[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house!

[00:00:05] Martin Stevenson: I was sitting in my chair gently popping up and down thinking, No, you can just go and install it and bend the stuff, because it's flexible enough to install at normal temperatures. Back at Valentine's Day, Kevin Jacquet over at the Builders in Rhode Island did a beautiful thing.

[00:00:23] Martin Stevenson: He took a couple of strips of our flexible waging and he bent it into a heart shape and made a Valentine's heart. And in the caption underneath, it says, He noted that he had pulled this out of the snow and we have a specification. He's supposed to bend it no tighter than four foot radius. Kevin did it down to one foot

[00:00:43] Eric Goranson: radius.

[00:00:43] Eric Goranson: When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered. This is around the house. Welcome to the round the house show. This is where we help you get the most out of your home through information and education. Thanks [00:01:00] for joining us today. I am here at design and construction.

[00:01:04] Eric Goranson: Las Vegas, 2024, and we're at my favorite decking, siding, everything company in the world here with Millboard. Thanks for coming in guys.

[00:01:14] Martin Stevenson: All right. Thank you for introducing us. It's nice to meet you again.

[00:01:17] Eric Goranson: Oh, that is so great. Let's do some introductions.

[00:01:19] Greg Cowan: Greg, we'll start out with you. My name is Greg. I work at Millboard, Australian, but live in the UK and it's really great, glad to be here.

[00:01:26] Greg Cowan: It's nice to be able to sit down. We have been busy for a couple of days.

[00:01:29] Eric Goranson: It's nice. See, it puts you to work in here, but you got a chair, you got a water, you get to chill out, right? I got some chocolate, life is good. Life is good.

[00:01:35] Martin Stevenson: Harry, hi, I'm Martin in town. Despite the accent, I'm actually from Boston.

[00:01:40] Martin Stevenson: Originally from the UK a long time ago. And I gotta tell you, it's a pleasure to be here in Las Vegas at the end of February where the temperature is so much nicer than sunny Massachusetts. Oh,

[00:01:51] Eric Goranson: yeah. Guys, you guys do so much stuff. And I first ran into you guys on social media. And I was like Okay, [00:02:00] I got to figure this stuff out because this is different than anything else on the market today.

[00:02:05] Eric Goranson: And I reached out and you just continue to impress me, whether it's decking, whether it's siting materials, you can build a whole house out of this stuff. The

[00:02:14] Greg Cowan: curved bench. Yeah. With a coffee. How cool is that?

[00:02:17] Eric Goranson: That is super cool. Yeah. So let's talk about the origin of Millboard, whichever way, when you guys want to jump in.

[00:02:23] Eric Goranson: I want to talk just about, because you guys do something different than basically. Yeah, so we're

[00:02:30] Greg Cowan: both reasonably new to Millboard. The company was started in 2007. It's a family business. Just wanted to have great products. They've been in the stone market business before. And they just experimented. They wanted a great product.

[00:02:42] Greg Cowan: What I love about the product is, every board is so unique. They're all hand brushed for the first color, so there are no two boards that are the same. You would have seen the boards outside that are from 100 year old French train carriages? Yeah. Have you seen the nails in them?

[00:02:56] Eric Goranson: Yes, I built a planter box out of that with the black, [00:03:00] and it turned out And people come by and they'll start picking at the nail on it because they think it's real.

[00:03:04] Eric Goranson: I'll tell you a funny

[00:03:05] Greg Cowan: story. I think it's a funny story. So we're at the Deck Expo in November. It was my second week, and I had a customer arguing with me because he kept saying, I like the wood, and I kept having to explain it to him. It was a mineral resonant composite. I like the wood. sir. But it's not wood.

[00:03:21] Greg Cowan: You know, you're working for a good company. When that happens,

[00:03:24] Eric Goranson: everybody comes over and goes, what kind of, what is this? It's a hundred year old French Oak, or that's at least what it was molded from. It's hilarious. But, but that's, what's different. There's 50 deck companies in this building that we're sitting in here right now.

[00:03:36] Eric Goranson: And this is like what 4. 6 million square feet, but they look like a printed product. No offense to you guys out there, but it looks like something. Something that you'd see at every other home center out there in this stuff. When you see it, you think visually and texturally, that it's real wood. Yeah. It's made using

[00:03:53] Martin Stevenson: a completely different process.

[00:03:54] Martin Stevenson: Yeah. So we are, we are molding it from real oak planks. Yeah. Rather than running it through an [00:04:00] extruder or embossing a surface onto a board. So you, you just get a depth of detail in the grain, which is absolutely beautiful. And, uh, the way the boards reflect the light is so natural and you, you, you just get.

[00:04:13] Martin Stevenson: A aah factor of the people are delighted by factor. The wow

[00:04:18] Greg Cowan: factor. Yeah.

[00:04:19] Eric Goranson: Yeah. It

[00:04:20] Martin Stevenson: really is something I, I'm picking up on. You're talking about how nice and innovative the product is. What I'm loving seeing and I, I'm experiencing myself here, is the way that artisans are picking up on this product and absolutely innovating with it and bringing their creativity to the product.

[00:04:38] Martin Stevenson: So I've just seen some beautiful work being done around the country using Melbourne and. As one component of absolute artistry that they're bringing to people's backyards. Making a space that people can genuinely enjoy because it's just an element of beauty in their house. Yeah, that's really fulfilling when you see that.

[00:04:57] Martin Stevenson: You're not just making a board, you're [00:05:00] making a way for people to live. It's a

[00:05:03] Greg Cowan: building material, as opposed to a board or a siding.

