FMBGN-ROXIE-AHT-Hurricane Protection Built Right

Hurricane protection gets marketed like a simple choice, but it’s really a chain of decisions where one weak link can ruin the outcome. We sit down with Jaime Zabala Jr. from Advanced Hurricane Technologies to hear how a family-run manufacturer (founded in 1993) designs, builds, and supports hurricane shutters at a level most homeowners never get to see and why they say quality is as much about people and process as it is about aluminum, motors, and hardware.

We walk through what’s new behind the scenes: a purpose-built 55,000-square-foot facility, a digital workflow with iPads and quality checks at every station, and a customer experience that’s built for real-world changes like HOA approvals, last-minute color swaps, and sizing updates. We also talk honestly about tariffs and rising costs and why pricing tiers don’t mean what they used to in the hurricane shutter industry.

Then we get into the topics everyone debates in Southwest Florida: impact windows, roll-down shutters, accordion shutters, hurricane screens, and the uncomfortable truth that impact windows can develop leak points over time. We break down why shutters and windows can work as a team, not competitors, and what you gain when the manufacturer is also involved in installation and ongoing maintenance. You’ll also hear about new product R&D, patents, extreme testing, and the growing interest in flood barriers along with the FEMA and NFIP nuance communities can’t ignore.

If you care about hurricane preparedness, Florida building code compliance, and protecting your home with fewer surprises, hit play, then subscribe, share, and leave a review so more neighbors can find the show.

Advanced Hurricane Technologies
Jaime Zabala Jr.
16501 Airport Haul Rd, Fort Myers, FL 33913
(239) 445-5477
sales@aht-usa.net
advancedhurricanetech.com

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Transcript

Welcome To Good Neighbor Series

Intro/Close 0:00

Welcome to The Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor Podcast — No Shade, Just Sunshine…Drama Free…Positive Vibes Only!!! This is the Ft Myers Beach Chamber Roxie Series where we share local information, meet the people who make this island special, and shine some sun on the businesses that keep our island glowing.

Jaime Zabala Jr. 0:17

Welcome.

AHT’s Origins And Core Values

Jaime Zabala Jr. 0:18

Thank you for coming to AHT. This is our facility in Estero or Fort Myers at 16501 Airport Hall Road at the ITEC Industrial Park. AHT is something that I'm very passionate about. It is a family-run and operated business. My family has been started the business back in 1993. And since then, we've been focusing on high-quality hurricane protection, either through repairs, installations, and since 2003, the manufacturing and distribution into the business-to-business market. So it is something that I'm very proud of. And I think it's something that a lot of people don't yet know about. We've been the silent industry leaders, and by that I mean just about every hurricane shutter company in the southern part of Florida that sells and installs hurricane protection, is has worked with us, has purchased from us, is installing our products. But the fact of the matter is, because we're so heavily into the business to business, people just don't know our name. That is until about three or four years ago when we restarted our retail brand and really started coming into the market because we realized that I think we were doing the market a disservice by not having the actual manufacturers out there installing, maintaining, and putting our level of quality out into the market. Our values are fairness, honesty, and quality. And those things aren't as simple as just the words. Quality doesn't just mean quality of the materials, it means quality of the people and quality of the effort. Honesty is the way that we do all our business. That means that if we don't believe that our products are right for you, we will tell you. If we don't think that this installation is going to work, we will tell you. A lot of people will not. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is fairness. And one thing that my father taught me early on is that fairness goes both ways. That means I will treat you fairly and I expect to be treated fairly in return. And so when we approach the market in that way, we were able to establish partnerships, friendships. We're not transactional in the least. We establish long-term relationships that benefit both parties. And that's the way that we see this market continue to move forward. Our success has been really thanks to our customers, because customers keep coming back over and over and over on the business-to-business side. And on the B2C side, every time somebody moves or has a new house, they want to come back because they want to be treated the same way they were treated the first time with respect and with fairness. So we have adapted our business to be primarily based around quality and customer service. Throughout the presentation, you may hear me talk about price just because of the situation that's going on with tariffs. But realistically, price isn't something that we start with or that we sell with. Today we have three locations. We have one location in Puerto Rico called PRAHT. We have this location where we're at here, which is our headquarters, and we have another one in Ecuador that it serves the security market. We do currently support hurricane shutter companies and security companies in California, Arizona, Chicago, all in the hurricane-prone states, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, all the way up into New Jersey.

