G JAMES BUILDING A LEGACY

Resilience in a residential building industry.

Number one, look after your quality people, because if you don't have quality people, you don't have a business. Number two, look after your customers, because if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. Your customer wins and you win. You grow together. You want to improve all the time. You want to listen to customers like yourself. How can we help? Are our products relevant to where you want to go?

Hey, guys, welcome to the Builder's Edge.

I'm Norm Wales from Norm Wales Constructions. Now, for me, the whole purpose of this podcast here is to bring a little bit more awareness around the construction industry. I've been feeling for many, many years that there's not enough helpful information out there to support you guys to make the right choice. Now, we are a smaller family independent building company, and we're not here to build everybody's home, but we would definitely.

Love to be able to work with.

You to facilitate your dream home. But if we don't build your new home, we want you to be able to make the right decision in choosing the right builder for you. So hopefully the information that I'm able to provide through this podcast can be informative and helpful that you can now create your dream home. So hope you enjoy it and thanks for watching.

So, Greg, mate, you know, you've been in the game for 50 years, you know, and we're just discussing, you know, a bit off air there. Like, that's absolutely amazing, you know, like, and I have so much respect for that and, you know, there's many people out there that, you know, do show a lot of loyalty and commitment and. But, like, 50 years, mate, like, that's an incredible achievement. But this goes to show, you know, being in the industry that long, that you've obviously also been working with the right company and, you know, that they've got good morals and goals in place there, you know, so, like, when it comes down to that there, like, you know, what core values have G. James, you know, sustained in the 50 years that you've been sort of around the block with them there in that marketplace.

Yeah.

You know, like, and how have they, you know, evolved themselves?

Okay, well, look at one stage, though, my major competitor. So I honestly didn't think I'd be spending my last part of my career, last seven years, with G. James. But I want to share a story with you about Louis Zaragozzi, who is the owner of G. James. Like, he's the grandson of George James. Okay. So Lewis said to me, and I Jumped out of windows and I thought I wasn't going to get windows again and do something else. And he rang me up. So Greg, would you like to have a conversation? I said yeah, sure Lewis. So I went to Joe's Diner which is named after his father. We're just connected to the head office. He said let's have a sandwich and have a chat and I just want to share with you what type of man this man, he's a good man. He stood back and let everybody else be served. We sat down and I was talking and I hadn't finished the sandwich. He said greg, you better finish it. He then picked the serviettes up and put them in the bin and then he took the plates into the kitchen and I went, wow, here's a humble man, here's a good man that cares about his people and his business. And I thought yeah, I want to work for you. Yeah, okay, so. And his two daughters are in the business, Rachel and Sarah. And they're good people. They're the main reasons why I wanted to come and finish my career at G James. Like the last 50 years has been a huge journey for G. James mainly driven by two people, his father Joe and Lewis where that they would then grow their business and they were, they will, they were acquiring a glazing company nearly every year. Okay. And now we've got 16 manufacturing plants from Cairns all the way down to South Australia. But also what we did was you know that we've got our own extrusion plants. Like that was started by Joe Lewis's father. But Lewis then expand on that and put a state of the art one in down in Eagle Farm and that services all the G James Group. We've got our own glass plant. We just opened a big double glazing plant down in Victoria. You know we did. G. James did the first two high rise buildings in Brisbane.

Wow.

By amp right. So curtain wall. So that was brand new. Okay. To. To the building industry, curtain walling and G. James just took off from there. We're doing projects in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, in New Zealand, over in Singapore and everywhere like that. We're the market leader and to the point where that we'd tender on a job. And this is one of the greatest strengths of business and we didn't have the windows for it so we actually had to design the window suite for that job, cut all the dies to extrude them and then develop it. And through that period of time we've developed a library of suites that are second to none and I actually said to Lewis and Evan, who was my boss at the time, I said, you guys have the ultimate lollipop for builders for windows and doors. And they actually said, we've probably got too many, but because of the depth of it. And we had a test rig three stories high to test window walls now for high rise to make sure they comply. So it's interesting because the sliding doors that we've got in our 80 story buildings we actually put in our premium houses.