[00:05:06] Eric Goranson: Yeah, but what's cool about it is Is it? It's not something that you have to worry about what mother nature is going to do to it, right? If you are making something out, let's say you're doing an outdoor kitchen and you're putting it out there around this area, you don't have to worry if somebody spills a little bit of grease from the barbecue on it.

[00:05:23] Eric Goranson: It's Gonna wipe right up. Yeah. The board, if that was oak, you've got another problem. Yeah. The

[00:05:28] Martin Stevenson: boards are are waterproof. Yeah, exactly. You can wipe stuff off of them. But another thing that's coming out really to the fore here, we we're talking for people from all over the country, is that the inside of the board, the interior is mostly, it's a limestone product, actually powdered limestone.

[00:05:43] Martin Stevenson: And that's a natural insulator. Mm-Hmm. . So it doesn't absorb a whole lot of heat. And the boards themselves, even in bright sunshine, barely move from expansion and. That makes for a very nice stable deck or siding on the side of your house and it allows [00:06:00] contractors and builders to do interesting things like glued mitre joints down corners which just don't open up when the when the boards get warm.

[00:06:08] Martin Stevenson: Yeah it just makes for a crisp finish and you can really see the the perfect craftsmanship that people are able to execute.

[00:06:14] Eric Goranson: It does and that's what's cool about this is that you get that depth and I was worried about it because I use some of the black stuff. I forgot what you guys call it. The, the, the dark, dark charred.

[00:06:24] Eric Goranson: Yep. That's all right. Yeah. So I, oh man, this is going to be hot. Not really. Not really. It's cooler than another composite deck board would be. So that's what's cool about that. Yeah. It works really well. So. There's a lot of stuff to talk about here. You guys are not like one trick pony here. There's a lot of different stuff.

[00:06:41] Eric Goranson: So let's just talk about decking. You can have two different decking theories, right? You have something that for the, for the listener out there that looks more like a traditional, really fine wood deck, and then you've got this. F that's created out of the French a hundred year old rail car floors. So let's talk about those two different ones.

[00:06:59] Eric Goranson: Yeah, [00:07:00] that's right There two different applications and they're two different looks, but they're both

[00:07:03] Martin Stevenson: gorgeous. Yeah. The enhanced grain, the one you're talking about is, is, is the beautiful smooth grain product just shows off the, the perfect variations in the grain and the color, and you can see it. And we've got 10 different colors of boards going there.

[00:07:15] Martin Stevenson: Mm-Hmm, . So you can have, it's, it's almost like a, a high-end hardwood look on, on a deck. But then on the other side, if you want a, a more rustic finish. We've got a board which it almost looks like a railroad tie the way the old wooden sleepers that yeah Have that lovely depth of character to them and something Something we've seen people doing with it is building docks, uh, because these surface of the board is naturally slip resistant.

[00:07:43] Martin Stevenson: So even when it gets wet, you can, you can walk across it and uh, it doesn't absorb any water. It's completely waterproof. So it makes a fantastic dock material and people are using it in areas that get wet and also ground contact. So, uh, there's a wonderful boardwalk down in, [00:08:00] uh, Ding Darling down in Sanibel, which is right out into the wetlands.

[00:08:03] Martin Stevenson: And, um, it just makes for a great way to, for people to experience the great outdoors in areas that you just Wouldn't be able to put wood in any way that would last for any length of time.

[00:08:13] Eric Goranson: Yeah, absolutely. I have the enhanced screen on the steps going up to my front door. Yeah, fantastic. At my house. Nice.

[00:08:18] Eric Goranson: And that is just absolutely gorgeous, but it's not, not slippery at all. Now, other deck boards you get a little water in. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, so we get a little layer. Slime on everything, right? That moss and mold, that's not a slippery

[00:08:33] Greg Cowan: product. The

[00:08:35] Martin Stevenson: slime grows because there's some protein in those boards that the slime can feed on to grow.

[00:08:42] Martin Stevenson: Millboard is made of, as I said, it's an inert product. It's got limestone in the middle. So there's nothing for algae to feed on. So it just doesn't grow there. So we recommend you wash down the boards. Twice a year, but you can do that with a hose or a gentle pressure washer. Um, that's all you need to maintain it.

[00:08:59] Martin Stevenson: [00:09:00] So there's no, no sanding off, no staining. It's just a great low maintenance product with a good look. Absolutely.

[00:09:05] Greg Cowan: I jokingly say in the UK being an Australian that the first warm summer's day, you don't have to actually clean your deck. You can actually enjoy your deck. Summer in the UK is what, about five or six days?

[00:09:16] Greg Cowan: Yeah, I was going to say, I heard this. Normally on a Thursday and a Friday when you're at work. If you do get it on the weekend, the one thing you do is cleaning your deck. You want to be able to go out enjoying it. So, there is the advantage. And as an Aussie, I'd love to be able to take a little bit of the Mickey out of the Brits.

[00:09:29] Eric Goranson: I'm feeling a competition here. I like

[00:09:31] Martin Stevenson: this.

[00:09:31] Greg Cowan: Tiny bit. I'm a dual citizen, so

[00:09:34] Eric Goranson: I, there we go. Hearing both sides of that fence, then without sp sprinters.

[00:09:38] Martin Stevenson: I love it. I love it. My living outside story is, a couple of years ago we built a screen porch onto the back of our house, Uhhuh, and just after Covid and I deliberately built a little home office into it.