The New Facility And Digital Workflow

Jaime Zabala Jr. 3:37

So what's new for us? The newest thing that we have going on right now is the building that we're in. This is this was a huge step forward for AHT when we talk about hurricane shutter companies. If you're in the market forum, go visit your hurricane shutter company, see their showroom, see where they build the stuff. The chances are you're gonna find a very small footprint, you're gonna find very rudimentary tools. That's not us. We invested heavily into our technology, into our infrastructure, into our building, uh, and that's where we're at today. This building is a 55,000 square foot building, um, was built in 2022, and it was designed by us for our purposes. Uh the material, once we go back, you'll see it enters through the Big Bay door and moves through in a cyclical fashion, kind of looks like a horseshoe because it goes out another door. But we designed that so that we could be as efficient as possible. Not only that, but we've also continued to extend uh our digital footprint. So we have digital work instructions rather than what everybody else has in the industry, which is paper contracts, things written on the back of napkins. Our entire process can be done online, uh, not only from contract signing and receiving a quote, but all the way down to the way that we build the product. Every station in the back has iPads, that's how they receive their work instructions. Uh, every station in the back has a quality check that they have to do. And then our fulfillment system as well goes through a digital uh platform. What that means for us is that if there's a last-minute change, like you decide on a different color or the HOA didn't improve something, we can put that into the system right away, and everybody knows. If there's a change in dimension that puts you into another motor size, again, the guy that's building the product outside is gonna know. And so that's that's an important thing because when we talk about quality, it means it's not just from the beginning and at the end, it's all the steps in between. Um, we do have a new marketing department. Our marketing department um is actually headed up by my sister, who is the branded marketing manager. She's up in DC right now, where she splits her time. But um she's the one that's helped put together the uh all the new catalogs that we have, the new website, um, her team, along with Eddie, Ramon, and um we have a VA that participates in the team. They've done a fantastic job in putting together a new website, uh in putting together a new CRM that's gonna enhance the way that we're able to communicate with our customers. Uh, and it's gonna make it's gonna improve our flow so that everybody in the company that's talking to a customer knows the full story. We also have dedicated tech support. This is something that almost nobody else has. So if you have if you're a dealer or if you're a builder or a construction company or a homeowner and you have any questions, you can call our tech support line or email us, and we'll respond with uh exactly what you need to do. Or we'll send somebody out there to figure it out. These are the new catalogs as part of the new image that we have at AHT.

Tariffs Shift Pricing And Strategy

Jaime Zabala Jr. 6:40

Uh, these things again have no pricing in them whatsoever because pricing changes so much. The world of tariffs has really changed the way that we need it to approach the market. And unfortunately, with the realities of rising costs, um, regardless of whether you're buying them domestically or internationally, uh, the prices have just gone up. And so we used to do a good, better, best kind of approach to people, and a lot of that was built around the perceived value. Um, that perceived value has been thrown out the window because the problem, the products that used to be considered more uh economical are now more expensive than the products that used to be considered premium. And so the world has been kind of thrown into a weird place, but that's okay. That's the thing, that's the reason that we roll with the punches and we continue to adapt. Um, AT Shutter Services is our local retail brand. Uh, they're the ones that will do your installations and contracts and all those things. Um we we didn't just at AHT our mission goes beyond products. It's about delivering safety and comfort tailored to your home. Every project is a testament to our dedication. Today we're at a special location bringing peace of mind to another esteemed client. Our expert installers work meticulously, ensuring every detail is perfect. Quality and precision are at the heart of what we do. The result, not just protection, but an enhanced living experience brought to you by the hands of our skilled craftsman. AHT means quality. That was put together by Eddie. Um, so we don't just we didn't just start our retail brand because we wanted to have the opportunity for better margins or better whatever. We did it because we thought that we could offer a better service to the market than what we continue to see locally. Uh, but more importantly, because we realized that we were getting a lot of feedback from our users of our products, the things that we should have known, things that are found during installation, things that are um discovered, you know, two or three years after the fact through the maintenance systems. And so if we could be involved in that, we could be the canary in the coal mine. We could know in advance if something is wrong. We could be our own product testers and and uh and ultimately the guinea pigs that get these things installed. And so it's actually enhanced our offerings to our customers. It's a very large industry, it's a very large market, it's something that I believe we do really well, and we're one of the very few vertically integrated companies. The bigger part of my business is wholesale. And so, what you see here actually on the board are two different um can you guys see it or is it glary? Um two different photos from about six months apart. One of those was before when we had a second location that was just for holding material, until we invested in all of these racks that you're gonna see outside to get all that material up off the ground as high as we could so we could use it to utilize the space as well as possible.

