EP# 165 - Revolutionizing Hurricane Protection: Jaime Zabala Jr.'s Legacy and Community Commitment

Can a single innovation redefine an entire industry? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Jaime Zabala Jr., president and co-owner of Advanced Hurricane Technology. In this episode, Jamie shares the remarkable journey of his father, an Ecuadorian immigrant, who founded the company and introduced the revolutionary end retention system for hurricane shutters. This breakthrough eliminated the need for storm bars, quickly becoming the market standard. Learn about the company's impressive expansion into Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and discover how Jamie leveraged his engineering and management expertise from NASA to drive further growth and innovation in the family business. We also discuss common misconceptions about hurricane protection and why Advanced Hurricane Technology's robust solutions are setting new benchmarks in the industry.

But that's not all. Jaime also sheds light on the company's commitment to community involvement through the AHT Education and Advocacy Fund. This heartfelt initiative, co-led by Jaime’s sister and wife, focuses on educating children about hurricane preparation and coping mechanisms. The fund aims to distribute an educational book to every kindergarten through second grader in Southwest Florida, providing comforting items to help young ones manage fear and uncertainty during such crises. Listen in to learn how you can contribute to this noble cause and make a difference in the lives of the youngest members of our community.

Advanced Hurricane Technology
Jaime Zabala Jr.
16501 Old Airport Haul Rd
Fort Myers, FL 33913
(239) 260-0020
sales@aht-usa.net
WEBSITE

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, cabo, jim Schaller.

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome Good Neighbors. Episode number 165 of the Good Neighbor Podcast, estero. Today we have Good Neighbor Jaime Zabala from Advanced Hurricane Technology. Welcome, Hi, cabo. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, pleasure, excited to learn a little bit more about what you guys do. So let's jump right in. And why don't you share a little bit about what you do over at Advanced Hurricane Technology?

Speaker 3: 0:34

Fantastic. Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you. This is a great opportunity for me and for my company to let the public know a little bit more about what we do. I'm Jaime Zabala Jr. I'm the president and the co-owner of Advanced Hurricane Technology, and this is a really well-timed podcast at the start of the hurricane season, because it's so crucial to start preparing for the hurricane season that's coming up.

Speaker 3: 1:00

My company is a family-owned business. We're immigrants, so we moved here to the United States in 1993. And in 1994, we started our first business. It was my mother, fernanda, and my father, jamie, who immigrated from Ecuador in the pursuit of the American dream, and my dad actually. His first job was fixing hurricane shutters, and so he learned the business from the ground up. Wasn't until 2003 that he came up with a unique invention that he patented. That really propelled us to where we are today, and that's kind of what's helped build the company. It was the invention of the end retention system. That was the first technological breakthrough of the company and really what gave us our name, and it meant that we could eliminate storm bars, those really pesky thick bars that used to have to be put right in the middle of hurricane shutters every six feet. Well, eliminated those, and so all of a sudden, it became the market standard and our product really began to dominate.

Speaker 3: 2:02

You know, we about 80 percent of my business is business to business. We have clients and dealers from Texas, louisiana, the Carolinas, all throughout Florida. Back in 2019, we started another business in Puerto Rico and that is now serving all of the Caribbean, and so we've had the opportunity to take this technology that we've developed and really grown it throughout most of the hurricane prone regions that we're able to protect. We now have also a smaller arm of the business, that's a business to consumer. We're doing installations, service and repair. That's one of the things that a lot of people don't know about us. We don't just invent the products, design them, manufacture them, engineer them. We also install them now as well, and so that's something that it's been our coming out party here in 2023. And we did a great job and we're hoping to keep that site growing.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Absolutely. It's got to constantly be growing. Things are changing, technology changes, so I know your family was involved in the business. But how did you get involved in the business? Just following the roots?

Speaker 3: 3:13

Yeah, well, I actually grew up here in Southwest Florida. I went to Pelican Marsh Point, sienna, pine Ridge, middle Gulf Coast High, and then I played golf for three years at Florida Gulf Coast University Interesting. And so in my junior year, I had to make the decision what I was going to do with my life, and I got an internship with NASA Wow. And so at the time, I was studying computer science and it really led me in the direction of engineering and aerospace. For the next 10 years, that's what I did from 2009 through 2019.

Speaker 3: 3:48

I was working up in Greenbelt, maryland, for Goddard Space Flight Center helping to design satellites and write software, test software and later on it moved into management. And so that was that was my dream, and my dream came true. But in 2018, you know, dad started having some some health issues, started planning the succession, what was going to happen with the business, and we really wanted to keep it in the family, and so me having two small kids of my own and being married, I decided to move down to southwest Florida. It's a great place to raise kids, you know, that's where I grew up, and so that that was really what pushed me this way, and I brought a lot of the technological know-how and management skills that I developed with NASA. I brought them here, and so it was an opportunity for me to see what I could really make of it, rather than, you know, working for somebody else, be the guy in charge and see what I could do.

Speaker 2: 4:41

Yeah, and apply your knowledge. I'd love that. So, talking about the industry, you know, and the technology side of things, are there any maybe myths or misconceptions that we can clear up for our listeners?

