Vinyl Siding Institute Member Companies Meet to Move Industry Forward

Kate Offringa presided over
the first VSI member meeting since
she became president in 2014.

The VinylSiding Institute (VSI) ushered in some big changes during its semi-annual membership meeting held April 19-21 in St. Petersburg, Fla. The meeting saw some new VSI board members added and a new president, Kate Offringa, who officiated at her first VSI member meeting. Offringa, named president in late 2014, comes to VSI with extensive executive management experience, including serving as executive director of the Vinyl Building Council and president and CEO of the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association.

There was a lot of excitement about the changes and one of the meeting’s key objectives was to enhance vinyl siding’s already solid leadership position in the cladding marketplace. There is a lot of optimism within the VSI, both for the housing market in general and the vinyl siding category. It was great to see the membership working together to advance the common goal of ensuring a quality product category for the homeowner. It was especially heartening to see companies that compete against one another on a daily basis coming together in the best interest of the industry, and the end consumer.

Over the last 20 years, VSI has introduced a certification program to ensure that the industry manufactured vinyl siding to meet or exceed quality standards. Later it would sponsor a Certified Installer program so that these products were installed properly. With these programs in place, VSI sought to educate builders, remodelers, planners and architects on the performance benefits of vinyl siding. Homeowners were added to this education campaign in 2014. And they’re not done yet. The buzz at this year’s spring meeting was about VSI’s next evolutionary leap forward. The Steering Committee and Board have agreed to hold a strategic planning meeting this summer to advance the priorities of its members. It signals a new dynamic that will create value for suppliers and manufacturers alike.

The meeting also included several excellent speakers, including one who spoke to the group about demography. This is a key topic as VSI seeks to educate consumers throughout North America. VSI’s next member meeting will be held September 16-18 in Washington, D.C., when we’ll learn a lot more about the organization’s efforts to serve the needs of its members as well as the industry. 

Mike Fair

Market Manager, Architecture

Americhem, Inc.

The Vinyl Siding Institute and Americhem

Americhem as been a member of The Vinyl Siding Institute (VSI) since the institute’s inception. VSI started off in the 1960’s and at that time, they were a part of the Society of the Plastics Industry. Americhem was involved with the organization from the very beginning of the vinyl siding industry, which also started in the 1960s.

Americhem has played a key role in the coloring and color retention of vinyl siding. Former Director of Research Rick Mathew knew that color retention was going to be crucial in the industry’s foundation.

Based on his knowledge of color science, he knew that the numeric ΔE value, which measures the color difference between the initial color and the color of weathered siding, does not always agree with visual assessments of color difference.  Rick lead the industry in establishing hand drawn ellipses for multiple regions of color space that corresponded to a visual assessment of the limits of acceptable color change in siding after weathering.

Back in those days, in order to determine if a vinyl siding color was within the acceptable color change limits, Americhem employees made hand drawn ellipses for each of the vinyl siding color spaces, plotting the ΔE’s by hand. This was in the time before personal computers which now make such tasks much easier. The work done by Americhem helped establish a new standard in the industry, ASTM 3679. This specification establishes requirements and test methods for the materials, dimensions, warp, shrinkage, impact strength, expansion, appearance, and wind load resistance of extruded PVC siding. The weathering component of the standard was an appendix which remained in place until the late 90’s, when Americhem scientist Phil Ledgerwood urged the industry to move to mathematical equivalents of the hand drawn ellipses. This resulted in a new, easier method of determining if weathered panels met the color retention requirements.

Americhem has continued its contributions to VSI until the present day, including the introduction of CIEL*a*b* ΔE2000 as the method of choice for vinyl siding color retention over the previous Hunter Lab method. This move redefined what was acceptable and unacceptable in the industry.

Americhem employees have served on committees within the VSI, including several polypropylene task groups, the heat distortion committee and the life cycle analysis group. Beyond the organization, Americhem has helped dozens of vinyl siding manufacturers over the years to optimize their product offerings.

In 2005, Ledgerwood won the VSI’s Ken Mieure Award for distinguished service, which was one of the first awards given to an employee of an industry supplier (most past awards went to employees of vinyl siding makers.) The award was created in the late 1990s and recognizes extraordinary efforts of members in helping to build and advance the industry. 

We continue our active participation in VSI and recently, market segment manager Mike Fair was named to VSI’s board. Americhem’s contributions continue with our work in dark color spaces, where the goal is to prevent heat distortion, and in variegated products that simulate the look of natural wood grain. The VSI has served a valuable role in the industry by establishing standards and monitoring for the industry’s products. Many industries could benefit from following VSI’s model.