers that sit out there create prototypes and new designs, and basically have any and every prototyping machine you can think of. So that team has CNC machines, laser cutters, welding wood shop. We have injection molders,
Mark D. Williams 19:51
3d printers too. Of course, we've got, when we were there, we got to go into the cold the cold chain. Remember I did that funny video where I'm from the northeast, from the south. I hate the heat, he hates the cold. And so we, we're just obviously celebrating that Pella has to put windows in my climate. This winter, we had a couple, think we had a couple weeks of minus 25 temperature. Windshield was minus 35 and below. And obviously Arizona is, I mean, it might as well be on the center of the Sun. I can't stand that heat. So anyway, it was sort of celebrating this. The R and D lab was super cool to be a part of and see the stuff that happens behind the scenes. You hear about a think tank, you know how who has the ideas? Is it like a whiteboard people are and walk me through this regular cadence thing. It's almost every couple years we expect something to come from Apple have a product launch. It seems like you're adopting some sort of a regular cadence, but go back, where do all the ideas come from? And how does that process start? Let's, I guess. Let's keep it specific to study set in general. At what point was this a thing that you what problem were you trying to solve? How did the idea, how was it brought up and identified? And I'd love to hear, kind of its journey of sort of being handed on the baton, or like a relay, like, how did it get to the end?
Jenn Tuetken 21:02
It was absolutely a relay. So innovation, the ideas, are really sourced by going on the job site in people's homes through surveys, asking them questions. What problems do you have? What drives you crazy about your windows? We're looking at codes and compliance to understand what regulatory challenges are coming our way. So we're trying to just have, like a nice, broad landscape of anyone who's going to come in contact with our product. What problems do they have? How could we solve them and or what unseen problems do they have that we could also solve? So what I mean by that specific to study set. Install is a fascinating world, right? Like, there's lots of install methods, there's lots of install accessories, there's lots of systems out there. Most of them are installed either as a block frame, or you're doing them from the outside to you just put them up the outside weather barrier, and you're screwing them in that way. And it's a great process. We've been doing it for a long time, right? It's something that I think became industry standard around 40 years ago, and everyone's adopted it. But that always took the approach of, how do we design an install system for the building system, which is important, because obviously, we're part of the total envelope. We're not just a standalone product like a couch. And the approach we took there was different, because for the first time, we said, why don't we go understand the human who's actually installing the product? And what gets a little challenging there is installers aren't the ones who are foot in the bill for windows and doors, right? But our product is only as good as the install, and when you take a look across the industry, you have major challenges of labor shortages. Our products are getting really big, which means they're getting really heavy and kind of tough to maneuver around. A job site, you have most of the work happening outside with weather conditions, people are on ladders. So in general, there's some unsafe scenarios where people are getting into and you're seeing accidents happen, right? And also, we have so many different install systems that at times it can be very difficult to train and understand them. And windows and doors aren't like those installs aren't something you go to school for and get certified on. It's really a on the job type training, apprenticeship style trade. And so we had to take a look at human behaviors that were occurring in the job site to really understand where the problems lie. And so we had a research team comprised of design and engineering and deployed them into the field to follow installers for three months exclusively. So they were on the job sites. They were watching. They were asking questions, being curious, like, what's going on here? How can we solve problems for them? And admittedly, we didn't have like this. We didn't send them out with a targeted problem to solve, and saying, like, hey, how do you add on clips to make this system simpler? Like, it was really generic in terms of, hey, go start to understand the single family new installer persona and the activities they're doing on a regular basis. And come back to us and say, How can we optimize? How can we make this better? How can we do it differently and drive additional value? So in
Mark D. Williams 24:37
some ways, it's similar. Rather than trying to solve a specific problem, you're really just trying to get to know the subject at such an intimate level that what you create, I mean, you ended, I would, I don't want to give it away, but at the end, I'm very curious, like, I could give you my perception of what I've heard of a number of things you've sort of solved that I suspect was not your primary goal, but because you've solved some of them, it's kind of been a. Game Changer. And I think that really speaks to when you get to know more so than just like the black and white lines, but the color the spirit of a situation. And I'm speaking more in analogies now at this point, like with people, I think are a great illustration, right? There's a favorite quote of mine that sort of relates to this, which is, people forget what you say, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And so that feeling, this is obviously an analogy, but you know it, there's there's a the more you understand something, the better you can obviously explain it. I've heard before, too that to be considered a master. Can you simplify teaching this? The simpler you can make it. When you say it, that means that is like, your true definition of like, your your mastery of the subject, whether it's math or science or whatever it might be. And so that's sort of what appeals to me, while you're sort of, were they in lab coats? Were they in white lab coats? Because that would be like, very like, like, looking at mice running through a little building.
Jenn Tuetken 25:54
I wish it were that scientific. No, they were jeans. They've got their like, weather jackets on babies, like, maybe an iPhone. Like,
Mark D. Williams 26:03
actually, I want to back up for a second. How did, how did it get decided that this was going to be like, go back before you even sent these observation teams out, how many other things were on the topic? Or at this point, you don't even know what the topic is. You're like, let's just go observe people and then come out and figure out after, like, I'm just curious how many other things were on this innovation board that you're like, that's the one we're going after.
Jenn Tuetken 26:25
So we're tasked with having a really, very valuable pipeline of ideas for the organization. And that essentially means we have to have a ton of ideas in our hopper that can be worked on and developed depending on the shift of strategy or the shift of the environment, right? And so it's really about finding that perfect timing alignment from a business strategy perspective, a market need perspective, and kind of the customer perspective. And is this, is this actually going to make sense, or not?
