New Year’s Challenge - Mike Lenk, Vice President, Sales

As we all begin a New Year with new challenges it is quite common for contractors to try and utilize “left over” products on the shelves to get the early year projects completed without purchasing materials.

This makes good economic sense if you have the correct components of the system you need.

What makes poor economic sense is trying to mix and match various suppliers’ products to install “epoxy goulash”. Not all epoxy coating products are compatible. Various suppliers will add different ingredients to their products for things such as U.V. resistance, gloss agents, de-foamers and the list goes on. These additives make 100% compatibility with other supplier’s products difficult.

Since January 1, 2016 we have had several of these situations where different manufacturer’s products were used together and problems arose. This puts ROCK-TRED and the customer in a “no win” situation as ROCK-TRED cannot predict how our products will react when used with another material. Once each supplier learns of the others involvement (and we do) the contractor is ultimately left without any recourse.

My advice is to use your left over shelf material to make samples for the New Year. Patch some spots around the warehouse or do your uncle’s pole barn…..but don’t take the risk of compromising your good Company and its reputation by mingling various suppliers’ products.