[00:09:49] Martin Stevenson: So for about six months of the year, I work outdoors in the screen porch and I've got my desk there and I bring my laptop out. That's where I, and I was on a, one of those video calls with one [00:10:00] of my colleagues. Mm-Hmm. and. She was telling me that in the background of my Airquotes office, what she could hear was the birds singing.

[00:10:08] Martin Stevenson: Now that was just such a, I work in an office where I really am genuinely living life outdoors. And that's what we're aiming for. It's a great building material. And it's a, it's a nice product. It's really about the lifestyle that it affords you. And I genuinely enjoy working outdoors. My only regret about this is that I built this deck about a year before I missed the opportunity, but I do enjoy the birds singing.

[00:10:34] Martin Stevenson: I think

[00:10:35] Eric Goranson: you know somebody, you might be able to get that fixed one year. I could

[00:10:37] Martin Stevenson: probably work with that. Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:39] Greg Cowan: I know a few people.

[00:10:39] Eric Goranson: Yeah, absolutely. See,

[00:10:41] Greg Cowan: see one

[00:10:42] Eric Goranson: every morning when I look in the mirror. Yeah, absolutely. That's what's cool. And, and as for somebody that's built with it now. So I've worked with kind of three or main products.

[00:10:51] Eric Goranson: I've worked with both decking and then I've also been, I installed the board and batten around siding around my outdoor, I have an outdoor bar that's [00:11:00] eight foot by eight foot. So I wrapped that with that underneath and that looked so good. So that's what's cool. And building with this stuff is really easy from the construction side of things.

[00:11:12] Eric Goranson: It's interesting. So

[00:11:13] Greg Cowan: outside here, we've got one of the guys from the UK and he's doing how to use the product, how to mold the product. The amount of wows we hear, it's a PG radio show. So that's what I'll say. But the amount of people you get going, this is amazing. You surely, you can't do that. The hidden screw, all those things.

[00:11:29] Greg Cowan: Don't actually believe the product until they do it themselves. Yeah, it's, it's fantastic. It's lovely to work for a company where people look at you and go,

[00:11:38] Eric Goranson: wow. We had more comments on my TV show when I, we took some nice, good, slow, sinking the screw in and watching it. going to go rub my hand over and it disappears.

[00:11:48] Eric Goranson: And yeah, we got more comments about what

[00:11:51] Martin Stevenson: is that magic? I've been talking about that on the stand here. We have a display stand here at IBS, which measures 40 feet square and it's [00:12:00] completely decked in millboard. And something I do when people come to visit is I just say, Hey, look downwards. Can you see any fasteners?

[00:12:08] Martin Stevenson: And then I tell them it was screwed straight through the face of the board. fastener underneath. We just put screws through the surface of the board. elastomer surface. It's a bit like the sole of your sneaker that just closes up the screws. And that's a fantastic

[00:12:23] Greg Cowan: finish. We're expanding in the US, bringing on new people.

[00:12:26] Greg Cowan: We've got a new guy we started today. He's doing the screw demo. Nice. It's not hard. My eight year old son can do it. Night now. Birthday last week. Yep. Sorry Samuel.

[00:12:35] Eric Goranson: There we go. I'm in trouble when I get home. No, but here's the thing though. You could sit there and, and sink that screw down. Yeah. And it's gone.

[00:12:42] Eric Goranson: And that's one of the tips that I always give people working with it is if you're trying to get something fit, sink those screws down most of the way. Get it where you want it. Then drive it all the way down. Because you're gonna have a hard time finding that screw later. Yes.

[00:12:55] Martin Stevenson: So it

[00:12:55] Eric Goranson: is a neat finish. It is.

[00:12:57] Eric Goranson: It is. Cause I tell you what, when I've done projects [00:13:00] that I don't like talking about about other people, so we're not going to, but generally when I'm having to sit there, drill a hole, sink a screw, push a plug back in it to hide that screw. That's a lot of work. And it's tedious. So an issue

[00:13:14] Greg Cowan: happens once you forget to cover the plug, then you get water, then you get, it's not, it's porous, then you have issues and then you have extra cost and then it becomes

[00:13:21] Eric Goranson: a pain.

[00:13:22] Eric Goranson: Yep. And it's. And it's not like there's a benefit to it. It's not like you can go back and pop that plug out easily and tighten something that there's no reason to get back at it. So that's the beautiful part of being able to just drive that screw home and forget it.

[00:13:36] Martin Stevenson: It is good. There's another aspect of this millboard decking and siding board that's come out on this couple of days we've had here at IBS, and that is the sustainability of the product, because the inside of the boards are made from a limestone, which is.

[00:13:53] Martin Stevenson: Leftover from the food industry. Really? Yeah. So when, when your product, when your food says [00:14:00] enriched with calcium, there's a bit left over and we turn it into the boards, the insides. That is cool. So there's a recycled, reused product there, but also millboard is made without using a lot of energy. And some, many of the other boards, the more plasticky boards require a huge amount of energy to melt plastic a couple of times to make the board.

[00:14:18] Martin Stevenson: Whereas we're pouring it cold into a mold. Wow. And squeezing it tight and just letting it melt. Letting it sit there until, until it sets. And so for somebody who's looking for a kind of a more green product, this makes for a really nice board to put into your deck because it's using recycled products, low energy to make it doesn't need any chemicals or energy to maintain it.

[00:14:40] Martin Stevenson: So it's a, it's a nice story.

