Eric Thompson

Progress Never Stops for Window Manufacturers

Success in today’s window and door space requires striking the right balance between efficiency, performance and consumer preference.

Is Technological Adoption at a Standstill in the Fenestration Industry?

Despite hesitations—over new technologies, over consumer demand for higher-performing products—window and door manufacturers can’t afford to simply rest on their laurels. While it may not always follow a straight line, progress never stops in the fenestration industry.

Why Investing in Automation Means Investing in Your People

The right people can make all the difference in successfully implementing or expanding automation in your manufacturing facility.

Lower Volume? Heighten the Value.

Add value to your window systems in these 4 areas

Pushing Patio Doors Forward

Improved energy performance and total integration with the indoor and outdoor experience are desirable traits for high-performance patio doors.

Select the Right Spacer System for Your Business

Warm-edge spacers can be part of a system to achieve higher performance targets.

The Best of Both Worlds

As consumer activity continues to rebound for homeowners, it's important to take stock of trends. Homeowners attraction to wood-like windows can be met a few different ways, including with composite windows.

3 Manufacturing Considerations for Your Energy Star 7.0 Strategy

If your current products are unable to meet the new guidelines, there are several potential solutions to consider. If you’re intent on keeping your label, it’s important to choose the right strategy that fits your business needs.

Sharpen Your Competitive Edge Through Partnership

Success in our industry is about more than a transaction. It’s about more than a simple product or component. It’s about continual collaboration with your vendors to find optimal ways to grow your business.

The Value of a Full-service Supplier

Consider these particulars closely as you work with your supplier network to best manage the current supply chain crisis

How to Prosper In Adversity

These market conditions can’t last forever. When we do finally return to something resembling normal, the skills we have learned along the way will be highly beneficial for ongoing success.

Embracing Continuous Improvement with the Right Technology

Some form of automation can be beneficial for anyone making windows and doors. And no matter your operation’s size, there’s likely a solution that can work for your shop floor.

Balancing Thermal and Acoustic Demands for Total In-Home Comfort

As homeowners seek to make improvements, it’s important to offer solutions that offer a range of high-performance benefits.

Strategically Expanding Your Color Palette

For fabricators, developing new color options to meet customers’ new aesthetic demands might sound like just another layer of complexity. But with the right technology, it doesn’t have to be.

Energy Star Version 7.0: Reckoning with The Future of Performance

Energy performance is a marker that only moves forward, and it’s incumbent upon the fenestration industry to continue rising to the challenge.  

The Power of Relationships Amidst a Supply Crisis

Whether it’s vinyl extrusions, screens, spacer technology or any other critical component in high-performance windows and doors, alignment with the right suppliers is one of the most important things manufacturers can do right now to ensure reliable supply channels.

How Proven Technologies Can Deliver Futuristic Performance

Increasingly high performance is an inevitability. Consumers won’t simply start compromising, nor will regulations go meaningfully backward. Developing the high-performance products to meet those demands requires high-performance technology—much of which already exists in some form today.

3 Tactics to Contend with Lengthy Lead Times

How to get products to customers in a timely manner despite the ongoing shortages of raw materials and labor.

Three Considerations for Offering New Window Color Options

Keeping Up with A Surprisingly Hot Housing Market

It’s been a roller coaster of a year by any measure. Now that we’re in the thick of autumn, one of the more surprising things we’re experiencing is the extremely hot housing market, which has driven up demand for windows and doors all across the country.

3 Reasons Manufacturers Should Take Advantage of Skinny Triples

Adoption of skinny triples has, so far, been slow, but that could change soon. With some new incentives in place that make skinny triples more attractive, and as finding ways to hit California’s thermal targets becomes mandatory, there’s a ripe opportunity for window and door manufacturers to take…

At 2020’s Midpoint, Taking Stock of an Unprecedented Year

Thoughts on how manufacturing, automation, workforce challenges, and industry events have changed. Plus, comments on the resiliency of the industry.  

In Search of the Ideal Large-Format Frame

While large-format windows and doors for residential spaces are an area of opportunity for manufacturers, this category also presents some challenges in terms of design and componentry.