Mark D. Williams 27:00
So to oversimplify, you've got three silos. You kind of mentioned marketing company, objective and the public. Let's just call them three. And I won't, I know you won't tell me the number anyway, so there's no point to ask. But let's just assume, for easy everyone loves our top 10. So we've got 10 initiatives in each column. You're basically trying to try and get like, hey, number three on innovation lines up with number one for marketing and number two, for organizational let's, let's see if we can align these. And then, boom, that that, collectively now goes to the top of the list. Is that roughly how that works? Roughly?
Jenn Tuetken 27:28
Yeah. And at first, it's really, it's a little bit of science, but a lot of it's just intuition. It's we started working on this project three, three and a half years before it actually launched. And at that time we were, we were in COVID, quite honestly, when we were starting it all. And so we kind of had this rough sense of, like, this is generally, like, labor shortages are going to continue to happen. We're still in a housing shortage, so we're going to have to build homes. And at that time, it really went wild, right? And we talked about, job site safety is going to get more important because regulations. And you see OSHA right all the time, and how do we make job sites safer, and how do we reduce waste, and all that became really, really important to us. And you kind of look at, hey, if we, if we, if we can figure out a way to solve for some of these install problems. Pell is going to win, right? Because we don't have to make as winning windows because something goes wrong on the job site, or our installers don't get hurt. So that's a win. The builder is going to win because they're going to get a great install and they're going to be able to close the house up faster, and they're going to be able to work through more weather conditions, and the installer is going to win, because we can create a system that helps them do their job easier, and they're going to start to maybe talk to their friends and say, you really got to try this system right and influence the market. And so it seemed like a win, win win opportunity, and we were kind of like, let's just go see what we can find out. And that's what we did, and the main insight that drove study set, because we came back from research with a whole suite of ideas, and it wasn't until maybe nine months in to the actual work and the iteration and ideation sessions and concepting, we realized we kept seeing the same human behavior time and time again, and it was that 85% of the time, installers were carrying the windows inside of the home to the rough opening they needed to put the window in. They'd push it to the outside of the home. They'd flip the fins out, and then they'd bring it back, and then the friend, their partner on the outside, would then put the screws in, as this person is just holding the window in place, waiting. And because there were two people tethered together through that process, and you had most of the work happening on the inside, we just kind of asked ourselves, like, if you. Or if you're able to set it and attach it and install most of it from the inside, you could get rid of the guy on the outside, and he doesn't have to hold the window there anymore. And you have a sure footing on the inside for the installer. And typically, if you're doing an exterior install, and you do have to have two team members, your more advanced, skilled installer tends to be on the inside. And so we were like, let's leverage that power and that that training and expertise more. And so 85% of the time they were doing this behavior of taking the window inside, but you know, they'd have to attach from the outside. So it just became, well, how do we set and attach from the inside and build on that behavior they're already doing? And then we started to see more and more benefits happen just because of that one little nugget of information. Because now we could set and attach from the inside, we could do all the foaming at that same time, we do all the shimming at that time, we could get rid of the person on the outside because of our we should probably describe the system at some point, right? But then we have a piece on top of the window that helps hold the window in place, which really helps get rid of the installer on the outside. So you can install all of your windows, do all your interior work throughout the entire home, and then you could have that same person go outside and tape all of the windows. And when they're outside, they no longer have to take their tool belts up. They don't have to take their drills. They're not dropping screws down on the ground. They're not putting screws through the weather barrier anymore, because all you have to do is tape it on the outside. And so we saw windows being installed 3.1 times faster than they were before. And if you think about how that compounds throughout the entire building, the whole system ends up getting installed faster. I
Mark D. Williams 31:54
mean, some of the some of the observations that I've had in the field is and correct me if I'm wrong, it was last September, August, that they now are. The study set is on all Pella windows. When did, when did it come and hit the full lines? It's on all wood windows. It's on all windows. Yep. Are there? Will there be plans to put it on, like impervi and the vinyl windows, or where
Jenn Tuetken 32:16
they based on the market success we're having with studies that there's absolute interest, and how might that happen? And when can it happen,
Mark D. Williams 32:22
right? Just because it's on my mind now, and I said as soon as I saw it, because obviously you guys have patented like because how many patents would be on a window? Everything the patent process is kind of interesting. We can talk about later. But is there what four or five? How many patents would be on a window
Jenn Tuetken 32:36
like this? I actually don't know where we landed on this, but several, oh, yeah, several, and both in terms so one of the beautiful things about the innovation process is that one early on, we're starting to understand, where can we play within the patent landscape? Because we're not the only window and door manufacturer. We're not the only ones who've ever thought about install right? So we had to understand, like, what does the landscape look like? And then, because in the ideation or innovation process, the team is tasked with coming up with a bunch of ideas, and then we converge to the best ideas, and then we take it out for feedback, and then we diverge again, and then we converge again. And it's that process of ideation to convergence, to ideation, to convergence, that allows us to come up with the best idea that we launch with, but we're also able to look at alternative solutions, where a competitor might be able to think about too right after we've launched. And so one of the benefits is, yeah, we've got patents on the existing system, but we go beyond our existing system to protect ourselves, because we've done a ton of hard and good work on this, right? We want to protect it, and we want to make sure that we were advantage. At
Mark D. Williams 33:53
what point do you copyright or license it out? I mean, it's such a it's such a game changer. Yeah,
Jenn Tuetken 33:59
on that really, no, I'm happy if someone wants to call me, I'm happy to talk about it. I mean, that
Mark D. Williams 34:05
seems like it seems it's, it's so I think what is so unique about it, for those that haven't seen it, you can go to Pella website and check it out. I was looking at it again before the show. You could data mine, my Instagram to find it. But honestly, the pillow, the pillow is obviously a lot better. It's set up just for it, but, and it's on our Instagram, on our Mark Williams custom homepage. But I think it's, it's the elegance is in its simplicity. Yeah, clips on the side. I mean, a few things anyway, so I'm just shocked that I didn't know if there'd be a marketing campaign to like, hey, we'd love to license it, because it, if you're, if you're reducing ladder time by 72% think of, I mean, everyone has seen the crazy videos of and not just in the United States and other countries where safety is not nearly as and lots of things happen in the United States too. But I'm just thinking about just safety. I mean, the amount of ladder falls that happen is staggering. I
