Whats new in caulking. Caulking innovations from Tower Sealants.

[Applause] [Music] this christy idaho painter here on paint live tv today i got a special guest with me matt tomen from tower sealants and we've got uh a really cool interview we're gonna be talking about a really cool product that tower is coming out with or has actually already come out with an eco-friendly refillable caulking gun so stay tuned for this interview in this video if you want to see some new technology in the caulking world so i've got matt here we're going to be talking a little bit about um caulking today and it's something that we use almost every day in painting so matt um who are you what do you do here what's your role here at tower sealants yeah well chris first thanks for coming to join us we appreciate you flying across the country to to spend some time with us uh again my name is matt i'm in a new product development role here at tower i've been here since the beginning of the year and predominantly i'm focused on driving uh some new innovation there's been some great ideas some great products uh some chemical technology that towers had uh available for a period of time and they've been fortunate enough to where they've been growing with their current customer base that a lot of these great new innovations have just been sitting over on the shelf or on the side and so my job is to to bring this to life and figure out you know what the painters need and what the market demands and how we fill that additional space so how long have you been with tower sealants now is this a new role or is it it's a new role that was developed uh coming in and i've been here since the beginning of march and uh prior to that i was with a large paint manufacturer and in the industry a little over a decade yeah so you've been in the paint industry um uh product related industry for quite some time now so i think you got a lot of experience doing this um so is can you give me a fun fact about uh yourself about me uh i'm gonna put you on the spot i'm a little calmer now i have a wife and three kids but i spent quite a few years skydiving that was my passion and so uh a little after the second child before our third was born i i decided it was time to hang that up and maybe someday we'll revisit that and start so and so skydiving and you've obviously survived so yeah every time i i'm i'm an adrenaline junkie and so um and i think most skydivers probably are too but um skydiving is one thing i don't think i would ever do it's not as exciting as caulk so all right so uh we do have a product in front of us we're going to be talking about this product and um i think you know you're pretty excited about it tower's pretty excited about it um i was excited to fly across um the nation to check this thing out and see what this all about is all about because um you'll you know anytime we come out with products and new innovations and stuff it's kind of cool to see what's new uh what could possibly you know be game-changing tools out there and you know um here's a kind of a look at what we're dealing with right here and this is a refillable caulking gun and can you you know explain a little bit about you know what this thing does and what it's all about sure so this has been something that towers had in the works for several years uh it's patent pending for a variety of different utility patents i guess starting with what the challenge is and as you know probably the last 12 18 months there's been a lot of challenges in the industry from a supply chain perspective and one of those shortages or bottlenecks has been the availability of plastic cartridges so i think we're all hopeful that things will go back to normal at some point but one of the challenges is there's a lot of legislation that's out there pending the national break free from plastic pollution act is one many other states have similar local legislation at different levels but eventually i think single-use plastic is likely to be taxed fined or just outright banned in different capacities and the problem with caulk tubes currently there's about 1 billion roughly a year just in north america that are thrown in a landfill is because of the caulk or adhesive residue inside they're not recyclable so um did i hear that right there's one billion of these things thrown in our landfills every year just in north america not worldwide and this is a single-use plastic so does this thing degrade in the landfill does it disappear or is it there forever it's a good rub question good so we are going to be talking to the chemist behind all this stuff so i'll ask rob about that and but i think you know so when you're using this tube there's some left over in this tube right yeah so uh there's some left in the top and the tip as you're familiar with and from what doesn't get pushed out from the top of the plunger and then as the plunger goes up there's little tiny amounts of residual that are left throughout the tube as well and if you have a clear tube you would see that if you have a color tube you'd see that but when you have a white tube with white caulk you typically don't see it or if you're using a colored caulk and you look at the end sometime you'll probably see some of that residual that you don't otherwise notice and so that plunger inside there is actually sealing that caulking in there so that caulking basically is in the landfill it doesn't dry out it's inside this tube is to a certain extent yeah and over time anything will dry out i think the challenge is when you try to take that plastic and reuse it because of that caulk residue it's not really an easy process to get rid of the caulk to reuse the plastic yeah so i think so is it um you know tower sealant's belief that possibly down the road that we may not be able to get these plastic tubes anymore again not to speculate too much but that's where we're looking at all possibilities and we're looking at sustainability not just for our business but for painters and so what would happen if you didn't have the availability of caulk tomorrow and that's what we're looking proactively to resolve so um if we didn't have these tubes anymore you guys have come up with this sausage pack right here and this is the caulking itself in a sausage pack that goes inside this gun can you explain to me just a little bit how you know this process is used so this right here um this is what typically would go into a landfill when you're done with this the sausage pack when this thing is done this is all that's left out of this whole thing and yep so there is a 85 or more uh savings in either jobsite or landfill waste from