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Tali: Hi this is Tali reporting to you from the
2009 PCBC conference in San Francisco. I'm here with Lindsey
from MAI Doors. Lindsey, can you tell us a little
about your company and your sustainable practices?
Lindsey: Yeah certainly. We've been around for about 26 years,
we're based out of a suburb of Dallas in Texas,
and we have a line of products made from Andean
Walnut that is FSC Certified, we have full chain of
custody of FSC certification, and it's pretty rare to find
a hardwood entry door manufacturer that has FSC certification, so
we prominently display it here at PCBC, and we're
proud of our product.
Tali: And I'm just curious as to what made your
company decide to get the FSC certification?
Lindsey: It was really a partnership with the mill in
South America that provides us with the wood. They had
presented to us this opportunity to manufacture our product with
this wood, we saw obviously the benefits of having an
FSC certified product and the "green" movement, so to speak,
in building and being able to fulfill some of the
need on that end, so we partnered with the mill
to develop the wood into a line of doors.
Tali: Great. We're standing in front of this product right
now. Can you tell us a little about this product?
Lindsey: The product itself, the wood, is Andean Walnut, it's
a very stable hardwood from South America. It's got
naturally distressed markings throughout, I don't know if you could
see it so well on the camera there, and we
have about 40 different styles within what we call our
Alpine collection, which features this Andean Walnut wood, and we
have about 40 different styles of doors, we got true
divided light, all panel designs, we have doors which
you can add speakeasies, clavo straps, you can adorn them
in a number of different ways, this cross-buck is an example
of some of the adornment you can do with these doors, we
have exterior mounted wrought iron grills, so a very versatile
line really allows you to fingerprint it and make it your own,
and then in addition it has the FSC certification, so
especially in California and other parts of the country
where green is more prominent, it's a really important
product for us to have.
Tali: And what are the options that this door comes in?
Like what kind of woods? can you get it in a
non-distressed finish?
Lindsey: It's only Andean Walnut, that's the only wood
that's available in the Alpine collection, and it's
our only FSC certified wood currently, although
we're working towards FSC certification on our other
woods. You can get it in a variety of finishes.
We use a water based finish, which also support
environmentally safe manufacturing - we don't use
an oil base which obviously emits more VOCs. You
can get it in a variety of finishes, you can only
get it in the Andean Walnut, and then like I said,
we have about 40 different designs. You could
get a double door, a door plus side lights, round
top, square top, 6'8 or 8'0, this is a 42" door
here, not everyone has a home opening that wide,
so we obviously do a 36". We have a whole line
of interiors, so you can have your exterior doors
match your interior doors. Just a really beautiful
versatile collection for us.
Tali: Can you tell me a little bit about the
glass that you guys use for the doors?
Lindsey: We use insulated beveled glass in any
of our doors that have true divided light. It's
just a clear IG bevel, not much to it.
Tali: Do you happen to know who your glass comes from?
Lindsey: I do but we don't release our supplier info.
Tali: okay, and what is the company's plan for the future?
what direction is the company moving in, in terms
of sustainability?
Lindsey: We want to continue, obviously, to seek
sustainable sourcing for our products, you know,
dealing with hardwoods, that's an important part
of making sure that we can continue to do this going
forward. So like I said we're seeking FSC certification
on our Mahogany and some of our other lines of products.
For now we have it on our Alpine products. So we'll
continue to look for that in the future. There's a
variety of benefits, obviously, from the environmental
perspective, and then in terms of being able to
fill a need that's out there, and we want to be
able to have product that meets the growing consumer
demand for green products.
Tali: So this is an exterior door. Do you have
a line of interior doors also?
Lindsey: We do, we have a line of interiors
in the Andean Walnuts specifically, so it's this wood,
we have it on display over there, it's a two panel
interior door ranging a size from 12 in up to 36
inches in width, so you can fulfill basically any
interior opening. We get a lot of full packages
where they have the exterior door then the full
line of interiors for a really rustic naturally
distressed, it's pretty understated and it's
distressing so it's not so in your face like a
knotty alder type product, which has very ubiquitous
distressing throughout, so it's much more subtle.
Tali: And one last question, where would someone
go to buy your product?
Lindsey: We sell through the professional Millwork
Distributors, so particularly in California we
have a couple different distributors that represent
our products on a national level. Norandex is one
of our partners where you can always find our MAI
products. We have a lot of local specialty window
and door dealers that represent our products, so
it just depends on what region of the country
someone happens to be looking for us and if you
go to our website www.maidoors.com, you can contact
us and request information, let us know where you
are, and we can get you in touch with the dealer.
Tali: Great, okay, well thank you Lindsey so much
for you time, and yeah, thank you. This is Tali
reporting from the 2009 PCBC conference in San Francisco.
Thank you for watching.