Cover Story

It's All Good
From high-end interiors to high-end exterior storm panels, Signature kitchens has found an exciting new niche.

by Howard Shingle

Jim and Linda McLain came to storm panels from the inside. For more than 25 years, this husband-and-wife-team built Signature Kitchens, Charleston, SC, into a high-end kitchen and bath design firm. But like so many business owners these days they were looking for ways to expand their business. Signature Kitchens’ market penetration was so extensive the McLains had to look elsewhere, to other products to sell clients once they were in the homes.

That’s when storm shutters came to mind. But it wasn’t that simple. Signature Kitchens also had a reputation—for quality products, top-notch workmanship and installation, and unbeatable customer service—so a storm shutter had to be something special. Their search continued.

Actually, Jim McLain began looking at storm panels four years ago, but he wasn’t impressed by what he saw then. “The aluminum shutters I looked at weren’t too good: didn’t have a good paint finish and pop rivets were showing. . . they just weren’t what I was interested in,” he explains.

At the time, South Carolina was just beginning to review and adopt the International Building Code (IBC), so there was no mandate requiring builders to include storm shutters in design plans. That meant McLain had time to research and to find a product he, personally, could live with.

“I was looking for products for a home that I was building for me and my wife. Having lived in an older home in Summerville for 18 years, we replaced the shutters three times. I’ve been through the wood, the polywood, the this and the that, and I thought there had to be something better. While I was looking around for a product for my house, I just decided to wait. I’m not doing wood.”

McLain continued his research and, “Oddly enough, I ran into the product that I really wanted in Pensacola, FL. It was being manufactured by Rolltech [Hurricane Shutters]. I used it on my house, fell in love with it, asked for the line and here we are.”

HAND-IN-HAND
Signature Kitchens is a newcomer to the storm panel industry. It was less than a year ago that McLain added the line to his business. Yet, in just the three years he has been looking at them he has seen much improvement in the panels offered today. Particularly, the powder-coated finishes. “That is a no-brainer. You’d never buy a straight painted product over a powder-coated shutter. The life expectancy has got to be at least doubled,” he says. He adds that nearly an infinite line of styles has made storm shutters more attractive for homeowners as well. Today, Signature Kitchens sells and installs operable Colonial and Bahama shutters.

With the IBC now in effect requiring storm protection within 70 miles of the coast, McLain’s decision to add the line has proven to be the right solution to increasing business. “Our market penetration is so good, I don’t think we can grow any more in the cabinet business,” he says. “We’ve pretty well reached the potential of this market. Our residential sales is basically price-increase growth now. But the same house, the same client that buys our upper-end cabinet products needs these shutters. They go hand-in-hand. So it gives us more to sell at the same house.

“Really, for the price of a good decorative shutter—a good wood shutter—you can just about do these panels. If they’re under the [IBC] requirements, what they are letting them do now is substitute plywood window coverings. That doesn’t work very well. So, the logical thing to do is sell them some storm panels. So it works very well with what we’re presently doing. It just gives us a few more dollars out of the same house.”

Typical storm shutter jobs for Signature Kitchens’ clients run between $40,000 and $50,000 dollars. “But, hey, $17,000 or $12,000—it’s all good,” McLain admits. Most of the company’s work is in the residential market, although it has done some commercial jobs, especially restaurants, and is having good results. It’s too soon to tell how things eventually will work out, but McLain estimates commercial work is about 10 percent of his storm shutter business.

NEED IT, WANT IT
Once, most of Charleston was a resort area right down to the Intercoastal Waterway and the barrier islands beyond. Today, it’s much more year-round residences for homeowners. “It’s no longer just a cottage, second-home community. We’ve got a lot of people retiring here and living here,” McLain says.

