Well… how about the news from this past week? Big stuff. Before the word broke that the deal was done, the rumors on Cardinal and AGC making a deal were everywhere. So it happening was not a surprise. The shock was the timing. Most did not expect it to happen so soon and the talk was always about seeing who else would be involved with the deal as it revolved around the auto glass portion of AGC’s business. So now that the major share of this deal is done let’s take a look. Cardinal is a tremendous company with great people. When they make a deal (see Catalina for example) it is usually a massive success. So there’s no doubt they know what they are doing. The overarching fear from my vantage point is what does this do to an already tight supply chain- specifically on the commercial and heavy glass side. Obviously, this is way too soon to know exactly what will happen and I am sure Cardinal is weighing everything into their future approaches with these new plants. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the fear of more adventures in procuring glass is somewhat overwhelming right now. I have faith in the process though and look forward to seeing where the next steps lead. In the meantime, the overall deal itself from an historical base is amazing- for those of us who have been in this business for a while, the growth of Cardinal is surely something to see and the evolution of AGC- from the days of AFG- to now- is also a story. (Another chapter for my book) The glass world has just seen a massive change, what comes next is surely going to bear watching and an adventurous year already just got spiced up even more!
Elsewhere….
-- If you missed my latest Podcast, here are the links. (Audio, Video) This entire podcast process really has been an enjoyable one for me. To catch up with old friends and to meet new ones is simply awesome. And this latest pod was a mix of both. Meeting Kayla Natividad and Omar Maalouf virtually was awesome and catching up with my friend Andrew Haring was incredibly cool. The feedback on all has been so positive. Thank you for checking it out and supporting this effort each month!
-- Big and exciting news from Glaziers on Demand and Glazier Nation. Greg Whittle was announced as the new President of Glaziers on Demand. Greg is a fantastic guy and great advocate for the best in our industry. Congrats! There’s a lot of big-time exciting news that is coming from the Glazier Nation side of the world, so this is just a start. Good to see!
-- Speaking of good to see news… Q Railing got some great pub recently with their publication of the widest ICC-ESR report ever in the glass railing industry. You can read the entire report HERE but this thing is loaded with an excellent approach that covers a broad range of shoes, every building code known to man, and some smart approaches to edge protection and more. Congrats to Jan Hulin and the team at Q.
-- Thanks to past Glass Industry MVP Jon Kimberlain of Dow as he gave me a huge heads up on the 50th anniversary of the first 4 sided SSG project. The SHG building in Detroit. Obviously, that was a gamechanger for sure. Jon and the team are doing a paper for GPD and they’ll be a lot more out on this coming up. I‘m going to try and dig in and get some interviews as well. Until then check out this link from a few years ago of Jon being his legendary self and calling the shots on the growth of this product. Good stuff!
-- The latest ABC Construction Backlog report was a good one but it was tempered by contractor worry on the supply chain (no surprise.) Now this coming week the latest Architectural Billings Index will be released and it has been on a roll. Will this continue? The most recent Dodge Momentum reports (which are different metrics and timing) have been positive in the commercial space, so all signs point to the good trend continuing. We shall see and I’ll comment on it with my next post.
-- Last this week- PROGRAMMING NOTE- No blog post next week. Time to take a week off from this duty. I’ll be back again in this space week of July 4th! Until then stay well and for those of you in the US, Happy Independence Day!
LINKS of the WEEK
-- Big (bad) news for old school Microsoft Windows fans. (I’m all Apple but I do have friends in this area)
-- I saw this story a few times and it still baffles me. Even with the pandemic, how can you be so far off with inventory? 15 million extra boxes of Girl Scout Cookies?
-- The NCAA continues to be a mess. By the way both the Women’s Softball Championships and the Men’s Baseball Championships are very underrated events- awesome follows and watches!
PROJECT of the WEEK
We go inside for this week’s focus… This is from 8G Solutions and Chuck Mowery. Great company out of Kansas City. This is the Indian Creek Elementary School in KC.
Saw this on LinkedIn and 8G noted the glass handrail installed that features a custom gradient dot frit on Low Iron glass. Beautiful!! Congrats to 8G and also the fabricator on the job, the fine folks at Insulite Glass. Keep up the good work all!
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