the reduction from a spent sausage to as you can see the cartridge if you think about how many of these you can put in a box of caulking versus when you spend them if you put them back you can fit obviously 12 in there the sausage packs are not anything new this is kind of the standard in the commercial an industrial sealant in the larger 20 ounce size for quite a few decades what we've done is we've simply made them smaller so that it can fit into our new reusable tube system and can be used with any standard painters caulk gun so i'm gonna take this thing apart so this is the sausage pack inside here right here so um so sasha's packs has been around for quite a while then so it's that's not a new technology it's just how this thing is basically now deployed this is the caulking gun i use so um an absolutely amazing caulking gun so now i can use sausage packs with a typical caulking gun that or can i use it with any caulking gun that painters use yes it doesn't have to be this one doesn't have to be that one although that's an excellent model that we use here frequently so the main difference again this isn't new technology with the sausage and over the last six seven months i've been to all different places around the country to new home construction sites to modular home construction res repainters multi-family pretty much the whole gambit of people that typically use caulk in a production level and we looked at smaller versions of sausage guns which are available through several manufacturers the challenge is though is the additional weight and you can think about when you're caulking all day and reaching overhead and you know bending down to have that additional weight and it's it's a different feel what this allows and what customer feedback has been is you get the exact same caulk it's the same product in here that's in the the tube you're familiar with we use the same vacuum filling process so you won't have any air pops or any run-on as a result the only difference is the way you load the caulk gun is changing a little bit so you kind of touch on a little because my my first concern was i know i started using tower sealants tower tech 2 caulking and a couple of the other ones because uh the packaging process what i notice um you know across the board most caulking out there that you use is the packing process is not very good there's a lot of air bubbles there's a lot of air pops there's a lot of problems with the caulking running out of the tube called run-ons and so with these sausage packs i i started using tower tech too because of that and because i feel the caulking is a lot better superior to the caulkings that i've reviews so this sausage pack is not going to cause any issues with air pops run-ons or anything it's going to be the same quality packaging is what comes in this thing from first look i think that's probably what most people would be concerned about again everything is exactly the same from the gun you use to the product to the way it flows out you won't be able to tell the difference in the feel or the application all right matt so we managed to uh empty a tube of one of the sausage packs and so we're going to show you exactly what it looks like now on how to reload it so we've got one right here this is emptied out and can you show me how this thing now reloads sure so this is when you're done with the tube pull it out like you normally would and typically you would throw the cartridge away or place it back in the box like you mentioned now you just pull the end cap off you've got your spent disc that's your waste you throw that out you spin it around your tip is already cut the way you like so you don't have to worry about that step you just take your next sausage and as we mentioned you snip the clip drop it in and right back in your gun and you're ready to go again there you go it's that simple and easy i gotta say this is a pretty cool pretty cool so there's a big difference in waste reduction um it seems a significant difference 86.5 versus 55 cubic inches of waste that's per case yes per case so um in in the waste what we're talking about is the caulking inside so is that what we're talking about that's actually the cubic inches wasted when you're done with the case of caulk you have to put your 12 empty caulk cartridges back in your your case and that's the cubic space that is required by those versus how many of these that will take the same amount of space so a lot less space um you know bags of garbage that you eventually got to take to the landfill and dump and stuff so it's going to be a lot less going to the landfill a lot less for you to transport and stuff so that's a big deal um so a hundreds of uses so this is a one-use cartridge this cartridge um i think you said you can get about 200 uses out of this cartridge right here we're up to several hundred uh like everything else it's do you take care of it uh just like you do with your caulking gun you know if you allow caulk to dry in it halfway uh for a week at a time and everything else you may not get quite as much uh but if you respect it like you do the rest of your tools it'll last you a very long time so really the on the only because were messing around with them yesterday the only place this thing because there's a sausage pack you're not going to have caulking all over in here it's really only in the end where you're going to have um caulking and so say at the end of the day you know this is a reusable device right here i can just take this off right here and i would just drop this in a bucket of water wouldn't i just do like you would with paint brushes or anything else and then again you'll have two tips per box of sausages so if you don't want to be bothered you can throw the tip out and just soak the end cap or you can use the tip and just clean the caulk out and you're done or you can put the whole thing and use it again if you're halfway through a sausage it's the same as if you're halfway through a tube of caulk you can put a piece of painter's tape over the top you can put a nail in there and you're good to go for the next day yeah i mean we a lot of times uh as painters sometimes we're lazy we just throw our brushes in a bucket of water at the end of the day we clean them the next day i mean no no it's not the greatest practice in the world but it happens and i took this thing toss it in a little bowl of water and came back today and the caulking is all dissolved off of it and it's basically clean so on the back side of this i'm going to want to uh talk a little bit about it's one of the things that says it saves money so um that was one of my initial