The foundation of Duro-Last's success

By Emma Peterson.

For nearly five decades, Duro-Last has built its business around listening to contractors and building solutions for their real-world challenges.

These days, Duro-Last is a cornerstone of the roofing industry. However, they didn’t end up as an industry leader by chance. No, they built their brand and their business specifically on a commitment to commercial roofing contractors that remain central to their operations today.

To learn more about how Duro-Last grew over the last five decades, we sat down with Greg Hudson, their VP of commercial excellence, for an episode of Roofing Road Trips®.

Greg started by going all the way back to Duro-Last's founding in 1978. He highlighted why John R. Burt wanted to start the company, sharing, “The goal was to be on the forefront of working with contractors to solve their needs and ensure that they're getting a premium brand performance in their roof products and systems." And it is this same mission that continues to drive their operations today.

How are they working towards this goal? A prime example is in their contractor-driven innovation process. Greg explained, “Here at Duro-Last, we take the time to build really close relationships with contractors that foster open dialogue back and forth. And that dialogue is really the starting point of our innovation process.”

Once a contractor partner brings up an issue to their representative, the team at Duro-Last starts brainstorming. This is a part of the innovation process that benefits greatly from Duro-Last’s position as a core brand within the Amrize Building Envelope division. Greg shared why this position is key:

We have a great team here at Duro-Last, but if they get stuck on something, they are able to use that Amrize connection to bring in other people who may come at it from a completely different direct direction. And that collaboration lets us make sure we’re building the best possible solution for our contractors.

And once the internal team has a few solutions mocked up, Duro-Last goes back to their contractor partners for field testing and feedback. As Greg put it, “Once we have a few versions of different solutions, we go back to those good contractor relationships and have them beta test and give us feedback.” Not only does this give the Duro-Last team valuable data on the different versions, but it also ensures that Duro-Last stays true to its contractor-focused foundation with every new product.

Listen to the whole episode or Watch the recording on YouTube to learn more about Duro-Last's contractor-centric products and processes!