Carol Aurich, Mario Callejas And Tom Llerena With Florida Storm Panel Supply

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Diaz Trade Law, your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio. We have Carol Outreach and her team at Florida Storm Panel Supply. Welcome, Carol.

Carol Aurich: [00:00:36] Hello. Thank you so much, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. But before we get started, can you introduce your team?

Carol Aurich: [00:00:44] Sure. Excellent. Today they’re with me, Tom Llerena, our Sales Manager, and with expertise in all the hierarchy and protection system. And we do have Mario Callejas has also in the industry for a long, long time with a lot of knowledge in what is involved with our products.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:02] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us a little bit about Florida storm panel supply. How are you serving, folks?

Carol Aurich: [00:01:10] Okay. We do manufacture removable galvanized steel here, storm panels, pretty much. That’s the little silver things that you see outdoors in doors and windows when you see a hurricane. Those have been for a long time in the market. And we do manufacture those in different gouges, what we call them, which is the thickness of the panel. And pretty much these products are very important in the time of hurricane for people who would like to protect their their homes in this area that we are here in Miami with these very unpredictable weather.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:52] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did this concept get started?

Carol Aurich: [00:01:58] Well, this company has been in the market for the last 20 years. It used to have our older partner and then under our administration has been for the last 11 years. So we met a long time ago. And then in this industry, we just thought it was a good idea, of course, because of the environment in which we are. And it’s been a great business. You know, it’s great to be involved in what is happening regarding the weather and to help people get protected.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:31] Now, how has kind of the industry evolved over over the years? I grew up in South Florida, and when I was younger, there was you know, there wasn’t a lot of that. You know, the protection that you’re you’re supplying around. And people used to just make do with, you know, their own wood and cardboard and things like that. How has it evolved? Has this service become kind of a must have nowadays rather than a nice to have?

Mario Callejas: [00:03:01] Pretty much for the most part, the old style plywood panels that somehow store outside the backyard or in a garage or whatever, they inevitably warp or become distorted. These are panels are interchangeable within each opening. There’s not an ABC, it’s one opening. And any panel will go in and any area of that one opening and they nest within each other. So basically you could store a whole house full of panels in an area 14 inches wide by maybe a foot deep. As far as the thickness of the panels overall, as Carol mentioned, we have two different gauges that are 22 and 20 gauge galvanized steel panels. All our panels are hemmed on the edge. Over time, there have been instances of people getting cut. Because the just the side edge is it’s galvanized steel. We hand the edges so that that’s more of a safety issue. We also sell a lot of industry standard components for all sorts of hurricane protection, whether it’s panels, accordions, roll, shutters, locks, etc..

Lee Kantor: [00:04:18] So. So now the consumer has a lot of choices when it comes to protecting their home during a hurricane that maybe they didn’t have, you know, five, ten, 20 years ago.

Mario Callejas: [00:04:28] Correct. Panels are basically the industry standard as far as the entry level or first step. One of our main customers is a major home builder and down here in South Florida, and they find that it’s easier and more cost effective to provide regular windows with panels as a protection as opposed to a permanent shutter or impact windows. The prospective homeowner can also, if it’s a new construction upgrade to a permanent system and then throw it into their initial mortgage. But panels have been a mainstay forever. They’re not obvious on the house. Carol. Actually, they’re almost invisible, but they only come out when there’s an event, a storm event. All of our products are Miami-Dade County Code approved for the high velocity hurricane zone, which which is where we live now.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:39] So what is it like from the consumer standpoint? Say they have an older home that that they didn’t have this as part of their home when they was built. And they say, you know what, this is something. It’s time to invest in this. How does that go about? Is there a special permitting that they have to go through to install this? Do you teach them how to, you know, put them on and take them off and things like that? How does that kind of onboarding of a new client work for you?

Mario Callejas: [00:06:07] No. Part of the service we provide is whether it’s a a general contractor or a specialty contractor that has been asked by a homeowner or a commercial property to provide hurricane protection. They bring us the measurements and the site conditions and we sit down and do a basically consulting exercise.

Carol Aurich: [00:06:32] With the service.

Mario Callejas: [00:06:33] Yes, exactly. To to navigate to put together the permit package and help them navigate the building and zoning process in each individual. Municipality down here has their own set of guidelines and they’re all different. You can’t just boilerplate permit package for that would be applicable in Miami-Dade or in Broward or in Palm Beach County, Monroe County, also all of these within the hurricane high velocity hurricane zone. Sometimes it’s a new thing for them and we basically just help them navigate.

Carol Aurich: [00:07:14] Those are one of the our important keys for representing our company because not a lot of companies do this kind of service. Most of them must have at least know what to buy. And that’s it. They don’t talk to you. They don’t have the time for you. We do provide that service. So it is if it is a homeowner who doesn’t have any idea how to install, what are the sizes or if it is a general contractor with a huge amount of projects, we help them. We provide the permits, we give all the measurements. We tell them we are all the time, step by step with them along the installation process.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:53] So yours is more of a full service kind of white glove service rather than just Here’s the stuff. Go figure it out on your own.

Carol Aurich: [00:08:02] Exactly. Yes.

Mario Callejas: [00:08:04] Now you go to a big box store like a Home Depot or Lowe’s. It’s pretty much you better know what you need and buy it here. And hopefully it’s you bought the right thing here. We do. Hold your hand. Make sure that you’re getting the right thing for the for whatever condition you might have, whether it’s a concrete construction, wood frame, construction. It just depends, you know, trying to make as least of an architectural impact on the house as possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:35] And it doesn’t sound like this is a this isn’t a one size fits all situation. Every house kind of is unique and you need kind of your handheld if you want to do it. Right?

