This is episode 3.01 Non-toxic environments season 3 first episode of the year. I'm Andy Pace. Today we'll be talking about new product trends and materials and some customer questions right here on Non-toxic environments. Hey folks, it's Andy Pace with Non-toxic environments.
It is so good to be back with you. I have to tell you I've been away for gosh looks like a month now, at least a month. Jay and I have been taking some time off. Jay took a few weeks off on vacation.
I was here but working on some new and exciting things for 2020. Actually one of the things we've been working on is the our non-toxic environments video cast and as a long long story behind that that I won't bore you with. But truth be told it's been more of a process than we had imagined or I had imagined because of how good our building is in insulation from Wi-Fi. By default, our building doesn't have very good Wi-Fi access because I don't want those radio waves bouncing around my office and affecting me and all my employees and all our customers and so forth.
The building we have is really well insulated from that. We have a cell tower literally 200 yards away from us. We barely get a signal from the cell tower. In order to have our new video podcasting system set up, we actually have we need access to Wi-Fi for some of the crucial connections.
I'm not an IT internet whiz and while I love electronics and the fun of it, I'm not great with it. But I do know that there are some things I need Wi-Fi access to and because of the inability to actually get a solid Wi-Fi signal through our building, we haven't been able to get all the settings correct for our new system. So that said, we will be starting the video cast probably in the next few weeks. We've got some new equipment coming in that will help us in this situation.
And as we promised, we will be starting our video podcasting on a weekly basis. We'll also be doing a whole host of other events, product demonstrations, my degree of green reviews, just a lot of exciting things. So today I wanted to talk about the year. I wanted to talk about some new product trends that we're seeing.
Jay is not with me this week. He'll be back with me next week. We actually have a number of good interviews lined up for the next few weeks and then something exciting in the next couple of months. I'll be traveling around the country visiting some very important people that I've known over the years and talking about their projects, their materials, learning about how they look at healthy building.
First, I'll be spending some time in California with a couple of our manufacturers. AFM, of course, will be out there. But Callie Bamboo or Callie Brands, however they want to call themselves these days. They're one of our main flooring manufacturers that we do a lot of work with.
And they have launched several new products in the last few weeks that we are just extremely excited to bring to the market. And I know you all will be happy with it as well. So I'll be going out there and conducting some interviews. We'll be doing some videos of their showroom, their testing areas and just getting a better sense of who they are and how they can help all of our clients.
And then after that, I'll be going down to Orlando probably in March or April to visit with the healthy vacation properties folks, Emily and Ben, who we spoke with probably over a year ago now in the show. They've been busy at work remodeling their first location. They actually decided to do is by an existing property and remodel it in a healthy manner and work with us on a whole host of materials from finishes to flooring. And they want to get the property up to the point where they can show proof of concept to their investors, to their clients.
And certainly from what I understand, it really has knocked out of the park. And I'll be down there to do ender air quality testing for both chemical from Aldehyde as well as mold testing, just some general overall air quality tests. And I'll be able to report on that. So really looking forward to that project has been a long time coming and I'm so excited to find that they're almost close to launching it.
So look for that in the next couple of months. And then as the year goes on, Jay and I have a number of trips planned, Natalie Jay coming here. And once again, he comes here usually for a week or two every year to do recordings, to work on new product ideas, product testing. But then we're also going to be visiting a number of what I would call the originals in our industry, folks who have been at this for as long as I have, maybe even longer in a number of respects.
To talk about the way it was before things got really changed with the internet and with the ability for people to do some of their own investigative work on their own. And so we're going to be talking with these originals around the country and getting their sense to how the market is changing, improving, maybe even getting worse in some respects. But as we've said before, it's really difficult to plan for the future, unless you really know where you came from. And in our business, the industry of healthy home remodeling construction design, which is turning into a business now, other manufacturers and the mainstream is starting to pick up on this.
We have to make sure we're doing it right and we're doing it for the right reasons. You know, years ago, I was involved with an ad hoc group of green retailers. And some of you who listened to the show probably were part of that. It was we met one year before Green Build in Chicago.
This is probably the year 2003. Let's all say. So quite some time ago. And there was about 15 of us from all over the country, green retailers.
And this is before the big box stores started selling anything that was remotely considered green or healthy. And I remember sitting around this table talking about the idea of the industry actually deciding that healthy building or green building or a combination is. A viable way to go and what's going to happen when the big box stores, Home Depot's and Lowe's and all the other big stores start to sell these products. And about half of the retailers in the room said, well, we can't let that happen.
You know, they're not doing it for the right reasons. And myself and a few others said, well, does it really matter if they're doing it for the right reasons? And think about this. If if Home Depot starts selling safe code paint, am I really going to get mad because now my retail company isn't selling as much paint because Home Depot selling more?
