 So I feel like for an architect to be able to get the support they need, when they need it, is the most important thing. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everyone, welcome to another episode of Smarter Building Materials Marketing. I'm your host, Beth Papnikolov, where we believe that your online presence is your most important salesperson. I'm excited to welcome into the room today someone who is going to be able to speak from an absolute expert seat on how you can better build relationships with architects. We're excited to welcome Vardhan Mehta into the room. He is an architect himself as well as the co-founder and CEO of ASLAB. Vardhan, thanks so much for your time. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's very nice to be here. I've been a fan for a very, very, very long time, so I'm really glad to be here as a guest. We're excited to have you. I have my own story about how ASLAB has already put me in a shame, which I'll get to in a second. But first, I'd love for you to just introduce who you are and tell our audience a little bit about ASLAB. Absolutely. Yeah, so I'm a second-generation architect, actually. I grew up in a small town in India. My dad is an architect and my uncle is an engineer. Really, like, saw their practice grow and then fell in love with the industry from a very early age. I think as a child, what I found the most exciting about this industry was how it's so focused on collaboration. Any project, you know, it's a team sport and like we all rely on each other. And then I feel like the relationships that are born as a result or of a very high, you know, like nature of trust and so on. Eventually, I told them I'd like to be an architect as well. And they said, oh, you know, the practice in India is too slow to change and it's too old fashioned. So you should go to architecture school in the U.S. to learn the more innovative and tech-driven ways of practicing in this field. So I did. I came to Pratt Institute in New York for my undergrad in architecture a decade back at this point. Pulled a lot of all-nighters as you do in architecture school, which helped me land a job at a top 10 architecture firm in the city. There, I was designing projects for the State Department, which were U.S. embassies around the world and then institutional buildings for MIT and Yale. During that time as an entry-level junior architect, I was tasked with a lot of the product research, specification and selection. And I could not understand why it's so difficult and time-consuming to do that task as an architect. And I'm happy to double-click on why I feel like that is, but then that eventually led to the founding of ASLAB when I started my grad school at Harvard about three years ago. So when you founded ASLAB, what was the ultimate vision? Right. So during my experience and practice, I think the three problems I ran into the most related to building products or like relationships with manufacturers were the following. I think the first was just a pure information overload. I feel like as an architect, you are expected to know something about everything, but I'm yet to find an architect who would claim to be an expert on everything about everything, especially in regards to building products just because that world is so vast and there's so much to learn and things keep changing all the time. The second one was, I feel like as architects, we often wait until the latest stages of a project to start engaging with or speaking to product manufacturers. And I saw that a lot of times at my firm, and then I was hearing the same thing from my friends at other firms in the city that at that point in the project, you're already you have your back against a deadline. And you're so rushed that you don't really have the time you need to actually invest in a product research or to wrap your head around a new product. As a result, we often end up recycling specs from past projects, which ended up being the firm favorites just out of pure convenience. It's not the best product that we could find, but we just wanted something we know how to draw or we know how to render and that's why we end up choosing that product. And the third one I think is related to access. I feel a lot of times, you know, every architecture firm has their roller decks of trusted advisors or product experts, but of course, you know, you can't know all the product experts from all the manufacturers out there. So oftentimes I felt like, you know, instead of trying to reach a manufacturer just because I feel as an architect, if you try to dial the 800 generic number from a manufacturer's website, it very rarely leads you to the right product expert for your location. And as we know, architecture is very location specific. So if you're doing a project in New York, you need to be speaking to a rep who's in the city who understands the code, the compliance, not somebody in LA. And I think like these are the things that like led me to believe that there's a huge opportunity and like a lot of value here for both an architect and a manufacturer to start that collaboration in the earliest stages of a project like schematic design or design development. And that's where we founded ASLAB. The goal was for it to be a visual product selection platform where architects are able to discover, organize and collaborate on product specs all in the same place. So we launched this in May last year. So I can just speak a little to the success that ASLAB has seen because we were chatting on LinkedIn back and forth a little