Jenn Tuetken 34:53
think it's number three on OSHA's list of like, ladder falls. Yeah, yeah. And
Mark D. Williams 34:59
so if you reduce. Thing, ladder time by 73% I mean, that's pretty radical. I mean, this is a safety thing. So anyway, I just feel like there's a lot of licensing opportunities here, not only to help Pella financially, but I just think to help the window industry at large, like it's genius. Yeah, and, but anyway, well, I guess if your phone isn't ringing, I'm a little surprised. Maybe after this one, it'll start. Maybe after this, yeah, the curious builder sent you. So where I was going to go with this is just some of my observations, because I've installed a few of them during the competition, but also when I was talking about it, when I had the sample and and the the two, well, the two or three. And there's lots of things, but the two or three things that really stand out to me is, one is the clip. So the the pre manufacturer with these metal clips as they have a standard offset, and we've had most of the time when people have window issues, at least where I'm at, because we have awesome installers. In fact, appellate Northland, here in Minnesota, actually installs as well. So it's you guys are the first to have lifetime warranty on your windows for as long as someone owns their home the original owner, which is amazing guarantee. But it's also nice to know that most of the issues that happen around condensation, which usually ends up happening because the humidity is too high in the inside of the house and yada yada yada. But anyway, you do hear sometimes because your point back in the day up and because that only happened for about the last two years, where we've had our own install teams from Pella before it was our framers. And framers come from all walks of life, in different crews, and some of them are junior some of them are more experienced, inevitable, inevitably. Sometimes, like I just heard the other day, not on a pillow window, but another manufacturer, another builder, called me and said that they had actually had to take out all the windows because the framer forgot to shim at the cross check rails or follow the documented guidelines of the window, which a lot of people do, a lot of men, I should say, Don't read like men. Men kind of stink at reading like it's kind of like, they don't stop and ask for directions. They also don't read. And even if it is reading, they're like, I'm just gonna do it and see what happens. But my point is, you've sort of taken you've taken away the dumb man factor. Yeah, I guess I can say that, because I'm a dumb man here. But like, you put the window in the clips are already in the right spot. So, like, you don't ever have to worry correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't ever have to worry about them being located in the wrong spot. Now you still have to check to make sure it's leveled, and if it's not level, you obviously have to have those little air shims that come with it and set it. But that that alone is such peace of mind, but what it really sets up it is, is the fact that you can have continuous insulation around the entire window. And that, I think, is, I don't know if you were planning on solving that, but I talked to a Michael Ansel from odogawa and shell. He lives actually just a few blocks from me, but I know he's a big he's just really into building science, and I know he's done some stuff with Pella as well, and he's the one that told me at the Stadium Village when I was there, because he was across the stadium at pro trade craft, and he was, like, on their way to solving this. He goes, they've revolutionized the insulation barrier in our climate. I think we're climate zone six and seven in Minnesota, and maybe in the southern state, we might be five. But the point is, we're doing, most of all my homes that I do are external insulation. So I'm doing, like, we're doing a project right now called Misa whose which is a Scandinavian
Jenn Tuetken 38:02
vibe. I took your poll yesterday, by
Mark D. Williams 38:04
the way, did you really? Did you go light? Light or dark? I went with the
Jenn Tuetken 38:09
warm tone the light one. Yeah, it's tough.
Mark D. Williams 38:11
Everyone just gets split down the middle. Anyway, the point is, we're doing triple pane Pella windows there, but we're doing R 12. We're doing a zip R 12. So we've got two, two odd inches of foam to the outside of the house. But what makes this particular product so great is I've got a complete area all around the window where I can foam all the way out to that far foam to edge. Because if you're if you're getting air or water penetration or condensation penetration through that air gap, you've got real problems. Even if you have the best insulation on the house, it doesn't matter. But I was just sort of blown away. Like, wow. And I can't tell you how many times we've had to go back at homes where, let's say, you pull off trim, and it's not a fault of the insulator. I mean, they're given like a half inch reveal. It's like, how do you get the nozzle of the gun even in there? Now you have more room number one, and then number two, you're not hitting those dumb wood shims everywhere, which is going to be a cold part, and the whole industry is doing it, except for Pella. So I think it's, I think that's why I think licensing it is such a it's a good move for our industry, because it's just a better product. It's that much better that everyone I feel should be doing it. Yeah,
Jenn Tuetken 39:15
you're spot on. And that absolutely was something that we work towards, because the product's only as good as the install the home's only as good as everything that's installed, right? And the failure often isn't the window. It's often in an install situation where they forgot to foam, or sometimes the foam gets left to the insulation crew rather than the window crew. And you just, you have to make it simple, easy and intuitive for anyone who's coming in contact with the window. And so by having these pre applied brackets, the flip and click brackets, they come on the window from the manufacturer or from our manufacturing plants. And they come in a variety of sizes, two by four, two by six. And then we have an. Adjustable clip for, probably walls like yours that are a little bit deeper, right? And you need to be able to set them deeper from the interior. And what's important about that is, because the clips are already on there, they act as your structural attachment point, but you don't. They can also act as your kind of shim guides, where, if you need to push them a little bit one way in the opening or the other way, you attach them the screws on the inside to basically where you want that window to sit. And then you can have this continuous foam all the way around and on the bottom, at minimum, you're always putting shims down there, so that way you have a bit of an air gap between the bottom of the window and the lower the rough opening bottom, because you need some air in there. In case water ever gets in the cavity, it's got to be able to escape right? Otherwise you're trapping in it and you have a whole host of other issues going on. So what we ended up doing is we applied these pre applied shims on the bottom, so that way you always have a gap there, and they're kind of set. They don't come all the way to the interior side. They're set sort of in the middle of the window frame. And again, that's because now you can foam all the way around it, because you can't foam in between shims, right? And so there's a little bit of air that can come through that area. So we were really intentional on how do we have the best performing install, as well as, how do we have the best performing windows?
