Offering contractors a lighter path to premium roofing

By Jesse Sanchez. 

A real slate roof without the weight or labor burden? READYSLATE might just be the game-changer contractors didn’t know they needed. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, host Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Morgan Cathey, sales director at Vermont Slate Company, to talk about a product that’s reshaping expectations in slate roofing, literally. The product is READYSLATE® and according to Morgan, it’s built to solve a problem that’s plagued the industry for decades. “The product itself is really the first panelized lightweight roofing system that's ever been introduced to the market,” Morgan said. Unlike traditional slate, which can weigh more than 1,000 pounds per square, READYSLATE comes in at under 600 pounds, opening the door for use on modern residential structures that simply can't support the heft of natural slate. 

But weight isn’t the only factor that’s changed. Labor is another. “The specialty knowledge and training that's required for a traditional slate roofing system is becoming more and more difficult to come by,” Morgan said. That growing labor gap, paired with shifting homebuilding standards, has allowed plastic and synthetic roofing products to grab market share, something READYSLATE was designed to counter. 

While READYSLATE isn’t brand new, Morgan noted that the version launching now is the result of real-world contractor feedback. “Some of the things that they had mentioned was that the panel's a little bit too wide,” he explained. So, they adjusted the design, shrinking the panel from six pieces of slate down to four. That change alone made installation on steep-slope roofs significantly more manageable.  

Perhaps the most telling part of the conversation is Morgan’s emphasis on listening. “A lot of them (contractors) were kind of surprised that a manufacturing company was listening to them a little bit,” he said, referring to contractor reactions to the updates. That collaborative approach, paired with READYSLATE’s real-slate aesthetics, is driving strong interest. “This allows a contractor to come in and offer something that is totally different,” Morgan said. “They're giving customers a real slate roof at the end of the day.” 

Listen to the podcast to learn more about READYSLATE’s evolution and the contractor feedback that drove it!