Business View Magazine | June 2022

64 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 6 twenty-three to twenty-four thousand dollars,” he explains. “That’s besides rising costs in trucking due to labor shortages and higher fuel costs.” The company has implemented workarounds to lower costs and maintain more stable pricing. For example, instead of using trucks and semis to transport smaller deliveries, the company is now using hotshot trailers, which Kweton says are more cost-effective, nimble, and accessible. SMS has supplied materials for stunning architectural works in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, among other states. Although the company does provide some off-the-shelf products, most fabrication works respond to customers’ specifications. The company is incredibly proud of one notable project: the Chicago Park District’s Eleanor Boathouse. “We worked on this project with Studio Gang, one of the hottest urban design companies in the country right now,” says Kweton. “We supplied German-made RHEINZINK zinc panels, and it came out so great the project won the MCA Chairman’s Award Municipal in 2018!” Although the company has similar iconic projects under its belt, most of its work comes from the roofing industry, augmented by façade and glazing projects. One area that the company has never ventured into and does not plan to do so any time soon is installations. “We don’t do installations because it’s what our customers do,” explains Kweton. “Doing that would put us in direct competition, inevitably hurting our core business of supplying materials.” As the pandemic unfolded in 2019, the company quickly realized a lot was changing, especially in the supply chain. True to this hunch, by 2020, companies were scrambling to replenish shrinking inventories as supply chains constricted. For SMS, a simple strategy proved effective in ensuring supplies kept up with customer demands – relationship building. “One of the things I learned at the time was that