Building spaces for roofers

By Emma Peterson. 

From the first Roofers Exchange to the first roof museum, learn how people across the industry are building spaces for our community. 

Recently, Heidi J. Ellsworth had the opportunity to sit down with Donavan Morgan, founder of The Roof Museum and The Roof Gallery, and Vickie Sharples, co-founder of RoofersCoffeeShop® and executive director for Roofing Contractors Association of Southern California, for an episode of Roofing Road Trips® about creating spaces for roofers.  

This is a topic that Vickie knows well, having been the powerhouse behind Roofers Exchange – a newspaper dedicated to serving the roofing industry. She shared the why behind creating it, explaining, "When we first started this, you would go to the wholesalers and they would be selling products and doing help wanted ads and that was the extent of our industry’s communication.” What Roofers Exchange did was create a space for all those classifieds to live that could be distributed around the country – building a network of roofers and wholesalers supporting one another.  

It was a very similar idea – building a space where roofers can celebrate each other – that inspired Donavan to start the Roof Museum. As he put it, “I wanted to have a place where we could celebrate roofers that are doing things on a high level.”  

And so, he built the first museum dedicated to the roofing industry in Marietta, Georgia. And not only is this space dedicated to recording the history of the industry – from the great roofers in their hall of fame to their exhibits showcasing historic roofing tools – it is also dedicated to creating the future of the industry. Donavan explained:  

We want to use this space to celebrate the industry and get more people excited about roofing. So, we have a few block parties, and we also have events like the Home Depot Kids Workshop. Overall, just really trying to use this space to showcase the industry and show people what a cool industry this is.  

It is people like Vickie and Donavan who are dedicated to uplifting our industry and building spaces for our community to grow that inspire us here at The Coffee Shops™. Our goal is to be the place the industry meets online and, as our president Heidi puts it, “It's because of people and contractors like Vickie and Donavan, the people that want to build spaces for roofers, that RoofersCoffeeShop has really become what it is today.” 

Listen to the whole episode or Watch the recording to hear more from Donavan, Vickie and Heidi about building spaces dedicated to roofers.