[00:14:41] Greg Cowan: Yeah. Also we purchased all our energy renewable. We're trying to say that one again. We use renewable energy. Nice. From that point of view, there's all the benefits that Martin's told you about, plus a little bit more. And we don't, when we ship the product, we don't ship here.

[00:14:56] Greg Cowan: So it's even better from that point of view as well. That's

[00:14:58] Eric Goranson: nice. Yeah. [00:15:00] I want to talk about the siding products for going on the side of the house, all the cladding stuff you do. Cause I also see some new stuff here that I'm like, what is this? Let's talk about the side of a building or the side of your, your outdoor living space or whatever.

[00:15:13] Eric Goranson: Cause there's some beautiful stuff here. Okay.

[00:15:16] Martin Stevenson: We've got a couple of signing products. One is a board and batten, which looks like the, the old kind of barn finish that you might get comes in some great colors. There's a beautiful Jara color, which I think Jara is from Australia, isn't it? Originally great.

[00:15:30] Martin Stevenson: It's a lovely, lovely, rich red color. And if you marry that with some of the thinner deck. boards, which are in a white color. You get this beautiful kind of barn look like you might be familiar with seeing in, in the hinterland of the United States, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. And it's, it's a great old rustic look to it.

[00:15:50] Martin Stevenson: And then I'm sitting in a room here where in front of me, we've got the other kind of siding, which is a shadow line. It's a flatter board, a tongue and groove where you get a small nickel [00:16:00] gap in between each board just to put an element of shadow. And in this room, we've added on a new accessory that Melville has recently brought out.

[00:16:08] Martin Stevenson: Which is called Decor, and it's an aluminum strip that can insert into the tongue of the groove between boards. Comes in a few different colors. We got a black one I'm sitting looking at here with a light colored board. And somebody was in the room just recently and said, it looks like a modern take on a log cabin.

[00:16:28] Martin Stevenson: Yes. Yeah, it really does. It's just brought it up to date. I'm thinking

[00:16:32] Eric Goranson: about having a black and tan right now after this. I'm getting

[00:16:35] Martin Stevenson: thirsty. Quite nice. Behind me we got dark boards with a golden stain. It's pretty close. Over the dock, absolutely. Exactly. I

[00:16:42] Eric Goranson: had to fit a pint in here someplace. Yeah. Some of the

[00:16:45] Greg Cowan: new colors will be outside as well.

[00:16:47] Greg Cowan: It is gorgeous. Yep. I'll let

[00:16:49] Martin Stevenson: Martin talk to you about the new colors. We, uh, just at this show yesterday, we introduced two new colors. So we've got sage green siding and salt blue siding. So that [00:17:00] is perfect for the coastal environment. Yes. So we're thinking down in the panhandle of Florida or up into the Carolinas.

[00:17:08] Martin Stevenson: Or deep Sydney.

[00:17:13] Martin Stevenson: It's a pastel color, so you've got this lovely shade that just moves us away a little bit from the earth tones that Milborough's has been associated with before, and it's just a different look that I think people are going to use with some interest now. I want to

[00:17:28] Eric Goranson: talk about this. Decor strips, so does it just slide into a groove in the side?

[00:17:32] Eric Goranson: Is that what that does? It's an aluminum

[00:17:34] Martin Stevenson: extrusion and it, it has itself a tongue and groove. So it matches the tongue and groove of the board. And we've made it in three colors and two widths and a couple of shapes. So when you take that and then you take all the different colors of the boards, you can riff on the permutations.

[00:17:52] Martin Stevenson: And I'm really waiting for a designer or an architect out there to go to town with this because

[00:17:57] Eric Goranson: you can, this. [00:18:00] My design background. I see this and I'm just going crazy going, this is so cool. Oh my gosh. Now that brushed gold is that is gorgeous. Oh yeah. That is cool. Do that with the block.

[00:18:14] Martin Stevenson: Yeah. And the dark carbon colors.

[00:18:16] Martin Stevenson: So if you're building maybe a privacy screen or an outdoor shower, this would be a lovely way to enhance it. Both of

[00:18:25] Eric Goranson: those projects coming up. So we have a outdoor shower, we're building. And a privacy screen around the hot tub coming up. So we're going to talk about that because that is absolutely gorgeous.

[00:18:36] Eric Goranson: And that is something there that again, innovative where you guys grab it and say, Oh, we're gonna do something different.

[00:18:42] Greg Cowan: The thing is it's innovative, but really, really easy to use. So it's not complicated to use. That's the important thing. So if you're a contractor or you want to try it yourself, that's not my skillset in any way, shape or form.

[00:18:54] Greg Cowan: It's easy to follow details on the website, the YouTube videos, et cetera. So it's not complicated. You got it. [00:19:00] So you can try

[00:19:00] Eric Goranson: things and that's what's cool is now you're using that middle of the board where everybody else has to use it to Fasten the boards down with because there's no way to hide the fasteners.

[00:19:09] Eric Goranson: Now you guys get to go through and say hey We're gonna embrace what we do. Well, you put this beautiful piece in there and hold the deck boards down correctly We've got something for

[00:19:19] Greg Cowan: you next year. It would love and that's all we're gonna say for now. There we go Nice You'll go, wow, this is a phenomenal

[00:19:29] Eric Goranson: product.

[00:19:29] Eric Goranson: Yeah, and that board and batten, it's so funny when people come over to my house because we just wrapped it around. It's that just beautiful light oak color and people come over and go, what is that? Because they think they're touching wood, but then they go, am I touching wood? Yeah. And so it's that, it's that.

