Talking Nichiha at IBS 2020 with Dave and Audree (when the world was normal)
With Dave Cooper, Audree Grubesic,
Video: Dave Cooper & Audree Grubesic Interview Tim at IBS 2020As a throwback, Tim talks with Dave Cooper and Audree Grubesic all about Nichiha and how they are trying to transform the marketplace. This may be from January 2020 but the information is timeless.
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The Build Perspectives podcast shares insider knowledge to build connections and community in the building materials industry. Tim and Carolina are friends, colleagues and former coworkers who love the construction industry and their clients, and want to share their passion and insights to attract future talent to the industry.
In this episode, Tim talks to Dave Cooper from Dave Cooper Live, and Audree Grubesic, Owner of Modular Sure Site, at IBS 2020 to talk about offsite construction.
Nichiha’s Move to North America
In Japan, about a quarter of all construction is done offsite, prefab, or modular. Within Japan, about 50% of all projects have Nichiha on them. Tim shares some early modular history of a 16th century Japanese castle that was prefabricated offsite and then assembled – in just one night!
Nichiha is still trying to see how much of their modular experience in Asia is portable to the North American market. Tim discovered not all can be applied here, but as Nichiha finds more and more partnerships with people willing to roll their sleeves up and work with Nichiha technically, they are finding more success. Additionally, because historically offsite has been expensive with less adoption in the Americas, that’s part of what Nichiha sees as it’s job: driving the On-the-Wall-Cost down. Visibility into pricing dynamics has been aided by conversations with some heavy hitters in the execution of construction design, sustainability, and thoughtful efficiency.
A lot of people may not know Nichiha has a large presence with influential brands such as Lexus, Starbucks, Hilton, Chick-fil-A, Whole Foods, and Burger King. When brands choose a product for their buildings, there’s a lot of thought that goes into it. It takes years of planning on both Nichiha and the brand’s part, and they make their decision based on durability, the flexibility of design, and even portability (can the product be easily taken off the wall and replaced or repaired). Often people who are building a home drive by or frequent these locations and see that these large brands are choosing Nichiha, and they inherently know the dynamics of product selection done by these brands, and they choose to use Nichiha because of that thoughtfulness and reputation.
What are Portable Materials?
In Japan it’s common that, when people leave their apartment, they take their cabinets, wall panels and flooring with them. Sometimes they’re on lease programs for these items and sometimes they own them outright. This allows them the ability to remove it, take it to their next home, install their cabinets, install some fill-in material, and they basically have what was their old home in their new home.
And the portability is great from a design standpoint but also for repair and maintenance; being able to repair damage to just one panel, instead of a whole wall, is game-changing. That really resonates with people like Building Engineers and Facilities Managers, who are very aware of challenges with other materials and systems.
Supply Chain and Extreme Accessibility
It’s one thing to have a cool looking product at a decent price point, but it’s another to have both of those benefits while also having a short lead time. It’s powerful for customers to be able to get a high-end looking material that’s available in two weeks that’s moderately priced with no minimums – this is great news whether a customer is doing a 300-room hotel or fireplace in their home. Plus, it’s available through basically any supplier.
Accessibility is one of our products as a service approach because it’s a differentiator. Not every manufacturer provides this, they instead rely on the distribution channel to do the work for them. So Nichiha decided to remove that constraint to provide better service and experience for the customer.
Fitting Into the Market
Nichiha fits well into the U.S. market. From a design standpoint, whether your building style is traditional, transitional, contemporary, modern, or anything in between, Nichiha can help with their broad selection of sheens, colors, profiles, sizes, and formats.
Plus, it all works on their rain screen clip system, so you not only get the entire exterior package you need, you can make changes between sizes, colors, and widths easily, without changing too many components on the job.
And Nichiha is moderately priced. So while you aren’t getting entry-level commodity pricing, you aren’t paying high-end $60-a-square-foot exotic pricing either. For between $17-25/sf installed, you get a more robust building envelope, flexible design options, easy accessibility, and concierge support.
Nichiha’s product is created in Japan by designers who are both artisans and engineers. So you get a great combination of beauty and functionality.
Thoughtful Palette for Every Design
The sheer amount of interior design and exterior cladding options from Nichiha is stunning. They do high-gloss finishes (that are normally very expensive), wood texture (so you get the warmth of wood without the maintenance), metal, stucco, brick, and concrete textures as well. All on the same panelized attachment system.
Just think: if you were going to do a traditional interior architectural concrete wall, you’d usually have to deal with engineering and forming and pouring and stripping and stacking and filling cracks. Or, you could use a Nichiha wall panel like EmpireBlock on their easy to use clip system and be done in a fraction of the time.
Nichiha is designing its products to streamline processes for these historically labor-intensive scopes of work to add more options for residential, commercial, and retail design.
Using Exterior Products on Offsite Construction
Audree loves Nichiha because with offsite construction, you can tend to get an uncreative form. But with products like Nichiha, you can give it depth and modulation to design something unique yet contextual. Being able to put these pieces on the front and change the design is exactly what we need in the marketplace right now.
A lot of apartment buildings and homes look the same because they haven’t been able to find or apply or have access to something different that doesn’t completely blow the budget. And that’s what Nichiha is trying to fix, by giving them access to a product that’s priced well, high-performance and beautiful.
Join the Conversation
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