um things is is this going to save me money is this going to be any cheaper than you know going the route of the traditional cartridges can you talk a little bit about that matt yeah that's that's one of the good not original problems we were looking to solve but a very nice side benefit so again we're looking from a long-term sustainability play to make sure that painters don't run out of product and they always have product available they're not limited by single-use plastic if it's not readily available for them it's good for the environment we're reducing waste by a significant amount but the advantage is there's also less packaging there's a lot less material here outside of the caulk with the foil and with two clips than what's required for a single-use plastic tube and then we're again we're using that same box and things that you don't think about boxes cost money as well and when we put almost twice as many sausages in that same box you're taking more packaging cost out so there's a savings per unit as well uh that gets passed along to the end user to make it more economical for sure yeah i think that's you know that's going to be one of the the big things that painters are going to be concerned about i mean is especially if you're in the new construction business i mean margins are very tight and um we've got to try to save costs you know anywhere we can and one of them you know if you can get your caulking cheaper that's going to be a big benefit so not only you know is this an eco-friendly product we're putting less waste in the landfill which is actually really good i think this is one of the things not only you know in uh the new construction market but in the repaint market this is something that you can market to your customers that you know you are an eco-friendly painter you use you know eco-friendly devices tools products and stuff i know there's even a painter you know in boise idaho where i live that is called painted green painters and they completely market themselves as eco-friendly painters and this is just one of those things you can do to help you market your company and it's an eco-friendly product but it also is going to save you money so bottom line you know your margins are going to be better painted green painters wants to leave a comment below we'll certainly send you some free samples [Music] all right matt so we've been talking about you know this um device this new innovative product that's coming out so can you just you know tell the painters out tell our audience out there three reasons why they should attempt to use this device i think the first reason is actually that there isn't really much of a difference so for painters and this is your trade and you do it every day first and foremost you're going to have the same product again you're going to have the same air free filling you're going to have the same feel and experience so what you do best all day every day is going to be exactly the same how you load and change from one unit to the next is slightly different so that's reason number one is nothing's really changing in how you do your trade number two uh we are all hedging against potential future supply chain shortages just ensure that you can continue to get caulk on an ongoing basis and it's good for the environment but number three again that important side benefit is the packaging cost less and so you can save some money today if you're interested in trying out the new system yeah you know i'm i've had the opportunity to mess around with it here i'm very excited to take it out in the real world and give it a test myself this is brand new so i haven't got the opportunity yet to test it out on the job site but you know i'm definitely excited about it i can't wait to go test it and i can't wait to get um some feedback from some other painters you know on our platform that begin uh using it so hopefully you know tower might be able to hook me up with um getting a few out there maybe to some of my painters watching this video so we'll see so um yo hopefully you guys you know give it a try and um you'll hear what matt has to say all right so i think you know one of the things that um people are going to be you know interested to know is um where in the world is tower sealants and where in the world is the product of manufactured i know a lot of products you know across the board tools and stuff are manufactured all over the world but i flew across the u.s you know to um come see this stuff you know being made and first-hand see tower sealants and get the grand tour so where is tower sealants and where are the products made so our headquarters and our manufacturing same facility we're in gainesville georgia which is about one hour north of atlanta and um something trivia about um that's interesting about gainesville is i learned today that it's the chicken capital of the world and you had some fried pickles and i did have some fried pickles and i've seen that on menus uh multiple times you know in my travels all over the place and i always thought that that is something really nasty just to think and i can't believe they're actually really good i don't think they are so i actually like them so interesting fact in your guess um about what the chicken capital of the world really means all right matt we're wrapping up this interview hopefully you guys enjoyed it um but uh my audience out there hopefully you guys have enjoyed it i want you to just give me kind of one interesting thing that you've learned you know in the caulking industry it's um it's part of painting it's part of the process and you know you've come over here at tower sealants so can you just give me you know something interesting that you've learned about caulking yeah and you know really the reason i came here i've i've known the folks at tower for quite a few years in their products and what really differentiates i think tower from caulking as a whole is the management team here is very focused on the end user we have over 100 years of experience in the paint industry specific and it is knowing what the painter needs and how they use the product and how that evolves over time whether it's different types of paints or whether it's changes in the labor force and how caulk gets applied and every formulation and every tube or sausage of that gets made is with that end user in mind and what's important to them yeah so i i really appreciate you know the time that tower is took in to give us the grand tour this facility um the people that run this company are amazing the owners are absolutely amazing and i do now know why tower makes the best sealants that…