Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/767739
Construction Marketplace 4 7 Thursday, January 12, 2017 CUSTOM SAUNAS FROM SAUNACORE Custom saunas – from a sketch or design drawings, to any shape, any size – Saunacore™ can build it. Saunacore products are engineered and manufac- tured in North America. It brings you the quality, durability, reliability and safety which one should expect in a product. It selects its materials carefully; its wood is supplied from one of the top mills in Canada, and its metal is chosen carefully, supplied from one of the largest U.S. companies. All Saunacore products are assembled and tested before being shipped or taken out of the manufactur- ing facility. Since the 1980s, Saunacore has been building premium quality saunas in North America. Saunacore prides itself on practicing the traditional art and craft of making fine sauna rooms. Its sauna making tradi- tions and skills have been put into every single sauna room manufactured and is still being practiced in its workshop today. The company creates each and every sauna in its shop one at a time so that it can pay close attention to the details that make Saunacore saunas stand out from the rest. Saunacore has always hand-selected the Canadian and American lumber for each piece, so the end result will be wood grain that match- es visually in a natural and continuous way. Its beautiful designs can be made from cedar, hemlock, poplar and any other wood of your choice. It can build saunas in any size and shape using the finest materials and components available. Each traditional sauna room is hand crafted to the highest standards with thick wood, solid benches and beveled edges. Complete custom capabilities are also available for prebuilt modular type sauna rooms. Complete custom capabilities for the DIY sauna liner kits and pre-fab modular sauna rooms is also available. Saunacore ensures that every detail is made certain. Main key features are that benches are assembled from the bot- tom while all walls are blind nailed to assure that no metal is exposed in the sauna. You may also choose different style doors and front wall options for a unique character- istic to your liking. Custom is Saunacore's specialty. Visit Saunacore at booth #S1036. For more information, go to www.sauna core.com, call 800.361.9485 or email info@saunacore.com. HB&G: TAKING THE LEAD IN CODE TESTING, INNOVATION Producing high quality, low maintenance and easy to install building products is a key driver of HB&G Building Products' success. Part of being easy to install is ensuring that HB&G Building Products' products meet or exceed building code requirements and have the documenta- tion to back it. Lack of third party testing or accreditation can result in issues with inspectors and building code officials. Building code requirements are updated regularly. In some cases, additional prod- uct testing or product changes are required to stay current. "Changes to the testing requirements and methods for structural fiberglass columns necessitated additional product testing," says Jeff Byers, Vice President of Marketing at HB&G Building Products. "As the industry leader, we worked with Intertek/ATI to conduct the required testing and ICC Evaluation Services to have an evaluation service report issued. ICC-ES is a well-respected third party evaluating service and with their report the construction industry can be confident in the performance of our products." HB&G Building Products is the only manufacturer of structural fiber- glass columns that has stepped up to conduct the testing required to earn an ESR# (ESR-1361) proving compliance to the 2015, 2012 and 2009 IBC and IRC. Builders and remodelers can use its columns with confidence, knowing that they comply with current building codes, thereby avoiding inspection delays. New product development allows HB&G Building Products to meet building code require- ments for particular markets or regions. HB&G Building Products developed SecurePorch™ products to meet these type of require- ments. SecurePorch is a suite of products, Column-Loc ® , Porch- Loc ® and RigidWrap™, which were developed to deliver wind uplift resist- ance for columns and synthetic porch posts used in porch application where wind uplift is an issue. Column-Loc delivers wind uplift resistance to PermaCast ® square and round fiberglass columns. Porch-Loc does the same for PermaPost ® synthetic porch posts. RigidWrap delivers wind uplift resist- ance to cellular PVC columns, along with making them load bearing. "Innovation is a way of life at HB&G Building Products," says Chief Executive Officer Lance Servais. "Construction trends, building code changes and customer feedback drive our prod- uct development efforts. We are particularly pleased with the expan- sion of the RoughSawn ® offering as it directly addresses issues raised by a number of builders." HB&G Building Products is intro- ducing new sizes of a rough sawn tex- tured, structural fiberglass column – RoughSawn, new caps and bases to trim square fiberglass columns, expanding its outdoor living product offering and is in final testing of a new cellular PVC railing system – PermaRail Plus ® . Eliminate building code-related issues and delays. Select products from HB&G Building Products for your next project and put your mind at ease. For more information, visit www .hbgcolumns.com, call 800.264.4424 or stop by booth #W6752. ENGAGING EVENTS IN A COOK'S PARADISE By Micah Cheek When