Manufacturing Scale And Quality Checks

Jaime Zabala Jr. 9:33

Today we are, I believe, the shutter manufacturing specialists. We are the top dogs when it comes to manufacturing anything with aluminum. Um, we have maybe not the most experience, but the most quality experience. Uh, our guys have been doing this forever. We have very little turnover, and the people that have built and designed our products have been doing this since the hurricane industry was in its infancy. We're able to produce upwards of 300 completed hurricane shutter products every week. Um with the the little important asterisk next to it, that we do a quality check on every single product that goes through. And so that means that we are checking the appearance, we're checking the function, we're checking the uh the length, uh, and we're checking the count on all the slats and all the tracks and all those other things. Every shop employee that we have in the back is cross-trained, and so they know how to not only do one station, if we have a key person out of another station, they can step in and do it. Um our roll-down and screen box assembly, uh, it's a little bit unique because this is something that a lot of other companies kind of outsource to somebody else. We brought all that in-house. We have one of the largest breaks in the southeastern United States. Um, it's got it's 32 and a half feet long because we've seen that structures are starting to get bigger and bigger, and the openings are starting to get bigger and bigger, and so we decided to invest to that level so that we could be as efficient as possible and also make products that on demand could be as large or as small as we needed. And then lastly, in the second floor is where we do our hurricane screen manufacturing, and you'll see the entire process there from the welding to the sewing and cutting. Uh, we use machinery for all of that so we can be as precise as possible.

Engineering Rules And Barriers To Entry

Jaime Zabala Jr. 11:16

Interesting thing about the hurricane industry that most people don't know about is that every single thing that we sell and install has to be engineered. There is an extraordinarily high barrier to entry in the hurricane industry to get to the point where we are. Um, if you want to sell a new prototype of a product, let's say it's gonna be the new roll-down shutter, you're gonna need to get an engineer, you're gonna have to do a test plan, you're gonna have to send that test plan to an independent lab, you're gonna have to have that test plan and those results uh independently evaluated, then you're gonna have to go to the Florida building code and list that. Uh, you also have to, don't forget, extrude the product, pay the engineer that designed it, go through that whole thing. It could be as much as $150,000 to $200,000 per product. And so that high cost uh barrier to entry is really what protects us from those bad players, but it also inhibits um innovation to a certain extent. Because before you've sold a single item been able to install it, you have to have invested all of this money. That said, that's why you don't see so many products on the market. You see very limited amounts. In our case, we've got um aluminum roll-down products, we've got hurricane screen products, and uh accordions. You'll also see things like Bahamas and Colonials, uh, some panels. These are the ones that we concentrate on because these are the things that I think we do better than anybody else. These are our strengths.

Patents And New Shutter Innovation

Jaime Zabala Jr. 12:40

We also hold patents. Currently, we have uh two patent pendings and three patents. Um we hold the patent. Well, it's expired now, but we held the patent on the original land retention system, which has become the standard uh in the industry. Every single aluminum roll-down hurricane product that is sold out there uh is based off of this patent. Um we also were the original manufacturers of the zipper hurricane screen. There were other hurricane screens on the market. We're the first that went took it to the zipper. We did that because we realized that the failure point for most hurricane screens was actually the Keter, because it's a fabric-covered rope that was wearing over time inside that metal. It's metal on fabric. Um so that was our big thing. Since then, we've worked on new things like an aluminum, uh, aluminum hybrid with a hurricane screen, uh, and a different kind of Aramid hurricane screen, a sideways rolling hurricane screen, a bulletproof hurricane shutter, uh, etc. And so all those things may not necessarily come out to the market, but this part of, you know, that's part of how RD works. This is the uh currently a patent pending product. This is the hybrid that is both aluminum and hurricane screen. Uh I've got two installed in my home. My wife loves them. She says they're the best shutters we've ever made. Um, but there's a long road to actually getting it delivered. So this is something that I hope to see coming out soon. The important thing is that we continue to develop so that we can offer things that impact windows don't necessarily offer. That's the portion of the industry that is continuing to encroach over to our side. So as more and more people go to Impact Windows, we have to start offering things that maybe Impact Windows don't. And it's not just protection, there's also an aesthetic component, there's also a lifestyle component. Imagine a world where protection doesn't mean darkness. Where security means opening. Introducing the dual sheet hurricane protection, redefined. So, um those are basically the ideas. We put out these videos, we go into other markets, we see what kind of reception we get with the new products, and if we have good enough reception, then we say, let's put the money into the test. Um, this one was a fun one. Warning do not try this at home. Bullets, no problem. Powerful winds, bring it on. When the weather gets wild, we get tougher. Your home is your everything. That's why we don't just test our shutters against the elements, we take it to the extreme. Don't just weather the storm, defy it with AHT hurricane shutters. There you go. That was one of the most fun days of testing that I think we've ever done. Um, but that said, you know, uh, after we again took that to market, saw what we could do with it, we realized it was going to be far too expensive for what the normal market is gonna take. So we still have the product, we can still build it. I don't think we've actually built one in over a year. Um but that's again, that's part of that system. And it allows us to offer unique things that maybe other people can't. We're actually evaluating that product now in Ecuador for the security market for banks.

