Product Manager, Verscene

So my name is Nick Nobbe and I work in product development, specifically with building products. So residential roofing products, so from cradle to grave. We go out in the field, get the ideas from our customers and then turn those into product concepts and go through the development process, and eventually launch them. Everybody who owns a home, they have to ventilate their roof somehow. So we did one project that I worked on was we went out in the field and we're working with the contractors, roofing contractors, and we're figuring, watching kinda what they do and how they ventilate roofs. And we watch the products that they're using and kinda analyze what features they have, and really kinda figure out what are they missing and what problems are they having. So then we took that and then kinda went into our lab, figured out how can we do this in a better way, and so we came up with our own version of a ridge vent that goes up on the top of your roof, and it's just a better way to ventilate from what options were out there. So then we developed that. Worked with manufacturing partners to figure out how to make it and now we're selling it and contractors are using it in lieu of whatever they were using before. So as a product manager, that's kinda my role is to really kinda carry the ball. A lot of times I'll be working with a manufacturer, I will be working with an engineer, or I'll be working with our marketing team to figure out how to market it. Or I'll be working with our accounting group to figure out do the numbers and dollars make sense on this. So I'm kinda the one who kinda shepherds the project along from start to finish. I might not have technical expertise in one specific area, but I'm kinda the one who coordinates everyone and makes sure that the project keeps moving forward, that we're asking the right questions, and that really at the end of the day that we're keeping all of our customer feedback in mind. So a lotta times we have no idea what we're even looking for. We'll just go out and just say, hey, we just want to see you do your job, when I'm talking about the roof, and we just wanna get out there and just see what you do and see what's slowing them down. You'd be surprised how easy sometimes it is to figure out when you watch somebody do their job, to figure out the inefficiencies. So that's another way we do it. And then we go to a lot of industry trade shows too and you're always kinda seeing what are your competitors doing. Monitoring, okay, well this new product just came out and depending on if multiple companies come out with it, maybe there's a reason why they're doing that. So kinda always monitoring the market as well.