Tom Ashenbrener was planning to leave the hardware business and jump into the kitchen, he wanted to have a store where he could throw a party for the whole community. "The manager and I said, 'We're not much of a hardware store, and I'm sick of fixing snowmobiles when they break,'" says Ashenbrener. "We never closed; we gutted the building and just recreated ourselves from Price Hardware to Rudy's." Since the shift in 2002, Rudy's - A Cook's Paradise has had success as a kitchenware store that hosts a wide variety of large events for the Twin Falls area. Every year, the community comes together at Rudy's for the yearly making of lefse, a Norwegian flatbread. The idea was brought to Tom by a neighboring business and quickly took off. "We'll get a couple hundred people who want to see what lefse is, and we put out the jams and jellies, and the kids love it. You get all this theater, it's part of that sense of place. You tell your relatives, 'we're going to the Lefse Fest,'" says Ashenbrener. Tourists and locals alike show up to participate in making dough, rolling it out and watching the lefse get baked on a griddle right inside the store as traditional Norwegian songs are sung. But Lefse Fest isn't the only party Ashenbrener throws. Eight years ago, Twin Falls began organizing First Friday events to bring people downtown. "We knew we needed to be event oriented, so we wanted the First Friday musical events right off the bat," says Ashenbrener. "So we get hundreds of people in here for a big party once a month." Rudy's was one of the original businesses to take part in First Friday, and actually has a dedicated stage for live music. Ashenbrener will even jump on stage to play a few songs on the guitar as well. Rudy's also hosts cooking classes. Local experts are brought in to teach their expertise, like Twin Falls baker Aaron Adams, who teaches class on sourdough, or Executive Chef Bridgett Slater from the nearby College Of Southern Idaho who lead a couples' Date Night class in how to make salmon en papillote. Many other cooking classes are also spawned from customer input. "We just had a fermenta- tion class, that was suggested by a cus- tomer," he adds. "That's the whole point, to listen." Rudy's has even hosted a book club, complete with wine and food that relate to the book. Up to 20 people can sign up for the club, and pay monthly to join the conversation in the store. Wine and beer tasting events happen frequently at Rudy's and are always a crowd pleaser. "We do wine tasting, both formal and spontaneous. We'll have a 23- wine wine tasting with distributors a cou- ple times a year. But then we'll have free tastings at four in the afternoon," says Ashenbrener. "You put that on Facebook and some people will leave work early for it." Rudy's has two full-service bars to accommodate the traffic for these events. The tastings also bring customers' atten- tion to their Wine of the Month subscrip- tion program, which brings people into the store monthly to pick up their bottles. Marketing events for hundreds of peo- ple requires a strong system for getting the word out. Event dates, news and updates for Rudy's now run online. "They roll on the social media, including the twice-a- month email newsletter. And then the word spreads from there," says Ashenbrener. "We actually eliminated our contract with the local newspaper, and we put that into new ways of doing things like that." The network that Rudy's built through newslet- ters, Facebook and Yelp has had an added benefit. Rudy's is right in the center of major reconstruction for Twin Falls' down- town, and a social media presence will be needed to show customers how to get to the store and park during road closures. "Our challenge is to put together a plan that gets the word out," says Ashenbrener. "We'll be torn up on the streets for a two- month period so there will less access for the front, but we have a backdoor and back parking lot… They'll learn pretty quick how to come in the back door." For a store that needs to change to suit events, layouts can get tricky. The building that houses Rudy's was built in 1904 as Price Hardware, one of the first retail spaces in Twin Falls' historic downtown. When Ashenbrener opened as Rudy's, he changed the store's layout and filled the 4000 square foot space to the brim with merchandise. To accommodate the crowds for special events, Rudy's has a flexible floor plan that can be changed as needed. Many product stands can be rolled out of the way, and collapsible tables are set up around a central demonstration island as needed for larger groups. "We have fix- tures we've made, we can move a fair amount of stuff," says Ashenbrener. "Most of them are on rollers that we built on grid- wall, fixtures that are 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall, those just get moved to where they don't bother customers." Ashenbrener esti- mates that more than a third of the displays in the store are able to move as needed. Moving these fixtures out of place tends to make some items in the store inaccessible, but that isn't always a problem. Ashenbrener doesn't plan on people shop- ping during the party; he is focused on making them comfortable with the store, and making it a social hub that customers will come back to the next day. Plus, put- ting all the knives into storage before an event with alcohol is a plan that benefits everyone involved. "It's an inconvenience that isn't insurmountable, we do it twice a week," he adds.