Mark D. Williams 41:33
This episode is brought to you by Pella Northland. For 20 years, I've been using Pella windows, and I couldn't be happier to call them as a business partner, a trade partner, and someone that really supports us in our quality builds. You know, we use wood windows and doors on every single one of our homes, and 98% of every home that I've ever built has been a Pella window. I've gotten to know their team here, locally as well as nationally, and the way that they support us as a craftsman as well as they support our homeowners with their lifelong guarantee it's actually been a game changer for me. So when people ask me who I use, I recommend Pella. If you want to hear more about Pella story, you can listen to episode one, where I interview Peter and Ed from pela Northland about their journey into the Pella ownership. Most people are familiar with the nailing flange, as you mentioned. Been around industry standard for 40 years, and yours is aluminum. Some in the market are vinyl or plastic. And in our climate, when it's minus 25 I mean, you're not if you put one of those in, you hit with a hammer, it's going to shatter. So the aluminum was already a better option. But again, going back to, I think the prevalence, especially in our climate, of rigid insulation to the outside. You know, now you're having to figure out. And not every system we use, zip and there's a variety of products. It's just the one we use, that which does have the wood substrate, which makes it a lot easier to screw to if you don't have that. But let's say you just have foam. Well, if you have no backer, you just you screw it into foam. You know, who knows how that screw is going to go? It's going to wander all over the place and shear where. Now you don't you don't even have nails or screws on the outside. Now, it's a simple, flat moment you tape it and you're done. And so obviously a time aspect. But for me, it's also an accuracy thing. It's one less thing for somebody to get wrong in terms of screwing through foam and not and trying to hit their backer, especially when that foam starts getting thicker and thicker. Yeah,
Jenn Tuetken 43:19
you're spot on. And one of the nice things about our fin is it is folded when it arrives, so it's easier to push out from the inside, right? There's other the vinyl ones often aren't folding fins. They are always out, and sometimes they break in transit. And so what we wanted to do is offer a folding fin that also has a continuous seal all the way around. And so our particular fin, you can't miss it. It's bright yellow first and foremost, which was a really intentional design move, because from the curb, you want to be able to see, did everyone tape these windows accurately? And so you should really, once it's installed, you should really only see that bottom yellow strip. So that was a kind of a design cue that that's smart we're proud of, yeah, but often we don't talk about but essentially, because it's not structural fin anymore, it really just becomes that continuous barrier. And the fin, because it's folding, has a three, eight inch flexible part to it, so it allows for a little bit of give and take, if your exterior surface isn't totally perfect and planar all the way around. And then we have these corner fins that give you full perimeter. Because sometimes when you have a folding fin, you make you have to make sure you tape really, really well over anything that's folding and there's a joint on because a hole may occur. But with this, because it's a fully flexible I think it's TPE, is what we ended up using. It's similar to, like a squeegee material, right? That then you just tape over that and you're good to go. So it's it. Simpler and it's more foolproof, and you're not putting holes through the exterior of the home, which is where you don't want to put them anyway. That's
Mark D. Williams 45:07
a little bit this might be a little controversial, but like skylights, I kind of feel like I have architects. I have architects all the time, and I'm not, I won't even say a product name of skylights. I don't even know if Pell has a skylight, but, but the point is, is anytime an architect suggests a skylight, I'm like, No no skylights in my house. And they're always like, but why I'm like, because we're not in California, Arizona. It gets really cold here, and it rains a lot. And number one, I have a perfectly good roof that's trying to keep water out. You just put a giant hole in it, and now I you still want me to keep the water out like the best case scenario is only a matter of time before it leaks. And I'm being somewhat facetious here, because they make great products for this. But I have actually had three times in the last five years, I've had architects draw it in, and I have a very frank conversation with the homeowner, and basically just say, I don't, this is, I'm, I'm highly recommending against this. I think this is a very this. You're asking for trouble. I mean, if it's so fundamental, you've got to have it, we'll figure out a way around it. I'm saying it can't be done, but I'm just saying it's not the best scenario anyway. The word thought of me is just like you're putting a bunch of nails in outside of your house. In this case, I'm putting a giant window in my roof. Yeah,
Jenn Tuetken 46:19
you want to avoid as many fasteners through that outside material, right? Or if you are putting fasteners, you absolutely have to cover them with tapes or silicone or dots, essentially. What
Mark D. Williams 46:33
is that? So we I think at this point, people should just go look at the videos. We could describe this window forever, and people are going to tune us out. What I would like to know about is going back to the back side of things you're in the lab, you're creating this stuff. It takes years. Yeah, there are times where the team sort of like flags, where you're just like, oh man. Because, I mean, sometimes if something takes a long time, you kind of lose some of your steam. How do you talk to me a little bit about keeping the team motivated, keeping the team, like, excited. Like, how do you see progress? Is this the only project that you're working on at one time for four years? Are you working on like five or six projects at a time? I'd love to know, like, how the team, like how the how the sausage is made, because these are one off things you don't you you're creating the process. The process doesn't exist now. It exists now. It's like you're on to other things, right? So how walk us through, kind of the back, the back side of the kitchen in terms of, what are the processes where this goes through? We talked earlier in the podcast about this ID. You have these three silos. How do they all line up? You pick it and now you're starting to move it forward. Yeah. How does these iterations? I mean, they take years,