[00:19:47] Eric Goranson: It's that realistic when somebody can walk out there, touch it and feel it and go, what

[00:19:51] Martin Stevenson: is this? That's what I've noticed here at the show is that if you just stand back and let people come up to the product, what I routinely see people is they reach [00:20:00] out and they just stroke their fingers over the surface of the board and they look puzzled and they're trying to figure out what it is they're looking at.

[00:20:06] Martin Stevenson: I

[00:20:06] Eric Goranson: do that at my house. I'll have contractors over. people to do. Yeah. They come over and touch it. They're like, okay, what's this?

[00:20:13] Martin Stevenson: What a nice thing to have in your house. Something that you like so much you want to go stroking.

[00:20:17] Eric Goranson: Exactly. Yes, absolutely. Yes, it is. Absolutely. And speaking of paint, you'll never have to mess with that staining, sanding, finishing nightmare

[00:20:27] Greg Cowan: again.

[00:20:27] Greg Cowan: There's the joke of the English summer I could make again

[00:20:29] Eric Goranson: that I won't. Give

[00:20:31] Martin Stevenson: it a good wash down, twice a year, done.

[00:20:35] Eric Goranson: Yeah, and that's what's great. So, I tell you what. So there's so many things you can do with these products. I mean, you guys keep taking stuff and you took what was a decking product and now you could literally do three tones on the outside of a house and give completely different looks with the similar product.

[00:20:53] Eric Goranson: It's interesting.

[00:20:54] Greg Cowan: I say it's a building material product. Yeah. Not a decking product. Yeah. Our heritage is decking, but I said it's a building material. [00:21:00] Look at the curve edges here where we've got the, uh, the cartoonists doing the drawings. Yeah. The decor across the bridge. This is a building material. The curved table where you get your coffees.

[00:21:08] Greg Cowan: It's not a To me, it's not a decking product anymore. Yeah. It's a, it's a fantastic product and a great company to work

[00:21:14] Eric Goranson: for. And it fits on a bunch of different sizes. This isn't just a contemporary product. You can sit there and do some beautiful stuff. I've seen like that little pergola right there that's over the top of that coffee bar over there.

[00:21:26] Eric Goranson: With the wrapped posts. That could be in a 1800s farmhouse and it would look absolutely gorgeous. Do you follow

[00:21:31] Greg Cowan: tennis? Yes. So court one at Wimbledon is fully done in an envelo. Looks absolutely fantastic. The whole of

[00:21:39] Martin Stevenson: the court of Wimbledon. The whole, the whole arena around that second court. Beautiful.

[00:21:44] Greg Cowan: That's

[00:21:45] Martin Stevenson: cool. It's the second court after the center court. So we'll just call it one. Just to really confuse people.

[00:21:52] Eric Goranson: Neither is through finance as you can

[00:21:53] Greg Cowan: tell. But then, have you seen the Joshua Tree project on it as well? No, I have not. You've [00:22:00] got to see that. Okay. We'll talk about it

[00:22:02] Eric Goranson: next year. Okay. Nice.

[00:22:04] Eric Goranson: That is good. You guys are available worldwide, but in the U S you guys are really starting to come out. It's it's, I'm loving to see the growth out there because it seems like people have really started to get their arms on the, around this and go, wow,

[00:22:17] Martin Stevenson: this is exciting. I'm seeing that in this show. We've been, we've been talking to people from all over the country, from Maine to San Diego and all the way out to Hawaii and a lot of interest.

[00:22:28] Martin Stevenson: I really think this is about to take off. Yeah.

[00:22:30] Greg Cowan: So we're investing. We've got some. For our own team, Martin was the first meal board employee in the U S where it was like I think 20 or 22 ads on LinkedIn at the moment in the U S for roles. We've got your application. We consider you. We're not sure if you're an advocate yet, so we'll work our way through it.

[00:22:47] Greg Cowan: No, I'm joking. But yeah, we've got lots of roles. It's exciting. And the important thing for us is we can get you to stock anywhere in the U S within seven to 10 working days. That's cool. We want to build longterm relationships. So we've [00:23:00] invested, we've got, we're investing in people, we're investing in distribution.

[00:23:03] Greg Cowan: It's really exciting. Yeah, we got some great people here already. Yeah, no,

[00:23:06] Eric Goranson: it is great. And it's one of those products that people should really be paying attention to out there because it was funny with composite decking when it came out, it was the answer for everything, but it came out that that first gen, I'll just use the word Rex, it came out and it was just.

[00:23:24] Eric Goranson: Pop bottles and sawdust. Yeah. Yeah, it was like everything on the first try. It's not perfect. And Then they started coming out with the capped PVC stuff and it got better. Yeah, I call that second gen And then now you guys can come out and went all right now We're gonna look up make it look beautiful and have the durability built in Into it.

[00:23:46] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So

[00:23:46] Greg Cowan: Tru Simmons, our global marketing director, said, Greg, it's quite simple. I'm not talking about the competition. There used to be the Blackberry, there's now the iPhone as a comparison.

[00:23:55] Eric Goranson: Yeah, that's a great comparison because back then you couldn't pull that [00:24:00] blackberry outta certain people's hands.

[00:24:01] Eric Goranson: They're like, yeah, I'm gonna die with this. This is it. I like the click. Yeah.