bit because we saw what ASLAB was doing and we're excited to have you guys on the podcast. And then you and I met in person and at the Wizard Summit and I was doing social media audits and putting together the presentation for all of the people that were there. I was going through and typically because it's a room full of manufacturers, mostly a lot of what I say is like, Hey, you know, here's ways that you can improve or hear some best practices that you're missing out on. And ASLAB's Instagram basically broke every best practice and everything that I had said leading up to that because I, you know, I'm like, don't put a bunch of texts on pictures and make it really easy to read and very dynamic and really pretty and buttoned up. And ASLAB breaks that in all ways, but your follower base is off the charts. Your engagement is off the charts. And I remember our conversation being like, I don't know exactly why what you're doing is working so well, but I would be a fool to tell you to change any of it because the impact is so significant. Why like, don't break something that's not broken. And I think part of what you're seeing is the response of the need and this pain point that exists for architects. And honestly, it exists for manufacturers too. There seems to be just this constant miss of manufacturers. We talk to them all the time, but they have this deep desire to be honest, trusted advisors for architects. Nobody's wheeling and dealing. Everybody's like, Hey, I have this great product. I have this great information getting through the noise and getting to the architect to your point Ardan at that exact moment that they need me not in a project in general. But when that project, my product is about to be installed or when you're ready for my product in the specific phase of your project. I mean, it's like needle in a haystack situation. Absolutely. To your point earlier, a lot of your feedback, by the way, was incredibly helpful to us. So I hope that you see that in, you know, the more recent ASLAB posts on social media, especially, but I think what we discovered is like this massive appetite from architects for ongoing education. And like really not, you know, like really like, like long posts or courses, but rather something that is like more applicable, accessible, and it's easier to sort of understand in a short amount of time. And that's what has been our strategy with content or that's been the sort of like centerpiece of that strategy. We focus on all the content that we make towards architects to be entirely focused on education and for that to be genuinely inherently valuable to them. So are there specific strategies you've used to build out ASLAB that you think a manufacturer could apply in how they educate or talk to architects about their products? Yeah, I feel like one big challenge we see even with the manufacturers in our ecosystem right now is that when we read their copy or like we try to grab stuff from their site to set them up on ASLAB's platform, we see that a lot of times it's written in a way that is not immediately helpful to an architect. So by that I mean, as an architect, if I'm reading a few lines about, you know, your products, how you differentiate it in the market. At the top, I need to understand what are the project challenges that you will be able to help me overcome with your products and your team of experts. And I feel like a lot of times, you know, like we've had to rewrite a few of the things in terms of the copy from manufacturers to be more focused towards helping an architect from scratch as opposed to when they first speak to an architect. That makes a ton of sense. So I'm not waiting too long to get to the actual crux of it. Is it too much fluff? Is it the wrong information being put to the top? Or what do you think is hindering manufacturers to get what you need to you? So like, like, I'll use an example, you know, which I've seen for a lot of these websites. They may have a lot of information about like where the company was founded, where its headquartered, how big the warehouses, you know, who are the two guys or people who started this company. And then all of that is great. Like I love to like to learn about those things as an architect at a later time. But right now, if I'm seeing that manufacturers are trying to wrap my head around their products for the first time ever, I need to be able to just see what are the applications of the product? Who will I be dealing with? You know, if I do want to learn more about the products, do you offer samples of the products? Do you have, you know, a way for me apart from a form on your site where like you'll ask me for a lot of the information about the project, but I'm not even ready yet. To interact with you. So I feel like there's like there needs to be an initial return on value for an architect, you know, who's interested to learn more. And then after that, like, like it, it can almost be the entry point of like, okay, now you speak my interest. And now I need to learn more about like how you can help me solve this problem, this very specific problem on the project. Okay. So you set me up exactly for the next thing I want to ask you, which is you. So you mentioned a couple of really important things really about the cadence of a project that involves an architect and their involvement in specification and things like that. And for a lot of manufacturers, what we hear that their core belief is I need to be involved at the very beginning. That's the goal for. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say I hope that the spec gets started or the project gets started without me. Where from an architect standpoint, what's the most beneficial stage for a manufacturer to be involved if you're actually talking to them? You know, it's the same thing. It's like, like right from scratch, just because it will avoid the architectural team, the amount of rework they'll have to do later in the project, which they might not even do if they only find out about that manufacturer as a viable option towards the later stages of DD or even in CD. At that point, they just go with like a Frankenstein spec, which I feel like is used a lot as a word in the industry to describe a recycled spec. You know, like just something you're doing out of ease and convenience, but it's not really like based on a very good understanding of all the other available options in the market. So I feel like for an architect to be able to get the support they need when they need it is the most important thing. And that would usually start in like schematic design or like the earliest stages of DD. So that begs the question. How do we do it? How do manufacturers break through the noise and get an architect to stop and talk to them instead of just going to the default of using the Frankenstein spec because they have to solve so many other things for a given project. So I'll answer this in two parts of that. Okay. So, you know, with ASLAB, it's really like three important features in our entire like tool set which help an architect utilize ASLAB for the scope of the project. In terms of the product research, it's required and the products they end up selecting on the project. The first one is like smart search tools. Information is everywhere and anywhere. And I feel like as an architect, if you have to go from like five to six different sites to just find the data attributes or the technical specs you need, it's a huge habit. So like we've built smart search tools, which easily help an architect understand who are the right like the shortlist of the manufacturers who might actually be in the sweet spot for the requirements of the project. The second one is a project workspace. Oftentimes, like I had like I used to do this all the time, like have a posted note of a technical spec with the name of a manufacturer on my screen at the office. And then you have to like make sense of all of that like scattered information at some point during the project, which is not very enjoyable when you don't have it like recorded in the same place. So with a project workspace, any architect or an architectural team is able to save these products on the platform. And the third one is a collaboration portal with which architects are able to reach out to manufacturers when they want to. So instead of a manufacturer having to cold call or cold email architects and it may not even be the right architects. Like I feel like not all the architects in the US are in the target audience for every manufacturer in the US. And so for them to focus on that niche of architects and identify them and help them at the right time in the project, which ideally is in the early stages of design. We've built this portal where an architect is easily able to reach out to the manufacturer. They upload project details on the platform. So you don't have to repeat the same information with five different manufacturers and it makes this exchange of information or knowledge very, very efficient. Now to go over to the other side, I will share some insights from like what I've learned or heard from from manufacturers so far. I think like one very effective way to build relationships with architecture firms is through lunch and lunch. But that I honestly feel like it's a double X for because if you go to an architecture firm with 50 architects and the incentive just the way it's presented is a free lunch. So you will have some architects for now that interested in your speed. It may be like, you know, that like you're really, really into your products and you're able to sort of like speak to them in like from, you know, the vantage point of an expert. But some architects won't be interested. The other thing is like you don't know always if the firm even has a project that's active, that might be the right fit for your products applications. And the third one, which I experienced a lot as an entry level architect is oftentimes I would see a manufacturer do a presentation where it peak my interest, but I'm an entry level architect. And my PM and the principal at the firm is also in the room. And I often felt like I didn't have the authority to be able to discuss a project with them or to share any details about that project. So that's with lunch and lunch. I think another thing, you know, with trade shows, I feel they're great. I really enjoy attending trade shows. I think like really heavily for its social value. I feel like it's a great place to see folks from the industry or to make new friends. I'm yet to meet a manufacturer who can explicitly tell me that they've had a huge ROI or, you know, they're able to track how many direct sales came from that one specific trade show. And I think it's a huge investment. And I think the third one is just like with a few of the spec platforms or like lead databases. I think a lot of times you get like this, like wrong, like really long spreadsheets with like a name of an architect and the email maybe phone number, but like you don't really know if those architects like are in your sweet spot. If they'd be interested in your