Why This Manufacturer Says Trust and Speed Beat Big Budgets

01:00 - How Durasein approached a ground-up rebrand in a category that rarely invests in branding
 

03:00 - What Brandon wants people to think about Durasein when they leave the room
 

05:00 - Marketing to architects and designers without wasting their time
 

08:00 - Learning from brands outside the category to improve the digital experience
 

10:30 - Why Brandon considers large trade shows a high-risk investment
 

14:00 - How trust and a small team let Durasein move faster than larger competitors
 

15:30 - Brandon's advice to manufacturers chasing someone else's brand strategy

Brandon Guthrie is the Marketing Director at Durasein Solid Surface. He joined the company seven years ago at the ground floor to help lead a global rebrand, and today he oversees all marketing in the United States. If you have seen a pixel or a word from the Durasein brand, it has likely run through Brandon's hands at some point.

Durasein manufactures solid surface materials for commercial and residential projects. The company operates globally with a growing presence in the US, UK, and European markets.

Before Brandon joined, Durasein's background was in white label, OEM manufacturing. The brand at the time looked like what you would expect from the industry: focused on innovation and manufacturing capabilities, but not built to stand on its own in the market.

The leadership team wanted something different. They wanted to create an owned brand that could compete within the solid surface space, and they wanted it to feel unlike anything else in the category.

Brandon and the team spent six to eight weeks building an internal brand strategy before going to an outside agency. They chose a firm in the UK with a strong client list and a team that fit their culture. The brief was essentially: here is what we think we know, now tell us what we do not know.

That agency partnership produced a full brand strategy, visual identity, and website. The foundation was built in the first year, and everything the brand communicates today was shaped by that initial investment.

Zach asks Brandon a version of the Jeff Bezos question: what do you want people to say about Durasein when they leave the room?

Early on, the answer was about energy. Brandon wanted people to feel like they had encountered a consumer-grade brand in an industry that had never seen one. Over the past seven years, that answer has shifted. Now he wants people to walk away thinking about the people at Durasein more than the product itself.

The original brand strategy document included words like fresh, frank, familiar, and radical empathy. Those qualities were meant to describe the brand, but over time they have become more about the team. Brandon acknowledges this is partly because solid surface is a commodity. Multiple manufacturers make similar materials in similar colors. When the product itself is not the differentiator, the culture and the people behind it have to be.

Durasein's marketing to the A&D community starts from a simple premise: architects and designers already know what they need. They know the products. They need some education, but what they really need is to get information quickly without wading through drawn-out sales processes or spam.

Brandon frames the goal as being the partner they actually need. That means giving them the tools they are already using, making information easy to access, and not overcomplicating the relationship.

On the distribution side, Brandon keeps the strategy deliberately simple. One arm of the marketing effort focuses on the relational, consultative work with architects and designers, handled by the specification team. The other focuses on distributor support. Keeping those two tracks clean and separate, especially with a small team, lets information move quickly without creating bottlenecks.

When Durasein launched the rebrand seven years ago, they brought in a single specification rep. Within a year, that rep had 2,000 leads dropped on her desk to follow up with. The demand outpaced the team almost immediately.

Now the company is expanding that team in the US with experienced industry professionals. Brandon sees this as one of the most important investments Durasein is making right now. The specification market takes time, and closing the loop between lead generation and project wins requires people who can build and maintain those relationships over a long sales cycle.

Brandon pays close attention to how other brands, including those outside the solid surface space, present their products digitally. One example he highlights is Turf, an acoustic felt brand that he has followed for several years.

What caught his attention was how Turf displayed its products on its website. Rather than showing flat swatches, which is what most manufacturers default to, Turf showed samples leaning against each other with intentional lighting: dark, warm, and cool. Brandon saw architects and designers on LinkedIn raving about it, calling it a first in the industry.

That was enough signal for him. Durasein adapted the concept for their own products on a global scale. The execution was not a carbon copy, but the idea of showing materials in realistic lighting conditions carried over. Brandon's point is that the market was telling him exactly what it wanted. The job was to listen and act on it rather than make assumptions about what architects need.

Zach calls Brandon's trade show stance controversial, and Brandon owns it. For Durasein's current position in the US market, where they have established distribution and brand recognition, Brandon puts large-scale trade shows in the high-risk category.

His reasoning goes beyond the typical cost-versus-ROI complaint. He points to the sheer number of variables that can go wrong: booth design, product selection, whether the staff is engaged, whether there is anything genuinely new to show. Any one of those can leave a negative impression, and he believes manufacturers underestimate that risk.

Instead of investing in major show floors, Durasein leans on its specification team for in-person connection through smaller events, lunch and learns, and one-on-one meetings with architects and designers. Brandon views those as higher-value interactions with less downside.

He is clear that this is not a blanket position. In younger markets like the UK, France, and Germany, where Durasein is still building distribution and finding partners, trade shows are important. The right approach depends on the life cycle of the business and the brand in each market.

Beth notes that this is one of the more thoughtful trade show takes she has heard. It is not a dismissal of in-person marketing. It is a recognition that showing up without full intentionality behind the booth, the team, and the follow-through can do more harm than good.

Brandon credits much of Durasein's ability to execute to something that does not show up in a strategy deck: internal trust. He has a strong relationship with the sales director and the specification director. Nobody is trying to do each other's job, and that mutual respect removes friction from decision-making.

At a larger company, the oversight required to manage risk would slow the process down. At Durasein, the small team and high trust mean they can move quickly. Brandon sees that speed as a genuine competitive advantage over bigger players with bigger budgets. Durasein does not have the resources of a Corian or a Wilsonart. What they have is the ability to act fast and iterate without waiting for layers of approval.

When Zach asks Brandon what advice he would give to other manufacturers, his answer is direct: do not listen to me. Look at your own organization and be honest about where you can succeed.

His concern is that manufacturers see what brands like Durasein are doing and try to replicate it without asking whether it fits their own situation. He encourages outside perspectives from agencies and consultants, but insists the strategy has to be homegrown. A brand built on imitation will feel inauthentic, and the audience will notice.

Brandon frames winning for Durasein this year as incremental growth: expanding the specification team, increasing leads to sales and distributors, and continuing to build momentum at a pace that compounds over time. He describes it as rolling the ball up the hill, 1% or 2% every day, and finding real satisfaction in that process.

Brandon can be reached on LinkedIn. He welcomes authentic conversations about branding, marketing strategy, or anything related to growing a brand in building materials.

The Smarter Building Materials Marketing podcast helps sales and marketing professionals find better ways to grow leads, sales and outperform the competition. It gives insights, examples and shares stories about how to create a results-driven digital marketing strategy for building products and construction companies of any size. SBMM is co-hosted by Venveo’s Founder, Zach Williams and Venveo’s CEO, Beth PopNikolov.

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