Jenn Tuetken 47:34
yeah. So we have there's so the system is called steady set interior installation system from Bella. And this particular project took three, three and a half years from start to finish, from the first moment we put our team members on a plane to go the job site all the way to launch, really, at international builders show. And it was probably within the innovation team's hands for about a year and a half, and then it went into the commercialization teams hands for about a year and a half. And so I can kind of talk about those two big buckets, because there's a lot of work that happens in each of them, but they're wildly different types of work. So within the innovation team, we have industrial designers, researchers, engineers, and we have some machinists who help us build these prototypes really quickly so we can go test and learn as fast as possible. So we're looking at creating we have this problem to solve. How do we create an interior installation system? That's the big question. And then we had our core principles that it needs to deliver safety. It has to be easy for them to understand as well as teach and train. It has to have high quality installation to meet our expectations, if not exceed then that has to be faster. Was one of our key targets. It has to deliver efficiency in the marketplace. So those four guiding principles were basically what we pressure tested any and all concepts and ideas up against. So the team, collectively, through different phases, would create a bunch of prototypes, and then they would take the best parts of them, they'd put them on systems. They would then go into market with those. So our team went into the market, I want to say five to seven times out in the field, with prototypes to talk to installers on the job site and learn from them what was working and what wasn't working. So we believe that our job internally is to create the best options for our customers, to tell us which ones they truly prefer. Right? So what is the most desirable solution here? So we went through seven different rounds of research ideation, build prototypes, take them out to test, come back and synthesize, re loop and redo it. So it's this learning cycle that takes time, but in the. Innovation realm, we're trying to move as fast as possible to essentially figure out what is the most ideal solution that we can produce, that the customer desires and it delivers everything that we're aiming to deliver on. We have very strong reasons to believe that we can produce it and we can produce it at scale, and it's something that's going to deliver value in the market and for Pella, right? I
Mark D. Williams 50:27
think what I'm hearing is one of my new favorite phrases, which, if you're going to fail, fail fast, fail, and then, obviously, and then, if you fix, fix fast. So I mean, it's kind of this iteration loop of like, fail, fix, fail fix, and keep improving it. But because you're keeping on an aggressive timeline, you can rapidly move that through progression. Absolutely,
Jenn Tuetken 50:45
you're moving super fast. And the one thing you asked about team culture, that as you're managing a team through this because the team really was the rock stars who made this whole thing happen. It wasn't me. They were running, running, running, so hard to basically test and learn, test and learn, test and learn. And they were really unified, and I would say, motivated, and found this like continuous energy to solve this problem, because we brought the human problem inside as well as we were taking the solutions to the humans, right? If I bring something to you, Mark, I'm going to be much more motivated to go solve it. Then if I just put it up on a survey for 800 people, and 800 people are like, Yay, nay, right? You kind of like me. Or if it's you don't believe, if you don't believe it's a problem we're solving, you're not going to want to solve it really. And we just continued to see time and time again with installers and builders that, like you guys, are onto something. So it was very encouraging for the team to keep moving, and they just continued to refine, I would say, their instincts and their prowess to solve the right problem.
Mark D. Williams 51:58
How do you identify which builders are open to the trial, and is it like a one window, you just need access to the home, like, how does that work?
Jenn Tuetken 52:06
That was a capability we honestly had to build within this project. It's very easy within research to talk to a homeowner like, there's homeowners everywhere. There's a lot of people who want to engage in research, and we're homeowners, right? Like we think of ourselves as the test people, but installers and builders, no offense, you guys are a different breed for us to get to. Like we have to come to the job site. We have to come meet you. We have to kind of come in looking for your expertise, because truly, you are the experts, not us. And so we have to put our egos aside and say we're window and door experts. It's like, nope. Today, we're not right. And what was beautiful about our network was pela has a has sales branches all across the US that are Pella distributors. And to your point, they have install crews. So we were able to go to our kind of follow our install crews and see how they were installing, and get their feedback. And in turn, we'd meet the builders and we'd meet the sales team, right? And we would also just honestly social media, like, I'd reach out to people and be like, hey, I need some feedback on something. And I'd met some people at IBS a few years ago. I was like, Can you Would you give me 25 minutes?
Mark D. Williams 53:32
I would imagine that the feedback or the participation was really high. I mean, if a big company called me and says, Hey, I'd like you to test that. I mean, it's kind of, I think it's probably because it's not an average thing, like, I don't like, if BMW called me, hey BMW, this is your chance to call me, by the way. So you can reach me on my on my website, contact I'd be happy to test drive any of your cars for the ultimate driving machine I do, like Ferrari. I mean, honestly, any car company that wants to have me test drive it, I'm telling you know, right now a character would be happy to drive your car anyway. My point is, I don't it's probably not a common question was the answers. I mean, did you? Did anyone ever say no? I kind of imagine everyone be like, Hey, that sounds really cool. Let's do it.