Yeah.

So those, they're tried and true and tested and the knowledge that we've got from building those big high rise buildings washes down into our premium houses from installation perspective and a site supervision perspective. So, you know, there's a lot of depth, a lot of knowledge within the G James business. But the thing is that we want to help our customers. We want to sit down there and listen to them and understand where they're taking their business and how can we add value, you know, where you want to take your business, Norman, other good customers for the next five, 10 years. So they're the key things. And the other thing is good people, you know, the quality of your, quality of your business, quality of your people. And Joe had a saying that he wanted to treat his people like his family. So if he looked after them, they looked after him and his family. And that's one of the core values of the G. James. It's a family business. Right. They genuinely care for each other. And I've worked for multinational corporations, I won't say who, but they are clinical as. And you're a number, right, With a barcode not used by date where that when you have a private business that cares the way that Louis, Sarah and Rachel care that permeates down in the rest of the business and you have people like, look, I'll share this with you. So I was walking in, he said, have you been to the commercial factory? I said, no Lewis. So he took me over there and there's 60 plus people working in that factory. He knew them all by first name. And then he'd say to the guy, say Jim, how long you been with me? I've been with you 35 years. Lewis. When did you start? I was 15. He had people working there 50 years working for G. James. Now the crazy part about it is he then walked up into the main office and then he introduced me to every single person in that office by first name.

That's impressive, isn't it?

Yeah, it's incredible.

And that's the thing like, and I think we've discussed this, you know, in previous conversations and that, that you know, we're very family orientated ourselves and it's funny how two similar businesses and companies come together with the same morals and goals in life there. And yeah, it definitely helps bring the right product at the end of the line there.

Yeah.

But like, you know, really like over all those years G. James would have been facing many challenges, you know, that you would have seen, you know, like what sort of strategies and things like have they put in place over these times to combat that and continue to grow.

Right. I think the biggest challenge that we have within the Australian manufacturing industry is, pardon me, is buying products out of China. Okay. So there's a lot of. Because their labor over there so cheap they can, they can basically duplicate products, not only windows and doors, but anything and bring it into the Australian market. The biggest thing that consumers got to understand, the homeowner's going to understand is that when you buy G. James and you use all, all your suppliers that are Australian, it comes back to the Australian economy. It goes, it does a circle. Yeah. And everybody benefits from it. When you buy overseas products, Chinese in particular, it goes back to China. It doesn't come in Australia. So. So the thing here is also too is that we're going to be here, right. We've been here 107 years and we're not going anywhere. You know, it'll go for another 100 years plus, I've no doubt about that because it's know it's a family business. You're going to stay within the family and there's, you know, you know, I know that Lewis and his family are committed to supporting the Australian community.

Yeah.

Look, and you know that's something that I'm very proud to be a part of there as well. Like you know, you guys, you know, 107 years in, you know what I mean? Like it's the knowledge and the wisdom and things that you guys have had over all those years, you know that you're then able to provide that information to the consumer. And then us as builders there, you know, it's second to none, you know, but like I guess over that 107 years there, like, you know, what's a few things that you can see that G. James have contributed to, like just, you know, more probably the residential building industry, like you said, it's gone from the high rise down.

Yeah.

We can bring things in but like what are the number, you know, one things?

Well, I think what makes us really proud, there's a couple of things we look at from a product perspective, the quality of our products. We don't bend the rules, we play with a straight bat. We want to make sure that the products we give to our customers and your customers are going to be there for a long time and they're going to be happy with them and they're going to function properly. So when the cyclones come through, guess what? They're not going to fail. From a human perspective, like We've got over 2,800 people working for us and we have families there. Like there's, you know, we have apprentices, we have apprentices. So we might have a father and son and we do, we have father and sons and wives working for G James and you know, we create that environment where that, you know, that we, we want to bring families through our business and give them a career path. So probably one of the best things is, you know, is that if you start on the factory floor, you could end up being a general manager one day.