[00:24:05] Martin Stevenson: Now, and it's happening with decking. They, they used to be wood plastic composite. Now there's mill board. Exactly. It's, it's moved on a whole generation at this

[00:24:13] Greg Cowan: point. Yeah, and I

[00:24:14] Eric Goranson: love that. I didn't, there's. so many things come into this booth.

[00:24:17] Eric Goranson: I learned that I didn't know about the, being able to form it, doing some stuff with what you guys are doing.

[00:24:23] Greg Cowan: We've got to introduce one of the guys, Russell, afterwards, but it's interesting. I was speaking to one of the marketing team. He said, Greg, you know, you're doing okay in the, in the UK when real estate agents are saying you have a smeg oven and you have billboard decking.

[00:24:39] Greg Cowan: That's when you know you're doing okay. Correct. Correct. You've made it. So we were starting to get.

[00:24:47] Eric Goranson: Yeah, all of a sudden you're getting that Rolls Royce name out there, but without the Rolls Royce price. So how do you guys come up with all the colors and this innovation? I gotta ask because you're really on that [00:25:00] leading edge of stuff as As far as the new colors coming out and the textures and that kind of stuff.

[00:25:03] Eric Goranson: Do you have a team for that or how does that work? We have a

[00:25:05] Greg Cowan: team but there's some really basic things that we do. So all the senior leaders of the team have to spend a day or a month on the road. Everyone that does a weekly report for the team shares customer insights. So we really listen to our customers if that makes sense.

[00:25:20] Greg Cowan: It's not us. We think that would be a great color because I like that color and we've also got a great product team. And also when you've got a global business like we do, you get different insights

[00:25:32] Eric Goranson: as well. Yeah. If I go into the interior space, there are companies out there that are just as good.

[00:25:36] Eric Goranson: Starting to come out with faucets in some of these colors. And you guys already have it on the wall in the building. You're already there on decking, right? So that's just shows how far ahead of the, of the game you are with that. Yeah. That beautiful lumen extrusion, the detail to this, then just very artistic.

[00:25:54] Eric Goranson: And

[00:25:55] Martin Stevenson: that's the thing I'm really enjoying working here at IBS [00:26:00] and further afield in the States is, I've come to realize that within the decking industry, there's a, there's a real core of people who are, they're competing with each other a little bit. Oh, there's not even, they are.

[00:26:12] Greg Cowan: They are super competing.

[00:26:13] Greg Cowan: That's the British coming out of it. There

[00:26:16] Martin Stevenson: we go. British understatement. Yeah. And they're goading each other to, to come up with more and more exciting ways to build decks. fantastic lighting installations. We've been working with a guy, Dan Pettit here from Northern Outdoor Living, who's done beautiful fiber optic, uh, installations.

[00:26:32] Martin Stevenson: And in fact, we put one on the stand here where there's a river of light coming under the deck and it's just completely innovative. I've never seen anything like it. I was talking to somebody from Arizona who said with the, with the dry, uh, conditions down there in the climate that people are changing the way they have their yard and they're putting in rocks and light in there.

[00:26:54] Martin Stevenson: You. Using different ways instead of having plants, which take a lot of water to grow. So yeah, it's a real [00:27:00] innovation going on. It's fantastic to see. It's

[00:27:02] Greg Cowan: not a rectangle anymore.

[00:27:04] Eric Goranson: No, not at all. And the more curves and the more radiuses, the more stuff you can do, the more people you start

[00:27:10] Greg Cowan: to see it. You don't need to warm up the product to curve it.

[00:27:13] Greg Cowan: So it's

[00:27:14] Eric Goranson: really simple to use. Well, wait a minute. Really? You don't have to go out and get the heat blankets. and go spend 10, 000 on the tools to go

[00:27:21] Martin Stevenson: out and bend the stuff. I was listening to a podcast a couple of weeks ago, one day sitting at home, and there was a bunch of guys who were sitting having a long conversation about the best time of day to install the decking and to bend it because you have to think about the temperature and whether it's going to warm up a little bit later in the day.

[00:27:40] Martin Stevenson: And I was sitting in my chair gently hopping up and down thinking, no, you can just go and install it and bend the stuff because it's flexible enough to install a normal deck. temperatures. Back at Valentine's Day, Kevin Jeketh over at the builders in Rhode Island did a beautiful thing. He took a couple of strips of our flexible aging and he bent it [00:28:00] into a heart shape, made a Valentine's heart.

[00:28:03] Martin Stevenson: And in the caption underneath the, he noted that he had pulled this out of the snow. We have a specification. You're supposed to bend it no tighter than four foot radius. Kevin did it down to one foot radius and it worked. Yeah, and it was. Cold does cool cedar,

[00:28:21] Eric Goranson: that that is a great illustration of how different this product is.

[00:28:25] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Because I know other people that work with other brands of decking and they would've had to sit there and heat blankets and then they had 45 seconds to get it right. Or start

[00:28:35] Martin Stevenson: over. Yep. You don't have to do that removal. You can cold bend it. Get out. That's crazy. Yeah.

[00:28:41] Eric Goranson: Really is. Yeah. But that's what's.

[00:28:42] Eric Goranson: It's different, right? Because of that core, because of how it's made. You don't have to sit there and heat up all the plastics that, to make it work.

[00:28:51] Martin Stevenson: And we've deliberately worked to make it that because we know it's important for craftsmen to be able to come up with that absolutely crisp, perfect curves and edges, and we [00:29:00] found a way to do it.

[00:29:00] Martin Stevenson: So, uh, the product is there to allow them to express themselves in the best way.