Flood Barriers And FEMA NFIP Limits

Jaime Zabala Jr. 15:57

So um this is one of the new things that we're doing right now, which is flood barriers. This is all the rage right now, as far as uh up in the Pinellas County area, uh certainly not Fort Myers Beach because of the issues that we've seen there. Um, but Collier County seems to be uh permitting this to go on. There is there is an important nuance to that. And so uh I mentioned this to some of the people that we were talking to earlier. Um the the restriction from the National Flood Insurance Program and FEMA on dry flood proofing homes below the base flood elevation uh is just for you know the residential side. But there is a there is an exception on the FEMA website that says that if a community obtains an exception from FEMA for permitting the construction of residences with flood-proofed basements below the flood base elevation, then it can be allowed. And so that's something that I think every community is gonna have to look into and see if that's something that they want to do or want to permit. Um, the consequence of not getting that exception and allowing is potentially the loss of participating in the NFIP. Um, but that aside, it's this is something that is gonna continue to grow, and I think that the economy is gonna push it into the direction of some getting some kind of legitimacy and uh uniform code.

Impact Windows Versus Shutters As A Team

Jaime Zabala Jr. 17:16

We also do window, we distribute and we install three different window manufacturers that's CWS, ES Windows, and Linha Rosa. Uh we've noticed a lot of the market going that way, higher ticket items. Uh but one of the one of the downsides of that is that the window is doing the complete job. Uh when you have a hurricane shutter in front of your impact window or in front of normal window, they work as a team. One stops impact, the other one stops any kind of water from getting into the home. Um, one of the dirty little secrets of the impact window industry is that impact windows, it's not a matter of if they will leak, it is when they will leak. Uh, every impact window that I have ever seen has some leakage point after it's been installed long enough. And so that's something that you just need to come to terms with. And it's something that we are honest about. We sell the products, we distribute it, we install them, and we're also honest about it.

Logistics Tech Tools And Service Plans

Jaime Zabala Jr. 18:06

Currently, our footprint is uh we actually have that needs to be updated six flatbed trucks, um, three box trucks, six work vans, and we do next day delivery from Key West up to St. Augustine with monthly truckloads to uh the Gulf states, um, up to the Mid-Atlantic as well, and now more recently over to California and Arizona as well. And so that's how our wholesale brand has continued to grow, and we've been pushing our brand. Uh and ultimately our mission every single year, what we're trying to do is enhance our customer service experience. Uh, come out with new products. More recently, it's been the Wi-Fi hub, which allows you to control your shutters from your phone. Um, Company Cam, which on the customer service side allows us to take photos of the before, during, and after every installation so that we can both protect ourselves and we can share that with the customer so they can see the experience. Uh, and service plans, which is something that is fairly new into the hurricane shutter industry, so we can continue to service your shutters for year after year and help you keep up on your warranty and make sure that those shutters are new. So that is it. Um, if there's any questions or any concerns or anything that you'd like any more information about, please don't hesitate to let me know. Thank you.

Wrap Up And How To Connect

Intro/Close 19:20

Thanks for soaking up a little sunshine with Roxie and the Fort Myers Beach Chamber. If you loved today’s local scoop, share this episode, leave a quick review, and follow for more island stories and come join us every Friday at the Roxie in Times Square on beautiful Fort Myers Beach Also, To Nominate Your Favorite neighbors, local legends, hero’s or local businesses to be on The Show Go To F M B Good Neighbor dot com That’s F M B Good Neighbor dot com Or Call 239-427-41- zero zero Until next time, Support Local, Be a Good Neighbor and We’ll See You at the Beach