Jenn Tuetken 54:10
Everyone was very open arms, and they were very willing to, like, invite us onto the job site, which was so awesome. The only challenges we really ran into where there was building delays or the rough opening wouldn't be prepped the right way, so we weren't able to test the install at that point in time or so. It was more the challenges you guys deal with daily, which is like, Are my trades lining up? Is the build lining up? And it's just slotting in appropriately in the time time there, that was our biggest challenge. But no, it was great because installers were willing to have conversations with us. Our distribution partners were fantastic at also letting us, kind of go through them to find installers and be on their job sites. And so
Mark D. Williams 54:56
it turns out, if you ask people for their opinion, they're happy to give it to you the. Problem is, is when people don't ask for your opinion and to give it. So it's really just the role reversal. I'm thinking of interpersonal dynamics here between people. Somebody asks you for your opinion, you're like, Oh, they're they want to, but then if you give your opinion without being asked, it usually doesn't go over quite as well. Yeah. And
Jenn Tuetken 55:15
what we're trying to do is we needed to understand the the main things that we needed to solve for. But also it was super valuable Intel for us to understand, how does an installer communicate? What words do they use? How what are they looking for, right? And how do, how do they say install systems and solutions and brackets and stuff. And so it really was a It helped us, not only in product development, but when we actually came to launch the product. It helped us understand, how do we need to talk and communicate about this solution the most, and what do they value the most? And people were very willing to just jump on a phone call, like I said. But anyway, so that was kind of, there was so much fast moving innovation happening for that first year and a half within the innovation team. And the way that we look at it is our responsibility is essentially to bring a seed idea to the business and say, we have something that we believe you can scale, that you can sell and that it's worth doing, because from the point of innovation to the point of launch, I'm not gonna lie, like before I joined Pella, windows and doors, I've been an industrial designer other companies. I've worked in manufacturing before, but it's always been a SKU based business. Windows and doors are unique to your home, right? Which means that any like where we put those brackets is unique to your window. And so there's a lot of complexity that comes with crafting essentially a one one time product repeatedly. And so we came to the business and we said, we've got this innovation. It delivers speed at 3.1 times faster. It's keeping our team safer. You're avoiding ladder time at 72% like there's a lot of value here. And the business said, This is amazing. Yes, we need to go do this. And it became, actually one of the fastest launches we ever did, because the team really rallied around solving this problem and doing it really quickly. So we, we kind of put on a calendar, like, hey, let's launch it. IBS international builders show in February of 2024 like, I don't know, a year or nine months in advance of that, and all of a sudden it became so much focus.
Mark D. Williams 57:41
Who's I mean, that's genius. I mean, I call it, I've talked about earlier this year, there's a Japanese principal called Dougie or masagi. It basically, it's one thing. So everything else revolves around the one thing. And obviously, for your team, I don't know how big the team was for this one project or however many other projects you were. Well, actually, I'll ask the question, how many, how many other How big was the team and how many other projects were sort of in conjunction or fighting for attention while you had this one month and or one year and nine month goal? Yeah,
Jenn Tuetken 58:08
we well, the innovation team usually has 10 projects, give or take, that we're working on. That's quite a few. Okay, yeah, quite a few. But this was disproportionately focused on so we had five full time team members who were just day in and day out, marching on this project. And then we leveraged a lot of part time help as we were going through it. And then when we passed it off, we actually created roles around launching this product, because it became so important, and we just saw so much potential with it. And so all of a sudden we had install managers, and we had commercialization specialists, and we had install engineering specialists that were dedicated to this. And so there was a core team, God, it's even hard to say that like we had you could, we have to pull in people from marketing, from sales, from it, from finance, from manufacturing, from logistics and supply chain to all the different sales distributors that we work with. And it was a massive undertaking. And I'm not gonna lie, at times it was like we all wanted to give up and just be like, This is so hard. Are we sure this is really worth it? But then you go, like I said, you go and market and you show it to somebody, and they absolutely love it. And you're like, this is absolutely what we should
Mark D. Williams 59:26
be doing. At what point did marketing like Trisha and Laura get a hold of it? Because I imagine, from a marketing standpoint, like, I'd be like, it's a new toy I can't wait to unleash. I bet I can only imagine, I know, if it was me, like, I'd just be like, can I please talk about this? Can I please market this? And you're like, not ready, not ready. And like, from a marketing point of view, you need their input. But like, in the gears or churning of how you market it and sell it, yeah, like, then being told you can't, or you can't talk about it. Oh, man, I'd be we
Jenn Tuetken 59:54
had so many NDAs in police mark. I can't even tell you.