[00:29:05] Eric Goranson: That is beautiful, guys. That is absolutely beautiful. So what other applications are you seeing out there of people using this stuff? Dex, of course, easy, but we're starting to see so many things. Yeah, that was

[00:29:17] Greg Cowan: a fascinating one

[00:29:18] Martin Stevenson: just a moment ago.

[00:29:20] Martin Stevenson: This was literally

[00:29:20] Greg Cowan: half an hour ago. Let me go first with one. Go on, Greg. Indoor showers. Really? Using the envelope for showers. Have you thought of that? You gotta redecorate now. So, indoor showers, barbecue areas. I've got a massive coffee table being made at my house for it. Okay. I'll call the coffee table.

[00:29:38] Greg Cowan: We're using the decks and having a massive coffee table made absolutely fantastic. You can see on the web, a new website, some of the mosaic styles that we're using as well. But I'll hand this to Martin. He has the best one to share with you. Just don't say the location.

[00:29:52] Martin Stevenson: Half an hour ago, we were talking to a guy who came on the stand.

[00:29:55] Martin Stevenson: You said he has a unique project and he wondered if our product would [00:30:00] work for it. And he was asking, could you wrap an aircraft hangar with millboard? And the answer was, of course we can. It's just a big barn. Yeah.

[00:30:10] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it is. It

[00:30:11] Greg Cowan: is. But people are thinking about not just for standard product. Yeah.

[00:30:15] Eric Goranson: I'm thinking about cause I'm going to be building a dog wash shower outside off my back deck because why take the dogs inside dirty, right?

[00:30:24] Eric Goranson: I want to be able to take them over there. They've been playing outside, wash the big dogs off real quick. It's a waterboard. It would work. It would work. Yep. That's what I mean. So we've got two dogs. Lab mix. This is double doodle type of labradoodle stuff, so. Yeah, I've got a miniature labradoodle. Okay.

[00:30:41] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Some lasagna. These look like labs. They're like, just like with a perm, but they're very labs. Love those dogs, but those are our two puppies that we've got, but it would be so much nicer to do that instead of having to come in. Outside in the Pacific Northwest, there's always mud in the six months out of the year with the rain.

[00:30:58] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And I'm thinking, [00:31:00] okay, we've got to be able to build this. So tired of sitting there for 20 minutes. with wet towels, trying to get them cleaned up so we don't get the rest of the house dirty. So it's like, all right, we're going to build this. We need a photo, please. All right. Put it on the website.

[00:31:13] Eric Goranson: We'll do it. We'll do it. But that's the cool part about this is that you don't have to worry about it with this kind of stuff. You don't have to worry about a dog going across it and hurting things and putting big scratches in it like that. It's so much more forgivable than other

[00:31:28] Greg Cowan: finishes. It's a

[00:31:33] Martin Stevenson: really durable surface.

[00:31:34] Martin Stevenson: I was amazed when I joined Millboard. I went over to the head office, and leading in from the front door of the office is a Millboard floor. And it gets incredible foot traffic with the number of people coming in and out of those offices. And the floor looks fantastic. But, uh, I asked somebody, How long installed down here on the floor.

[00:31:53] Martin Stevenson: And they said 10 years. Uh, it looks absolutely like it was brand new. It's incredible. Yeah. But see,

[00:31:59] Greg Cowan: [00:32:00] that's, that's what I'm talking about. There's so many people

[00:32:02] Eric Goranson: in there every day for 10 years. That is good. And it's had all the abuse of an office environment. So that's cool. And I think there's so many things you can do with this product, right?

[00:32:10] Eric Goranson: I think it's. It's so fun with what you're starting to see with these big movable glass walls where you could literally put it as you're going outside and make it look like when you open the doors up for instance, you could bring the siding inside, bring it out, it still looks like finished wood inside, but now it's dragging your eye outside architecturally.

[00:32:29] Eric Goranson: That's right.

[00:32:29] Martin Stevenson: So, sorry, you go Mal. I've seen it. I've seen that in the house that got built in Joshua Tree, where effectively you're moving straight from an inside room to an outside room, and they're the same space, and absolutely stunning views. And you can imagine living there with the sun going down over the desert there, it would be just a beautiful place to enjoy your boards, and your drink out on the deck at night with the sun going

[00:32:54] Greg Cowan: down.

[00:32:54] Greg Cowan: So we've done a call at Wimbledon, we're about to do an aircraft hangar, what's our next challenge? You gotta give us a challenge. [00:33:00] We've done the dog wash.

[00:33:02] Eric Goranson: Doing that give us a challenge. Okay. I've got some ideas. I got some ideas I don't want to put it out there for everybody else to hear right now But give us a challenge and we'll see what we can do That way we can have it between ourselves and then we can share it later because I don't want everybody else to hear about this Challenge first because I don't want anybody else to go.

[00:33:19] Eric Goranson: Hey, that was our idea. We had to keep this

[00:33:21] Greg Cowan: All array is challenge accepted.

[00:33:23] Eric Goranson: There we go. There we go. So what's next for you guys? This stuff you came out here, it's gotta be tough coming out with new products cause this here is spectacular. We can't talk about the stuff you

[00:33:35] Greg Cowan: can't talk about. So I'm gonna say what's next is a little bit of sleep cause we have been madly busy and this guy is very humble but I'm gonna say this.

[00:33:41] Greg Cowan: Do you like how this has been built? Yeah. Did you ask Marcel what he's been doing on Thursday and Friday this week? And he's the marketing director. What are you doing on Thursday? So Friday this week, this

[00:33:51] Martin Stevenson: week, I'm taking it all down again earlier in the week, earlier in the week. I put it all up. Yeah.