Or should I actually feel like we've accomplished part of our goal, which is to mainstream the products so that they're easy to find for everybody, easy to procure for everybody? And this is something as an independent company. This is something I struggle with on a daily basis when customers call up and say, can I buy your product at Home Depot or Lowe's? And as you know, you think about it, I would love to say, yes, of course, every Home Depot in the country has it because that means we finally, finally accomplished our goal to mainstream these materials, mainstream this idea and everyone would have the same access.
On the other hand, that puts me at a business, right? So what's the right thing for me to do? Well, there's a happy medium, of course, but at the end of the day, what would make me happy and would make a lot of folks happy who have been doing this for as long as I have would be if the mainstream companies finally picked up on this and ran with it because, you know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. And if Home Depot starts selling safe code paint and all of that paint business goes away from me, you know what?
I'll find something else to do. But I will feel a sense of accomplishment because that was my goal 27, 28 years ago when I first started selling safe code was to mainstream their product line. So it wasn't available just through these small, unknown niche companies. I wanted to get into every hardware store, every paint store.
And so if that happens, and I do believe at some point in the not so distant future, I do believe this is going to happen. I don't know if it's going to happen just from a standpoint of internet sales or if it will actually be in the stores, but I do believe in the not so distant future, you will be able to buy these healthier materials from mainstream companies because that is just the wave of the present and the future. This is the way things are going. So, and I won't be disappointed.
I'll actually feel like I've accomplished something in my life that I was part of a small but vocal group. People that pushed so hard that these materials became mainstream. So anyway, enough about waxing poetic about what we would wish and what we'd hope for. This episode is all about giving you some ideas of what to look for this year.
And so coming up very shortly will be the International Building Show and Services to the largest expos every year that are dedicated to home construction materials, flooring materials, tile wood, you name it. And so I'll be traveling out there to get some ideas of what the latest trends are, but I can tell you what I'm finding already from the manufacturers who are emailing me some of the previews of their releases for the shows. And we're finding that the trend that started a few years ago with the vinyl plank flooring is really, really going to town. Callie Bamboo is one of the lines that we've been working with for a few years now that sells a luxury vinyl plank system.
We like it because the core contains limestone in lieu of a MDF or some other particle board that's full of formaldehyde. Anyway, we like this product and they've launched now two new versions of that floor. One is called Callie Longboard, which is a wide plank and a six foot long plank. You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between this and real wood folks.
Quite honestly, it's one of the most beautiful floors I've ever seen. And then they also have their traditional Callie Vinyl Pro in what they call a mute step, which has a built in pad. We have been doing testing other products for well over two years now and their products consistently tested B0 from Altide, from Altide Free, which is really unique in this type of flooring. So they'll be broadcasting that product and getting it out to the masses to let everybody know about that.
And we're just seeing from our tile manufacturers a continuing trend in wood grain patterns of tile and a trend towards healthier materials. This is really interesting. Manufacturers about six or seven years ago really got away from marketing green as an attribute because I think it was well established that green means different things to different people. And at the end of the day, what good is a product being green if it's still considered unhealthy to the human occupants.
And so that particular term has become a little bit polarizing in our industry. People shy away from that term because they either understand it or they don't, but it evokes a feeling. Whether it's a good feeling or a bad feeling. Unfortunately, it's very polarizing.
Healthy or human friendly is something that we all can relate to. Everybody wants to live in a healthy home. Everybody wants the environment to be healthy for themselves and their families, their young children at home. And so manufacturers have embraced that terminology and technology and we're seeing more and more manufacturers now focusing on the health aspects of their material.
So be on the lookout for that and all the retail stores coming up this year after these big shows. And of course, coming in the next few weeks will be all the manufacturers of paints listing their colors of the year. I don't really follow those trends too much because here in the Midwest, those color trends will come to us in about two or three years. And by the time those trends get here, they're gone from the rest of the country.
So I don't pay too much attention to those, but sometimes it's fun anyway just to talk about. So that's about it for the show this week folks. Next week we will be back together. J and I and hopefully we'll have the video set by then.
Maybe if not next week, the following week and then we'll be able to launch some of our new videos that we've been working on. And if you have any ideas for shows, please reach out to me Andy at degreeofgreen.com. Feel free to go to the website degreeofgreen.com and hit the speak pipe app on the top left. That way we'll be able to hear from you and let you let us know what might be on your mind for a topic.
And then of course, what we're really, really happy about is the show growing and it's still growing at a fairly good pace. And I think that it's growing because of folks really promoting it to their family and friends and so forth. So what I'm hoping is that you can go on to iTunes. You can leave us a review.
You can leave us a rating. And let everybody know about the show that we're back on the air and we're really excited to talk to you this year. So that's it for this week folks. This is Non-Toxic Environments.
I am Andy Pace and we will talk to you again next week. Take care.