How We Built Practical Metals by Saying “No”

I've been in the metals industry for 25 years. I've put screws in roofs. I've waited on materials that never showed up on time. I've been the contractor who missed a billing cycle because a vendor said "three or four weeks" when I needed materials yesterday.

That experience taught me something most of my competitors will never understand: service is the only thing that matters in this business.

Practical Metals exists because the industry fails to serve contractors the way they deserve.

That's it. That's the whole reason we're here.

The “Final Piece” Problem

A client once ordered $40,000 to $45,000 worth of materials from one of our competitors to do a job. They ran short. The vendor told them it would be three or four weeks before they could get more material.

Three or four weeks.

That's the difference between getting a job done and getting paid versus missing the billing cycle with the general contractor. When you miss that cycle, everything falls apart. Cash flow problems. Crew scheduling issues. Client relationships damaged.

I know what that feels like because I've lived it. I've been the design-build contractor. The roofing contractor. The middleman distributor waiting on a manufacturer. I've been on all sides of this business, and that gives me a level of understanding most competitors can't relate to.

ASAP Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

When we started Practical Metals, the first operational decision we made was simple: listen to our clients and ask the questions that actually matter.

If someone says they need materials ASAP, I ask: What's your definition of ASAP?

Because if you're used to dealing with vendors that take three weeks, ASAP to you means two weeks. But that's not what I need to know.

The real questions are: When does the job start? If you're starting on the 20th, do you need these materials on the 19th? Or are there three days of work before you actually need them?

We reverse-engineer project timelines instead of just taking orders. This allows us to coordinate all aspects of a project and serve clients at the highest level.

New customers always want to know why we're asking these questions. They think we're being nosy or digging into their business. But our clients—the people who order from us regularly and use us as their primary source—understand we're asking to help them.

Customers vs. Clients

There's a difference between customers and clients at Practical Metals.

Customer	Clients
A customer calls and asks what our price per linear foot on a 21-inch coil is. They're constantly shopping. They're not ready to see the value of what we bring to the table.	A client calls and places orders knowing our pricing is competitive. They already know what it's going to cost them. We've probably already had the conversation about the job and knew it was coming up. We've made sure we have enough raw material inventory to fill it when they need it.

The biggest difference between a customer and a client is the relationship and the depth of that relationship.

Clients let us into their pipeline before the order happens. That means we're carrying risk and tying up capital based on their future projects. Most distributors won't do that.

Why We Manufacture and Distribute

We're not just a distributor. We're a manufacturer and distributor. There's a fine line between the two, and we chose to walk it for one reason: control.

We manufacture coils for roll forming and flat sheets for making trim. By keeping raw materials in that state, we have flexibility on the final product. We can serve clients for different sized products of the same base material.

Having inventory can backfire. We sit on inventory longer than we want to sometimes. But it

hasn't backfired in a way that's been detrimental to our business or our clients.

If a customer asks for Regal Blue Coil and we don't have it, they're going to continue calling other places. If we do have it, they may still call a couple of places, but no one else will have that inventory in stock, ready to serve them in a short time frame.

It's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

Having that control allows us to serve contractors in a way that a distributor or a manufacturer that's too big to see the ground can't.

The Growth Strategy Nobody Expects

I've got 25 years of experience in this industry. I have a lot of potential clients and friends who could be clients that we haven't started serving yet.

I get phone calls from them, and I tell them I'm not ready to service their business yet.

When we are ready, we turn them on one at a time to make sure we don't fail. Once we've got them up and running in our pipeline, we can service them with the same level they deserve and we require to take on a client.

Recognizing projects we're too small to take on has been a huge part of our growth.

The internal test for us is capacity. We have to have the capacity to serve new clients without losing the service we already provide to existing clients. That's why we're slow to take customers on.

Those potential clients seem to have more respect for us when we tell them we're not ready than if we took them on and failed them. I feel like we're earning trust and building integrity in the industry by doing this.

How Practical Metals Actually Started

Practical Metals wasn't even the plan.

Our parent company is Practical Building Systems, LLC. My business partner, Chance Roberts, runs that division. When my contacts in the roofing industry started asking us about buying panels—R-Panel, U-Panel, products that fit into both the commercial roofing world and the metal building world—we started selling them.

Then they started asking for coils and flat sheets because they fell in love with our service and wanted to use us for more.

That's when Practical Metals was born out of necessity from the industry.

Having a great manufacturing partner on the metal building side allows us to continue to grow the entire business without compromising our coils and flats business that we handle internally.

What We Won't Do

We get asked constantly about roll forming panels ourselves and bringing on that type of

machinery to support our roofing base. It would be easy to get into that and add more volume with the same amount of product by adding another service.

But there's so much capacity and good partners in the industry that we don't want to do it.

This is something I learned in this business: If I can service fewer clients and increase volume by selling my coils and flat sheets to my roll forming partners instead of all the roofing contractors, my need for internal personnel goes down.

I don't worry about those partners buying direct because if I'm sending business their way, they're supporting me. And the minute they don't support me, I'm no longer sending that business their way.

We're always listening to what clients are asking for because we don't just sell a product. We're in a market that is systems-based. Selling all the components of those systems and having those available for our clients is the goal.

We want to be a one-stop shop for our roll-forming and roofing customers. But only when we're ready. Only when we can maintain the service level that turned customers into clients in the first place.

In the next three years, Practical Buildings and Practical Metals will split into two independent companies, each supporting themselves completely. We'll still have a parent company that both fall under, but structurally, that's up to our CFO to manage.

What I know for certain is this: Growth without capacity is just failure in slow motion.

I've seen what happens when vendors can't deliver. I've been the one waiting. I've been the one who missed the billing cycle. I've been the one putting screws in roofs wondering when the materials would show up.

That's why Practical Metals exists. That's why we say no until we're ready to say yes properly. That's why service is the only thing that matters.

Because contractors deserve better than three or four weeks.