[00:33:57] Martin Stevenson: This room that we're sitting in. I assembled it. [00:34:00] Wow. Yeah.

[00:34:01] Greg Cowan: Nice. That is fantastic. So what we're going to do is we're going to rest. No, we're not. We're going to follow up with the customers because we have a lot of leads to follow up. Oh my gosh. And then we will rest. Yep. I don't think I've ever looked forward to a 12 hour flight as much as I'm going to now.

[00:34:16] Greg Cowan: And as an Australian, I've done some long flights. This 12 hour flight is going to be my best. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:34:24] Eric Goranson: So let's talk a little bit about how people find you guys out there. We got five or six minutes left here, but I want to talk about how people can track this stuff down. We've talked about all the wonderful things you can do about it, but how do people find it?

[00:34:35] Eric Goranson: Yeah,

[00:34:35] Greg Cowan: so it's simple. We have a new website. We will work through contractors, two steppers. So the simple solution to this is we can, we've got a lot of stock in the U. S. Yeah. We can get, we've got it in multiple locations. We can get it to anyone within five to seven working days. Nice. So it's nice and simple, easy to do business with, humble people that just want to

[00:34:55] Eric Goranson: help.

[00:34:56] Eric Goranson: [00:35:00] You won't

[00:35:04] Greg Cowan: get a computer system that says your call was very important to us, we'll come back to you in 45 minutes. Sorry, you've dialed at 5. 01, our office hours close at 5 o'clock, you won't get any of that. We're just, we're just trying to be really easy people to do business with. No question. To the values of the founders of the business.

[00:35:20] Greg Cowan: Very well said. Our values are all about empowerment, performance, integrity, and care. And the care is about our customers as well, or potentially our future customers.

[00:35:28] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[00:35:29] Martin Stevenson: And as a first step, if you want to delve into the product a bit more, you can go to millboard. com. It's actually a brand new website.

[00:35:36] Martin Stevenson: We launched a new one a couple of weeks ago. It's beautiful. On that website, millboard. com, you can order samples. We'll happily send you free, free, free, free, free samples. There we go. You can pick your colors, have a good browse through, and see what you like. See what catches your attention and we'll send them out to you and see how you're inspired

[00:35:56] Eric Goranson: to use it.

[00:35:57] Eric Goranson: And then you'll get a call and we'll help you from there. Yeah, [00:36:00] and I tell you what, this material is so easy to work with and that's what's so forgiving about it is that I like its flexibility when you're installing it because it's easy to work with. It's not too flexible, but it's That's the right amount of flexibility to work with it on the job site.

[00:36:16] Eric Goranson: If

[00:36:16] Martin Stevenson: I can install it in this room like he's doing, it must be fairly easy to work with.

[00:36:21] Greg Cowan: The marketing guy could do it right. He'll give you some training, Greg, though.

[00:36:24] Eric Goranson: That is great. Millboard. com. And then you guys are in distributors all across the U. S. right now. Yes, we do. And we're appointing

[00:36:31] Martin Stevenson: more. All right.

[00:36:32] Martin Stevenson: We

[00:36:32] Greg Cowan: have lots of people wanting the product over the last couple of days. Nice. And we have tomorrow as

[00:36:36] Eric Goranson: well. There we go. I know we're only halfway through this. game, right? It's halftime.

[00:36:40] Greg Cowan: That's a little bit. We got, we got some dinner tonight with some people as well that want to talk to us further. My first meeting tomorrow morning at 6 30 on the stand to be clear.

[00:36:49] Greg Cowan: Yep. I'll let you off that one. If that's okay. Thank you very much. You've got the 5 30 a. m. One.

[00:36:55] Eric Goranson: Yeah, we came by here earlier this morning when I was, and you guys had a whole group of people in here this

[00:36:59] Greg Cowan: morning. [00:37:00] You start early because you care and you get to have really good conversations and learn stuff.

[00:37:03] Eric Goranson: Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys. Well, I'll tell you what, I love what you guys are doing. There's so much that can be done around the home with this product. Just like we said, from decking to cladding is I think the thing that people really need to take a look at here too. So if you're out there doing a project where you're building maybe an outdoor kitchen, or you're going to side the front of your house, take a look at this stuff because if you want to make a sound, And have people slow roll your house and go,

[00:37:32] Greg Cowan: what is that?

[00:37:35] Greg Cowan: And by

[00:37:37] Eric Goranson: the way, if you don't ever want to have to paint your house again, here's

[00:37:39] Greg Cowan: another good one too.

[00:37:43] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. Guys, thanks for coming on today. Is there anything we didn't

[00:37:47] Greg Cowan: talk about today? The stuff for next year we didn't talk about today for obvious reasons. Absolutely. We'll

[00:37:51] Eric Goranson: talk about that next year.

[00:37:53] Eric Goranson: We'll discuss it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you guys. Thanks for having us. And I'm sure we might see you later [00:38:00] at some undisclosed location that we can't talk about.

[00:38:03] Greg Cowan: Yes, this is true. It's a secret. I guess that really narrows

[00:38:05] Eric Goranson: it down.

[00:38:09] Greg Cowan: Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming and seeing us today. Alright,

[00:38:12] Eric Goranson: thanks guys. And guys, Check out millboard. com. Check this thing out. This stuff is as cool as what we're talking about. You've been listening to around the house.