Now look, you know, Greg, obviously we've had a lot of conversations around like the building industry and that there, you know, but what's one final bit of advice I guess that you could give to other companies, you know, looking to achieve long term success and resilience in a residential building industry?

Yeah, I think number one, look after your quality people because if you don't have quality people, you don't have a business. Number two, look after your customers because if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. So you do the right thing. So you've got to have a situation where that your customer wins and you win. You grow together and make sure that the products and services are the best you can deliver. You know that you don't accept second best. You want to improve all the time. You want to learn from the market what's happening on. You want to listen to customers like yourself, norm about what type of house you're going to build in the next three to five years. How can we help? Are our products relevant to where you want to go? Right. So. And that we, that we're compliant for the building code of Australia and we do all the right things from that perspective. So they're the things that we, that we value. As you said before, we have a lot of your values and our values mirror each other and you find, when you find the right customer and you find the right supplier, you know you're in sync.

Yeah, it definitely makes the process a lot, a lot more easier but also a lot more enjoyable. And then the relationships and things that are forged, you know, it's, you have long life friends, you know, know at the end of it as well, you know. But mate, look, honestly, you know, with everything that you've shared there and you know that the history of G. James, you know, 107 years, you know, it's no small feat in itself there. But mate, I, I just want to thank you you know again for you know, coming on to Builders edge and sharing you know, so much informative information. You know, it's a blessing to be able to have someone like yourself there that can give the, the facts, you know, to our listeners out there that can make the, the right informed decision. But like always mate, there's always one last question that I like to jump into and we'll see what today's kinder surprise is going to bring. Okay. It looks like a big one this one. Okay. All right Greg. So mate, what, what's a challenging time? In the past you've had to step up and out of your comfort zone and what did you learn from that experience?

Wow. Okay. Yeah, I, I, from a window point of view my major background was residential. So I was used to volume housing, medium housing and premium. And then I took a role with a company to be their South East Queensland commercial manager. So I jumped out of residential straight into commercial land and wow, wasn't that a journey and a half? Because commercial builders nowhere does not even think anything like a residential builder. So I had to learn very, very quickly the building process on high rise buildings liquidated, damages for non performance that you'd have to go through the hoops to get your product certified and specified. Before you start you have to show test reports on the wind pressures of that product, energy running on that product or acoustic values on that product and then you sit down with that team and then you work out well how are we going to make this happen? So and I went on a huge, huge learning curve where this company I jumped into. There was 10 jobs on the go with LDs pending. High rise. Right. So I was going from one meeting and getting beating up severely, you know, for quite a long time. But we didn't cop any LDS because we sat down and worked through it. The biggest learning is that you need, if you have a problem, anything is solvable while you can. While you're having a conversation. Yeah, right. While you sit down and you're in conversation and you can make common ground, have agreement and then you stick to that promise, that promises that you've made. That was my huge biggest learning curve was, was. Was. Was the commercial side of the business. And that set me up where that then. Then I had the skill sets in residential, those three market segments plus the commercial market. And that helped me go to another business where we grew it dramatically. And that also helped me when I come to G. James because we have a commercial offer as well as a residential offer, I could understand the G. James offer very quickly and work with their teams and say, well, look, how do we grow the business from a national perspective and look at the market segments we play in and what the opportunities are. And by having that knowledge previously where I thought, what have I done? You know, but fate has a funny has reasons for you to do this stuff to prepare you for your next journey. Okay, so you go through pain to prepare you for the next one, but when you do get in the next journey, you're prepared. Okay? At the time, you don't think so, but you are, mate.

That's definitely very insightful. Like, that's. Yeah, mate, as I said before, your wisdom and your experience, it shows in spades, mate. So thank you once again for everything you've shared there today and we really appreciate you helping out everyone that's been watching.

Thank you very much. Much appreciated. This kind invitation on. Thank you.

Thanks, mate.

Thank you.

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