Mark D. Williams 59:58
I like that. You can't tell me how many NDA you. Actually had an NDA. To say how many NDAs you had in place? Because you could talk about the NDAs,
Jenn Tuetken 1:00:05
yeah. No, we trying to think so we kind of brought them along. One of the things you have to do, right in any large organization is you have to start kind of dripping the exciting stuff before you're ready to because you have to it. You just have to get familiar with the ideas and start getting people ideating about how they might do it right before it's really go time. And so we it kind of became official, like what I say a year before we launched, if not a little bit later, actually, now that I'm thinking really like thinking through the calendar, and I remember having some meetings in June before international builders show. And then I really remember August is when we, like, collectively, pulled marketing and sales together and said, How are we gonna go do this by international builders show? I mean, because
Mark D. Williams 1:00:56
you've got, you've got ad spend, you've got a at IBS, you would have already had, yeah, you're gonna get both of both, like you would have committed to that actually even earlier, because I assume, I assume you got to commit earlier. Yeah. And actually, this is kind of a somewhat of a parallel. We do a lot of show homes, like a pray to homes or an arson home tour, and we have to know at least six to eight months in advance, if not more, of when that home is going to be on tour. But honestly, even, because you can move to different tours for us anyway, it's every six months, I guess IBS, you could always move it back a year. There's, I'm sure, ramifications. But anyway, the point is, I've had homeowners say that they picked us to be their builder, and they they allowed us to have the home in the show because they knew definitively when the home was going to be done. And which is actually pretty interesting, because we're under, we're under as the builder we're under, it's hard to say exactly this is the day you're going to be done, because ultimately, all you can do is say, hey, like, for instance, our Misa, who's project, we're going to break ground here in May, and it's going to be in the June of 26 artisan tour. I know that already, so I'm a year and a half out on this, right? But that means, like, we're working it backward, like, Hey, here's the date. I've told my team I want to be done actually may 1 of 26 so I want a 30 day buffer to document it, market it, shoot it, all those things. And that all sounds great, but if you don't put the date out there, you're certainly not going to meet it. And if you leave it out there with note, with a with a tail of no deadline, I mean, that's never going to happen. And anyway, it becomes it becomes difficult. If you're too aggressive, it burns out the team, or you can't make it. If you make it too lax, there's no urgency. So there is definitely an art in the scheduling. And I can only imagine what that must have felt like for you guys. It
Jenn Tuetken 1:02:34
was wild. I think retrospectively, we're all really happy with the way that we went about it. But in the trenches, what did we sign ourselves up for? Right? And like, we had that exact conversation, because international builder show is February 2024, and we didn't actually start putting the product into market until March, April, after that show. And even then, it was in select markets. So we launched in like a pilot type program, and then it was full ramp up for all wood windows, which was in July and later on. And now we're really kind of seeing it ramp up at this point. But we did talk about, like, Should we wait till 2025, and there's this interesting point where you say, when is having something in the market and starting the conversation and starting small to your point like more valuable than waiting until we have everything perfect and everything buttoned up with a Bose and then you've learned, you've basically built the whole system and then not left Any time for learning. And so I applaud the engineering operations and leadership team, because they were very willing and excited to be able to launch in a small capacity and test and learn, test and learn, similar to how we do an innovation with the manufacturing side of the business, which is that's an art in of itself. And the team handled it beautifully. We had tremendous progress overall. And we're feeling really, really good about how we ramped and I think we'll again, we
Mark D. Williams 1:04:08
won't have enough time to talk about this, but like so we just want walk through the process of this three, four year process to get here. One thing we I'm just thinking about it now. It's one thing to create it. You mentioned something earlier, about a half hour in the podcast, but also to create it at scale, at what point do you have to start thinking about engineering and factory lines and tooling and all this stuff to like, hey, we need to bring this online. By the way, where are we putting this product? Like, do we have to build the building? Are we decommissioning? I guess, I guess I do want to know the answer to this. Like, where does it go? Like, it doesn't just like, magically appear in like, building 70 5c on the southwest quadrant of the parking lot, like, like, at what point they're reconfiguring
Jenn Tuetken 1:04:47
manufacturing lines in order to, like, bolt these things on, or we're producing the product, and at the end of the line we're bolting it's assembled. Yeah, yeah. And one of the tremendous things about our engine. Engineering Team cohort within the innovation team is they, when we started the innovation team, they came from Corporate Engineering, so they have a tremendous knowledge and like just a knowledge base around designing, for manufacturing, the processes, the materials, the how to build tools, right? And so they, while we don't necessarily put that burden on them through the innovation process, knowing that really the commercialization team is going to sift through all the different combinations and the ways that we need to do this, they have it in the back of their mind as they're designing so we're designing informed, essentially prototypes, so that way, ideally, the commercialization process can go smoother down the line.
Mark D. Williams 1:05:45
It's funny, I've been, I'll call myself a victim. I've been victim of two product innovations that I'm jealous of because I wasn't far enough along. I was too far in the build to do it. So one of them was, I was building a house, actually, for someone in who was a part of Pella ownership, and they had come out with the double hung screen, but he is already six months into his house, and he's like, oh man. He's like, I really, because everyone wants that the roll screen now it deploys right out of the reserve series. It's amazing. And so it was funny. So I actually, in my personal home, I have a 1919 house that we remodeled, and I we were remodeling the same time he was building his house, and I had the same thing. I missed the innovation of the real screen. And every time I have to clean my dumb screens every spring and fall, I'm like, if I had just waited six months longer, I could have had this cool thing. And now it was funny, because I was, I was in my client's home where I was shooting the promotional ad reel stuff for the study set, and my homeowner walked in one day and he saw me doing all the video stuff, and it's not really his jam and, but anyway, he's like, do I have those in my house? I'm like, No, this is, this is a prototype. It's coming out later. He's like, hmm. He's like, maybe we should have waited a year. It's like, Nah, you're good. But anyway, it's just funny how you see something new and you're like, Ooh, I wish I had that my home. So yeah, absolutely,
Jenn Tuetken 1:06:58
we're really proud of this one. Like, it's, it's kind of a new thing for window and door manufacturers to launch, really specific to install, right? And, like, we just saw this constant nagging issue that, like, somebody's got to solve it. Someone has to make some effort here.
