W hen Florida began unifying its building codes and mandating hurricane protection in high-velocity wind zones, it changed everything. It certainly changed the way new homes and condos were built in coastal counties, but it also changed business for Alan Bias and Anthony Barbieri.

    The partners already had strong relationships with the state’s top homebuilders doing steel framing for them, so when new building codes opened the storm shutter market they had one foot in the door. All American Shutters began as a wholesale fabricator and installer for all types of hurricane protection: panels, accordions, roll-ups, Colonials, Bahamas. As the need for hurricane protection spread from Miami-Dade to Broward to Palm Beach Country, so too did the business. Now, in addition to West Palm Beach, All American Shutters has operations in Fort Myers and Tampa with its sights set on moving north to Jacksonville and into the Panhandle.

    “My belief is, in the next couple of years it’s going to be mandated across the whole state,” Bias says, “because in the last couple of years hurricanes didn’t do damage just on the coastline. They went straight across and destroyed a lot of areas in the middle of the state.”

    From there it’s not hard to see what Florida has done spreading to other states as well. Bias notes that Texas and Louisiana have mandated hurricane protection along the coasts and North Carolina and South Carolina are looking to do the same. “Hurricanes just are not here in the state of Florida,” Bias says. He believes hurricane protection will be a whole East Coast phenomenon. “It just takes getting hit once to be rudely awakened. Living through it—once you’ve experience it—you’ll do everything you can to protect yourself.”

SHUTTERS AND MORE

    All American Shutters was founded in 1996 to provide high quality, reliable hurricane protection to meet Florida’s new wind-borne debris code requirements. As a partnership between Bias and Barbieri, the company initially operated as a family business. “We made an agreement,” Bias recalls. “He would take care of doing the work and I would take care getting the work. It was a match made in heaven.”

    As the potential for business increased, All American Shutters expanded into other metropolitan markets. “I wanted to be where hurricane protection was mandatory, not an option or a luxury,” Bias says. As part of its strategic growth plan, the company is looking to the Jacksonville market and the Florida Panhandle, eventually looking to service the entire state.

    All American Shutters operates a 15,000-sqaure-foot facility in West Palm Beach, which includes roll-forming machinery to roll aluminum coil stock. Bias estimates they manufacture 25,000 feet a week of accordion shutters sold wholesale to builders and dealers and retail to end-users. About 80 percent of the business is to builders and 20 percent to retail end-users—still a relatively new part of the business. In both cases, the company also installs.

    The company has the builder market well covered. Bias says All American Shutters installs for 18 of the top 20 homebuilders in the state, as well as a multitude of small and custom homebuilders. “You name a builder, big or small, we do some portion of their business,” he says.

    Not content with fabricating and installing, the company is also an innovator. In 2001, it helped bring to market the Safety Edge design on its steel panels making the shutters safer to handle and install. This product is approved by both the Florida Building Code and the Miami Dade Building Code and can be used in all applications throughout the state.

    That business is good is undeniable—especially with the hurricane activities of the past two seasons. All American Shutters keeps busy installing on 10,000 homes a year, more than 200 homes a week. In the builder market, most of this is in panels. For the retail market it’s mostly accordions. Although more expensive than panels, accordions are more user friendly. “If they put accordions on their house—a standard, normal size house—it would probably take them less than 30 minutes to close it off,” Bias says.

    Higher ticket products are available, too: Colonial and Bahama shutters as well as motorized roll-up shutters. “They all protect equally,” Bias explains. “The differences between the products are price, user friendliness and looks. We can pretty much put any of those products on any of the openings; it’s just a determination of the homeowner or the builder what they want to spend and what they are trying to achieve.”

    Because of the safety hazards created by the destruction of screen enclosures during hurricanes, All American Shutters added the manufacturing and installation of aluminum fence and gates to its repertoire of services in 2005. These products are engineered to withstand 140 mph winds, Bias says.

FLIP-FLOP
    Although All American Shutters was initially established to service the needs of homebuilders, the need for affordable, easy to install hurricane protection for end-users was recognized about two years ago as the threat of hurricanes became a reality in Florida. Hurricanes Charley, Jeanne, Francis, Ivan, Katrina and Wilma were a tremendous wake-up call for the state as well as the country. Even before the first major storm hit, All American Shutters had prepared by creating a fully staffed retail department to service the needs of individual homeowners, who either had no hurricane protection, insufficient hurricane protection, or wanted to upgrade existing protection.

      “When it was announced that hurricane protection was going to become code—about five years ago—things started to open up along the Florida west coast,” Bias explains. “Basically, we had locked-in customers. All the builders that we worked for on the east coast asked us to go to the west coast. At that time we weren’t doing any retail business. When we opened up in Fort Myers five years ago and up until six months ago, we were strictly selling to builders.”

    It is this retail market, spurred by active hurricane seasons, that has seen the strongest growth in recent years. “Absolutely,” says Bias. The company’s strength in the builder market has been enough to create referrals and word-of-mouth advertising, but as new retail markets open—especially on Florida’s west coast—it has started marketing in a more conventional sense. Its ads, commercials and business cards carry the slogan: “Let the All American team protect your all-American dream.”

    The builder market, meanwhile, has stayed even over the past two seasons despite the number of storms because hurricane protection is mandated by law. All American Shutters remains very busy filling builders’ backlog, but building, Bias says, is slowing down.

    Bias notes that Florida is one of the top three markets (after Arizona and California) in the United States that have been hit the hardest because so many investors have pulled out. “It’s just like the stock market. If it keeps going up, eventually it’s going to have to stop and go down,” he says.

    But Bias and Barbieri have a tremendous advantage. They have positioned All American Shutters to work in both the builder and the retail segments, so the year ahead looks very bright. “It’s still great,” Bias says, “because the retail segment of the market is going to grow as the builder market softens. It’s going to be offset. It’s just flip-flopping. Where we did X amount of dollars in retail three years ago, it doubled two years ago, it doubled this year and next year it’s probably going to double again.”

    Add to that the fact that All American Shutters has never lost sight of its original mission: “To manufacture and install quality hurricane protection products while delivering outstanding customer service.