Trust, Market Optimism and Growing Framing Diversity

I’ve played window historian on this blog in the past, tracking specifically the way that vinyl has ascended over the decades from a mistrusted bargain material to the undisputed market leader. Why the shift? There have been material improvements, of course. Standards and…

New Design Challenges for Impact Windows as ICC Ramps up U-Factors

Since 1992, when Category 5 Hurricane Andrew brought devastation to many of Florida’s southern cities, the state has been fairly aggressive in maintaining a strong building code to prevent similar damage from happening again.

The Ongoing Importance of Certified Products

If you think back to the formative years of vinyl windows in the U.S., we had our share of performance challenges to overcome. Particularly in hot climates like Florida or Arizona, weathering and yellowing due to high temperatures and UV exposure were major issues that caused some significant…

Ongoing Optimism

You don’t have to wander far to hear positive sentiments about the immediate future of our industry. For instance, Window & Door’s 2018 Industry Pulse notes that the majority of manufacturers, suppliers and dealers expect sales to increase throughout the year. Meanwhile, the Pulse reported that…

Application Versatility with New Door Designs

The combination of indoor and outdoor living spaces within the high-end residential market has been trending for a few years now. Large openings, made possible by oversized residential windows and doors, have attracted many a homebuilder and renovator. Just check recent pages of Window & Door…

The Innovation Imperative

I really enjoyed the recent blog written by American Architectural Manufacturers Association’s Rich Rinka. In it, he retraces some of the most important evolutions of the window industry over the past few decades, from when significant heat loss in American homes was just “accepted as the nature of…

Continued Opportunity in Color

A few weeks ago, I returned from International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas—where there had been a bit of snow, as you might have heard. Wild weather aside, IBS coincides with the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show to make up Design & Construction Week, and it’s always a nice snapshot of the…

Continued Opportunity for Impact Windows

Hurricane Florence has dominated headlines this week and last, as the powerful storm brought a major surge and heavy rains to the Carolinas and beyond. With significant flooding affecting the areas, recovery crews have their work cut out for them.

The Continued Evolution of Residential Comfort

I had the opportunity to attend the American Institute of Architects annual conference in New York City this summer. From my perspective, it was a great, busy show, with big names from around the industry, international attendees and a good energy overall. At the event, I noticed that talk about…

Now Trending

Early last month, I and several other members from the Quanex team attended the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, both for some good weather and to get a sense for how the industry is feeling at the outset of a new year. My takeaway: Many building and construction professionals are abuzz…

What Market Consolidation Could Mean in 2019

As we roll into the new year, here’s a question I’ve pondered recently: what kind of window and door market will we see emerge after some significant consolidation throughout 2018? Just a year ago, following a flurry of 2017 mergers and acquisitions, Window & Door forecasted 2018 to be an…

Is a Modular “Disruption” on the Horizon?

“Disruption” is something we’ve seen happen to a lot of industries over the past decade or so. Video rental chains got disrupted by Netflix. Taxi companies got disrupted by Uber and Lyft. Newspapers got disrupted by the internet and blogs (like the one you’re reading right now). What’s the next…

No Compromising on Form, Fit and Function for Screens

Screens are important, but most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them until they either don’t have them, or until their screens don’t work properly.

Making Smart Investments in the Future of Glass

Thin or "skinny" triples use a very thin, nonstructural center lite, allow the use of a single spacer, and create no significant weight changes compared with standard dual-pane IGs. Window suppliers can drop skinny triple units into existing framing designs with little or no change in the frame and…

The Biophilia Trend

Keeping your finger on the pulse of modern home design trends is important if you’re in the window and door industry. So where are people’s heads these days? I wasn’t too surprised to see that “window walls” were one of the top picks in a recent Houzz trends piece. While the write-up credits…

Is a Modular “Disruption” on the Horizon?

“Disruption” is something we’ve seen happen to a lot of industries over the past decade or so. Video rental chains got disrupted by Netflix. Taxi companies got disrupted by Uber and Lyft. Newspapers got disrupted by the internet and blogs (like the one you’re reading right now). What’s the next…

Tariffs Create Uncertainty; Won’t Slow Momentum

As of last week, President Donald Trump’s statement to impose steep tariffs will subject Canada, the European Union and Mexico to a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminum Over the past couple of months, I’ve spoken to folks about what these tariffs could mean for our businesses. No…