products, what type of projects they work on and so on. I feel like those are the things that I've heard from the other side and I think for architects, you know, at the end of the day, it's a part of the job that is required. It's something we own, like having to do the product research. We're still seen as the influencers for that part of a project, but we just need easier access to the information on our terms. So not when, you know, it's the right time for a manufacturer, but like really when we need them and we need to speak to an expert, we expect that, you know, we will be able to find these resources in an efficient manner. Making it as easy as possible. Don't make me wade through your company history and a bunch of fluff just getting to the people that can actually answer your questions. Sounds very easy. I can tell you from this side of the table. It's both definitely doable and sometimes it feels a little bit trickier maybe even than it should. Okay, I've got a couple more final questions for you. One is let's say I'm a manufacturer who's missed that, you know, key sweet spot of early stages. I'm not in the early stages, but you haven't installed my product yet or like the my product category yet. You haven't gotten to my phase yet. Is there anything I can do to get in at that point and help you avoid the Frankenstein? But I would assume I have to make it as easy as the Frankenstein is going to be the key here. Is there anything to make that situation as painless as possible for an architect to ultimately win and I guess effectively flip the spec would be what that is. Right. And I feel it's a great time in history to be really focusing on that. I spoke to a few people who are at IBS and they told me that a lot of the conversations they were having with architects or builders there, instead of being heavily focused only on the product roadmap for the company or the value differentiators for the products, a lot of the conversations this year still were focused on supply chain, labor shortage and so on. I feel like we're also seeing that on a slide where architects reach out to us all the time where they'll say, the project is still in like later stages of DD or CD and the architect will say, hey, we have a firm favorite for Windows, but unfortunately they're no longer an option because there need times right now 26 weeks. So we need to like we need to find an alternative who meets the technical specs and optionality from like a design standpoint, but with shorter lead times or just like more service or it's easier to install and so on. I do feel like I think like a really good opportunity there for manufacturers is to focus on those issues, especially in dealing with architects just because I feel like with a project that's already delayed, oftentimes you need to find a solution as fast as you can, especially if you can build that trust with architects that you will also be able to support them with your team of experts. Right on that tail, you mentioned two of the biggest pain points that we know our industry is experiencing supply chain, labor shortage with everything that's happened and changed in the world over the last three years. Is there anything, any new challenges you're seeing architect space that may not be on the radar for manufacturers? It may or may not be already on the radar, but I feel like at this point in time, architects are more interested and have more agency to implement healthier alternatives or like really focus on sustainability. I feel like it's been around for a long time. We know what, you know, some trends in the industry both could and bad like related to sustainability, but I feel like at this point in time, architects finally have the agency where they can inform, you know, just like a switch of the firm standard. So there's an architect and we're, you know, also seeing there's a lot on this lab. Architects who've been like using spray foam insulation for the longest time. And finally, it's a wake up call from a client who read an article about it somewhere and they said, Hey, for my project, no more. And plus like you guys should really also change your firm standards for things like this. And I feel like that is finally happening without, you know, it's also, I feel like the innovations in the marketplace like they have all these great manufacturers who are trying to make products which are healthier alternatives or from ingredients which we have not really thought about as much in this industry. And like that's that for me personally is really exciting to see. Yeah, I would agree. It's really exciting. Varnan, this has been great. I really appreciate your time. If any of our listeners have questions about what you're doing or about what a slab is doing and they want to reach out, what's the best way for them to get in contact with you? You can reach out to me by email and then also through our site. Like we're still, you know, we are an architectural technology startup. We've just launched the platform and we always appreciate feedback. So if there's something you'd like to pitch as a feature that we should launch on the site in the near term, we'd love to hear your ideas or there's just some other ideas you have or, you know, some insights about your interactions with architects or design professions, we'd love to hear those too. So yeah, please reach out. Well, for our listeners, if you want more great content like this, head to venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe. Until next time, I'm Beth Papnikolov. Thanks everyone.