Mario Callejas: [00:08:47] Right. You’re 100% correct Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:50] Now, when you got into this business and you started kind of helping the consumer out, was it always direct to consumer or it’s been a combination of homebuilders and consumers as your clients?

Mario Callejas: [00:09:06] Always a combination. I always say the worst thing than than an expert is someone that thinks they’re an expert. And you’ll have people come in with hieroglyphics on a piece of paper that makes sense to them. But basically, we just we decipher that into a correct product cut sheet for the for the particular project.

Carol Aurich: [00:09:33] Also to avoid any kind of lawsuit or anything because somebody’s installation could be a huge damage in a house in terms if a hurricane actually cmes.

Mario Callejas: [00:09:43] The Miami-Dade building code is very, very strict as far as fastener type fastener spacing, the what we call the deflection or the distance between the face of glass to the back, to the inside back of the hurricane protection, whether it’s panels or accordions or whatever. And the product approval has various various applications on it. So part of the permit process is to highlight that product approval specific to the job site.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:19] Now when, you know, when it’s properly installed and a hurricane happens, is this a situation where like this can be kind of total protection for the home, that nothing is going to, you know, crash through the windows or crash through the doors or whatever area is being protected? Like, do you have kind of some stories where you that you can share that maybe a home that was protected with your materials versus one that wasn’t protected? How that turned out in a storm.

Mario Callejas: [00:10:51] Oh, sure. The key to hurricane protection for any structure is to protect the envelope. Basically, you want no opening larger than the size of your your your your computer screen, basically that size to be open because enough pressure, the exterior pressure drops drastically, sometimes in an instant, and that the pressure is not based on the pressure on the outside of with you on the inside. As long as all the all the openings are protected, you’re you’re in good state. Now, personal experience. My home during Andrew, for instance, had panels. I mean, I upgraded to accordions later, but panels on every opening. My neighbor right next door had nothing. Blew off the roof. Blew out the windows. Mean. Devastated. It was a total loss. And my house? Perfect. My neighbor’s house that had panels also perfect. It’s like side by side. The the that was a pressure problem, I believe, in that case and debris flying through the air. You could break a window and then all of a sudden you got the pressure problem.

Carol Aurich: [00:12:16] It is also a combination of protecting your windows doors. But as well, you make you need to make sure that you have a good roof. Maintain maintain it. Also, the garage door, everything, whatever the air can come through is very dangerous. So you have to be protected in every way. You have to have the knowledge and don’t wait until the last moment because everything is very complicated. For example, the roof, you have a bad roof, but you have panels. Then you can bring the panels because you had a roof. So everything is a get together thing to to get covered.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:51] Right? So everything has to be working together in order to have the most protection.

Mario Callejas: [00:12:56] Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:58] Now, when you’re kind of recommending this to especially new home builders, I would imagine that part of the selling price is, look, the communities that invest in this in the front end are the ones that are going to be around if the storm happens. And then the value of all these other homes are going to be you know, they’ll be all better served by having this as kind of built into the the home choice when you’re building or are builders kind of investing in this or they’re kind of relying on every individual homeowner to make the decision themselves?

Mario Callejas: [00:13:34] Well, the Miami-Dade Building Code, Broward Building Code, also, I mean, it’s basically Florida. The current code is affordable building code 2020. And basically, you cannot do a new construction without having an impact rated device or impact windows on the on the on the property. That instance I quoted earlier of having non impact windows with perc with panels cause it’s a cost is a cost thing as far as the builders. It’s less, it costs them less to do that as opposed to putting in standard impact glass or, or standard permanent shutter. There’s a level of complacency that kicks in after, say, five years have gone by, ten years have gone by without a major storm and that. Gail prior to Andrew and various storms in between but. Unless you’ve. I’m a native here in Miami, and unless you’ve really been through it and you don’t want to be inside without protection and you look at what’s happening on the outside, it’s, it’s it’s it’s a catastrophic event that can happen. Unfortunately, we don’t learn well, we learned because we redid all the codes and the roofing codes, like Carol mentioned, the garage door codes. You need to protect the envelope, cover every opening.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:10] Right. But I agree that there’s a level of complacency in the sense that, oh, it’s been a year they say there’s going to be a storm. Oh, no storm. Oh, there’s going to be a storm. Oh, no storm. And then they start thinking, especially as people I mean, people are moving to South Florida from everywhere. They don’t have that scar tissue that natives have. And it seems like, oh, how big of a deal is this? And you know, when the storm punches you in the face, then you realize but it’s it’s sad that they have to kind of live through that destruction in order to really understand the impact of the storm.

Carol Aurich: [00:15:46] We were actually talking about that earlier because people just get they forget. And then since they don’t see in the news that the storm is coming and they don’t have the chart with their five day map, they don’t do anything. But the system is being like kind of delayed because of global warming or the changes that have happened lately. So it’s not that a storm is not going to come. We are still in August and pretty much is we were in May right now. So we don’t know what is going to happen for the rest of the year. So that’s that’s why it is so important to be alert and updated and be protected. It doesn’t matter if you choose an impact window, of course, it’s going to be you are going to pay a higher price. But if you start with the panel, you are going to be for sure, at least you’re going to have a peace of mind that if something is going to come, you are going to be ready.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:42] Yeah, I mean, this is a pay me now or pay me later situation. It’s not a matter of if another storm or hurricane is coming, it’s going to come at some point. You just don’t know when.

Carol Aurich: [00:16:52] Exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:53] So if somebody wants to learn more about your company and the services you offer, what is the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Carol Aurich: [00:17:03] Sure. Our phone number is 3056859000. And we also have our Web page, which is www.floridastormllc.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:17] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Carol Aurich: [00:17:23] Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:25] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on South Florida Business Radio. Yeah.