Contractor Resources

Why IKO Shingle Manufacturing is an Advantage For Your Business

2 MIN READ

At IKO we never stop working to elevate your business. Starting with product innovation, our laminate shingles are designed to IKO’s true square advantage helping you cut waste, install approximately ten percent faster and potentially save your business over $25,000 this year. Not convinced? Hold on to your calculators, we’re about to journey through IKOnomics 101. First, let’s talk hard costs. When you buy three bundles you expect them to cover 100 square feet of roof. That’s the number you build your quote around. However it’s not always accurate. Some manufacturers work in averages. In fact, three of their bundles may only cover about 98.4 square feet. Which means each bundle may be missing a shingle or two. So you may end up buying more bundles than you need for the job which can be a waste of time and money. That is unless you buy IKO’s Dynasty, Nordic or Cambridge shingles. We manufacture our laminate shingles in a special advantage size that allows us to put exactly 20 shingles in every bundle for an absolute 100 square feet. You can rely on these bundles for full coverage every time to help you estimate accurately. The larger size of our advantage shingles have other benefits too starting with a larger exposure of 5 and 7/8 of an inch or 149 millimeters. Compared to the traditional industry standard our Dynasty, Nordic and Cambridge shingles give the installer an additional quarter inch of coverage on every course they install. The advantage size is also typically longer than the competition so depending on the size of the roof fewer shingles per course may be needed. That means you’re hauling fewer bundles to the roof while laying and nailing fewer shingles. Those few minutes saved can add up to a lot over the course of a season. On average you can expect a 10 percent faster installation time with advantage shingles. On a typical 25 square roof if you install, IKO’s advantage-sized laminate shingles instead of a comparable shingle from our competitor you’ll purchase two fewer bundles on average. That’s 40 fewer shingles not to mention the savings on nails and your valuable time spent roofing. What about roofing projects on multi-family dwellings? The bigger the roofing surface, the more time and money you’ll save. For instance, on a multi-family project of 2000 squares you can save up to 160 shingle bundles – or 2000 shingles plus the savings of extra nails and labor. That’s a considerable amount of materials time and labor saved. Across a roofing season, that’s big for the bottom line. Even if your business focuses on single rooftop jobs for homeowners, you’ll save a tremendous amount of time and money in a single year of installing our advantage-sized shingles. We hope this video has been helpful to you. If you’re looking to learn more from the experts at IKO, please subscribe to our channel for more great content.

Quality & Consistency of Supply:

IKO’s control over the shingle manufacturing process and raw material supply, not only provides an unprecedented level of product quality; it also makes IKO a more reliable source of supply. “Do Not Mix” situations are virtually eliminated because IKO’s vertical integration and meticulous manufacturing specifications allows them to mix and match shingles produced in any one of our many North American manufacturing plants. This better enables IKO to rely on any of their several North American manufacturing plants to satisfy the needs of any market. While the competition continues to impose their limitations with “do not mix” stickers, IKO has perfected the process so our contractors and distributors can avoid the headaches.

Improved Profitability:

When calculating their “true shingle cost” it is important for the roofing professional to take into consideration IKO’s lower installation cost. To do this, the contractor would need to account for the fact that IKO’s Cambridge shingles feature a larger-than-metric, 60 shingles per square. This represents an average of four-to-six less shingles per square than many of the comparable competitive brands. This difference translates to the installer needing to install the equivalent of three more squares of the competitors’ shingle (180 shingles) to cover the same 30 square roof, in the same amount of time it would take to install IKO.

Time and Materials Study

The labor (time) savings is complemented by the material savings resulting from IKO’s three bundles per full square coverage advantage. Many roofing professionals are surprised to learn that three bundles of the competitors’ shingles only provide 98.44 or 96.88 square feet of coverage. When you consider a 23 square roof for example, IKO’s three bundles per full square would require 69 bundles. The competitors’ product would require 71 to 72 bundles, respectively. That translates to an increase in the contractors’ direct job costs by as much as 2-3 bundles on a 23 square project.

When roofing contractors take into consideration the labor and material savings associated with using IKO’s advantage-sized Cambridge, they can’t help but appreciate the profit-improvement potential.

A Story That Sells:

Roofing professionals enjoy selling IKO because the product is supported by a powerful story that resonates with their homeowner customers. Roofing professionals like to leverage the benefits of IKO’s vertical integration in a way that helps to position them as a professional with very high standards for quality. Rather than simply talking about using the best products, IKO contractors have a story to tell that cannot be told by any other manufacturer in the industry.