August/September Business View Magazine

24 25 residential.” Tuschall Engineering has about 30 employees. Since it also sells specialty zinc products, par- ticularly VMZINC, an historic brand of titanium zinc imported from France, the company also has several sales reps who cover a 12-state territory throughout the Midwest. Tuschall believes that his company preserves its competitive advantage in the sector because all of its installers work directly for him,whereas some of his competitors will broker labor out to third parties.“So the quality of our work is second to none,”he maintains.He also banks on the compa- ny’s long-standing devotion to innovation.“We are always looking for new cladding options. I make frequent trips to Europe to the major building product shows –one in Paris and one in Munich – and we always look for new products to import. So, we’re usually very progressive in that area.” TUSCHALL ENGINEERING CO. “Also, we specialize in doing things in jobs and projects that have never been done before,” he adds. “We can be very creative in architect/client solutions.We can take a design and make it work due to our experience with metal and interfac- ing materials. There are a lot of companies out there that just do the same thing, every day– just putting up planks of metal.We have really cool projects that are special.” According to Tuschall, the metal cladding indus- try, overall, is very healthy. “Metal is lightweight, easy to use, easy to stage, and easy to install, compared to brick or some of the other choices for exterior cladding,” he asserts. “Copper will last a hundred years. Some of our systems use a lot of zinc, which is a hundred-year product, so market- ing these quality metals is quite easy. I think the sector is going to continue to be very healthy for a long time.” One current challenge for his company con- cerns the recent tariffs that have been applied to some imported metals, but Tuschall remains relatively unworried. “I’m not going to be affected, as much,” he claims. “The big reason is because it’s managing a pass-through. It’s just raising the cost of everything, so the owners are going to end up paying for the tariffs, one way or another. We’ve seen aluminum and steel go up, even if it’s American produced. They’re raising their prices because they can, now. They put a little more profit on their materials because it still can be competitive under the imported metal product.