Mark D. Williams 1:07:15
I mean, to make it analogous to cars. It'd be like, if BMW was like, You know what? We're going to make these tires amazing for the mechanics to take off. Like, the mechanics are gonna love us, like the average driver, like, what do they know? And like, to the end of the average it does matter. I mean, through us explaining why it's a better window. It matters to my homeowners, but honestly, even the builder, unless you're a builder that puts it in, you might say, well, what's the value add? But as you go down, it matters to you, because it'll cost less, because what is, what a human hours cost? And to your point that we're seeing less and less people get into the trades. We have a we have we have too many homes to build, too few people to build them. So if we can do them faster, more efficiently, that does actually inevitably help our clients. It helps builders, it helps the economy. It helps it helps everybody. But it's you do have to get into the story, which, again, is why I want to have you on the podcast. I think going through this kind of detail and really understanding, like the value proposition, I'm just really big fan of storytelling, because I think people, people remember a story. They don't always remember facts, but a story, they usually remember. There's something very sticky about a story. So I anyway, I appreciate all the details, and I know we can talk for probably another hour, but I'll maybe leave you with this, because I'm sure there's more NDAs that you can't share. But like, what is, what's kind of like up and coming, or what, what is like, when will the next product announcement be? Or, like, what's kind of new and exciting that you can tell us about? Yeah, we
Jenn Tuetken 1:08:33
just relaunched new sliding patio doors within our wood offering, so that just hit, gosh, actually
Mark D. Williams 1:08:40
this week. So what's the what's the improvement? Or what? What changed? We have
Jenn Tuetken 1:08:44
bigger site or smaller sight lines. Overall. It has a lower threshold to the door, so now it's a, I think it's an inch and an eighth. So very low, very good for general transit. And then we have some material upgrades, and we have some finish upgrades that are also available on the product,
Mark D. Williams 1:09:02
on my climate sometimes they'll have, like, the those thresholds that are flush into the floor and whatnot. And again, I may be a little over paranoid, but it's like, I always ask my pellet guys up here, like, Hey, I don't even know what it's called, but I want the tall one. Because I want this, I want this door seal, like the bi fold doors. Like, I want that sale if it's a multi slide. Like, yeah, so is that? What are you speaking the rail of the sliding door, or like the profile of the threshold.
Jenn Tuetken 1:09:24
So the the sill of the sliding patio door is now lower, but same great performance as if you had a taller one. You can get an upgraded performance package with the door, so you can get triple glaze now in the doors, which is a big improvement across the
Mark D. Williams 1:09:39
that's what we're doing. So we, actually, I don't know if you're involved, but I was talking to Trisha. We have a call actually scheduled tomorrow at this actually, this podcast will air after we have our call. But because we're doing triple pain in our miso, who's project, because a big part of that house is wellness, and one thing that we don't talk I mean, obviously, from an energy point of view, triple pain is obviously much more efficient and. And those types of things. But to me, wellness is also is quiet and and our home is in an urban environment, and so having a triple pane window is going to be extremely quiet. And so I'm kind of excited to discuss this wellness aspect. It's something I'm really I think wellness is kind of having its day in just a broad I mean, how many you cannot scroll through Instagram and not see someone going in a cold tank. Do you see colors cold tank at international builder show? Sorry, I didn't, but I they're on my list to call because the we have a wellness studio at our house where we have the sauna, the workout gym, the Pell by fold triple pin windows opening up to the pool. But we're also going to have a cold plunge. And so I'll mention that Jen took it in, told me to reach out to Kohler, and she I know hardly endorses at the cold plunge.
Jenn Tuetken 1:10:42
No, I was impressed by it, but yeah, wellness absolutely is having its day, and it's to your point. It's sound, it's general privacy. How do I feel in my home? So we have our blinds between the glass, which help deliver that and keep it nice and clean the new improved sight lines on some of our products, so they're thinner, which allows more visible light to come through. That's a big reason, or big kind of influence on how you feel right getting that natural daylight. And that's also one of the secondary benefits of having a hidden screen on your windows. So we offer roll screens as well as hidden screens in our double hungs So in lifestyle in reserve, and in our 250 series, we have hidden screens, so you don't have a screen blocking light from coming in the glass of your window unless and then when you open the window, then the screen appears to keep the bugs out. And so there's improved light transmittance with those products as well. You have
Mark D. Williams 1:11:40
to check that one out. I'm familiar with the pleated one. Is it different than the pleated one that you see in the big patio doors, like the pleated blind that comes down. You have, like, little toggle on the side of those.
Jenn Tuetken 1:11:50
We have, we have mini lines, and then we also have the pleated ones.
Mark D. Williams 1:11:54
Okay, yeah, I was thinking about the roll screen thing is just, I love, I mean, this was kind of an old shout out, but like, if I recall, correct me, if I'm wrong. But I believe the original company was not pellet. Was the roll Screen Company?
Jenn Tuetken 1:12:04
Correct? Correct in 1925
Mark D. Williams 1:12:08
company? I just think that part's super cool. And just even just now seeing it, thank you so much for coming on. We'll have your contact obviously, Pella website will be on the on the deal. If people want to reach out to you as the best spot through LinkedIn, or where do you want the phone calls to go? And people want to license this thing,
Jenn Tuetken 1:12:22
then you can find me on there. I'm also on Instagram. Jen, dot, T, dot, D, S, G, N, not, yeah. So that's my Instagram, if you want to follow me there, but yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to get to know you and to let us brag about the good work the team's doing so
Mark D. Williams 1:12:39
excellent. Appreciate the support and thanks for everyone listening to the curious builder podcast. Thanks for tuning in to curious builder podcast. If you liked this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends, like and review online and thanks again for tuning in. You.
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