Charleston also is a low-rise community. There are no high-rise structures, although the closer you get to the water, the more likely you are to find multi-level homes with the ground level being empty to allow for tides and storm surges. Other than that, the most noticeable trend is for homes to get larger. “People are able to build more home now than they could before simply because of the low interest rates,” McLain says, “So all areas—whether it’s entry level housing, mid-level or upper end—homes have a tendency to be a little larger. People want to build all the home they can.”

In many cases, for homeowners moving into the area the idea of hurricane protection is new, but McLain says architects and builders make them aware of the need and their options.

As has been the case elsewhere, many homebuilders in the area at first were against the IBC requirement for storm protection. They knew the extra costs would drive up the price of a house. “Well of course,” answers McLain. “You add that on and it’s a little more expensive. But if you’re already doing a good, high-quality wood shutter, the aluminum panels are just not that much more expensive. The other thing is, it becomes a level playing field. Once the IBC took effect, it became a level playing field. Every other builder has to do the same thing in the same area. So, if your house goes up by $5,000 or $10,000 so does your competition’s. Ultimately, it’s protection the homeowner needs—and wants, in most cases. If he’s given an opportunity, he wants this protection.”

DOING IT RIGHT
Adding storm shutters to the business has been a new and exciting learning experience for Signature Kitchens. And it will take time. It’s not quite the same as adding, say, a new line of cabinets, which everyone in the company already is familiar with. For one thing, McLain doesn’t cross-train his installers.

“We’re building from the ground up. We’re going slow—we’re going to do it the same way we did in the cabinet business. We’ll be the experts when we’re done, but we’re not the experts now. We’re learning something every day. That’s the most exciting thing for my company, that we’re getting to learn something new.”

To help, representatives from Eastern Metal Supply (EMS) have come on-site with a training program and to generate awareness in the products it sells, and representatives from Rolltech have come in to talk specifically about the product it has developed with EMS.

“It’s a two-day battery of sales and installation sessions. We’re actually going out to a site and measure some jobs. We’re looking at better ways to do things constantly,” McLain says.

In most cases, Signature Kitchens takes the window and door measurements right off the building plans, then writes up a proposal subject to field verification, and then places the order. All shutters are custom made for each home and are charged by the square inch.

Although it’s still a specialty item and more expensive than shutters, Signature Kitchens has just completed a project using impact-resistant glass. “Some people are just going to say, ‘Look, I don’t want shutters here, I’ve got a gorgeous window.’ They are going to pay the upcharge to get the impact glass, and in so doing I think they are going to make the price of impact glass go down. When you make more of something, it’s just logical that you’re going to reduce cost,” McLain says.

WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT
What really helped make storm shutters a successful venture for Signature Kitchens is the way the McLains run their business. “Everything we do, and the way we’ve gone about our business, is applicable to any new product that we take on: if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit,” Jim McLain says.

“We’re a start-up company, but we have a good reputation in the community, we have the longevity—there are no shutter companies that have been around as long as we have—so if people would just recognize the fact that if we can do one product and do it well, we can do a number of products and do that well. Our reputation has already been established. We’re known for quality work, completing on time and no cost overruns—that’s what we’re all about.”

Jim and Linda McLain also have been around long enough to have perspective on two factors that others might see as detrimental. One is competition. Where Signature Kitchens was once alone in the storm panel market, that’s not the case anymore. “Competition is fierce, but the good people that do a good job will always have work, ” McLain says.

The second is residents who haven’t seen a hurricane up close since Hugo in 1989 wondering what all the fuss is about. But McLain knows that will change. “I’ve seen the tape and the plywood and stuff go up and down here so many times when the hurricanes comes through. You sit here and say, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ Well, just the storm panels alone—in a good installation system where you get them up quickly, take them down when the storm clouds pass, and stack them up and they’re there to use again—that’s helping a lot of people here. We need a system and it needs to work every time. Every time you have to put up plywood and take it down and repaint or repair split trim—that’s going to sell storm panels. The guys who are buying plywood now will be buying storm panels after they use that plywood once.”