Speaker 3: 5:00

Absolutely so. We don't just manufacture roll down shutters and hurricane screens and accordions and all of that stuff. We also distribute impact windows, and that's one of the things that we hear all the time is that why would I get shutters when I can just get impact windows? The fact of the matter is that impact windows break. Impact windows break. They leak the way that they're tested. They have a 12 PSF pounds per square foot rating on their water penetration testing, and so during hurricane conditions, that looks something like 55 to 60 miles an hour.

Speaker 3: 5:31

So all you have protecting your home is impact windows. You can expect. If you have wind so all you have protecting your home is impact windows. You can expect. If you have wind driven rain, you can expect your home to get wet. It's a simple fact. On top of that, if you do get impacts onto your windows, those windows will break.

Speaker 3: 5:45

Now they're designed to protect what we call the envelope of the building, but they're going to need to be replaced if they take multiple impacts. That's not something I would feel comfortable standing behind. Moreover, they also do get glass shards that can fly into the home. So those are the things that are important to keep in mind. There are some windows in your home that I would be fine having impact windows on, especially in my house, but the really crucial ones I always protect with hurricane shutters. I put aluminum, I put time-tested and approved materials between me and the storm and that's the really important thing. You know so much of the industry has gone that way and so much of the design is going that way, but you just can't replace physics.

Speaker 2: 6:30

Yep, and one thing I've learned recently too that you know I never thought of it, but it's a great fact is that the number of storms we've had down here recently, you know they've, I want to say, weakened maybe the windows over time, so they're at a certain level impact-wise. But you know, maybe the seals get loose and you get water in there and now you get mold.

Speaker 3: 6:53

You're exactly right, and so that's actually one of the things that Florida Building Code. They commissioned the University of Florida and some of their experts to actually go and look to see what the long drawn out aspects of Hurricane Irma were, and one of the things that they found is that impact windows if you're thinking about it physically, you've got a tremendous amount of force and pressure that is pushing against those windows. But glass is more or less rigid and so something has to give, and it's those seals. And so with repeated movements back and forth, those seals at the end of a storm are shot, and most impact window companies actually won't warranty their windows if they've gone through a hurricane. So you're kind of on your own. It's the reverse with hurricane shutters. So hurricane shutters are designed to go through hurricanes. Damage that they take in the storm is certainly not covered. I don't think anybody out there is going to cover hurricane damage, but if your hurricane shutters are unaffected by the storm, they'll continue to be warrantied. You can't say the same thing about windows, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 7:51

So do you notice anything? Well, obviously there's been a lot of changes in the industry, but is there anything trending at the current moment?

Speaker 3: 7:59

Yeah. So Hurricane Ian was a water-based event and so right now my company and I know a few other companies are working on developing flood barriers. A flood barrier is going to be a key part of hurricane protection moving forward, especially here in Southwest Florida, so we've partnered up with a couple of different companies to come up with a temporary solution, which would be something like a flood barrier that's three feet high that can go across the opening. But realistically, we're working on a permanent solution because it has to be easily deployable or else people aren't going to use it every time it has to be forgive the term bulletproof it has to be, it has to work, and it's actually the Wild West.

Speaker 3: 8:44

There aren't any codes out there that are established for residential flood protection. They have it for commercial and they have it for a couple other fields, but right now there's not a lot of regulatory coverage in this area. So we're trying to develop something that is what we're calling a roll down flood barrier. That would be both a hurricane shutter and a flood barrier up to two meters in height. I'm not promising that it's going to be out anytime soon, but it's certainly something that we're working on because we see the problem that needs to be solved, and so we're trying to use our expertise to do that.

Speaker 3: 9:17

We also have a couple other things like bulletproof hurricane shutters that we're working on. Those are pretty cool where we're going to be putting something out in social media soon about that but we've been able to shoot basically any handgun or pistol at it without any kind of penetration. That's been awesome. Not only only testing it, but developing it, and we're working on different kinds of solutions so that people don't feel trapped in their homes when their shutters are down. You know screens are one way of doing it, but we've got a couple other things that we're working on as well.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Interesting and it continues to evolve, like you said, with the technology.

Speaker 3: 9:49

You have to.

Speaker 2: 9:55

Yeah, absolutely so you have to. Yeah, absolutely so you mentioned yeah, yeah, yeah, you live down here in southwest florida. You grew up around here, you played a little bit of golf when you get a moment of free time, what you enjoy doing well.

Speaker 3: 10:04

So I played golf for so long that it's kind of hard to give up. So I I still play golf. I play in little know, scramble or pro-ams whenever I can. I still enjoy that a lot. My kids both like the scouts and so I volunteer for the scouts with them. I'm actually the treasurer of PAC 2001 down in Naples and, you know, live vicariously through them whenever I got the chance to be in the scouts, and so I really enjoy going there and kind of passing on some of my knowledge but at the same time really experiencing kind of the camaraderie of bringing a bunch of people together. The camping is certainly a lot of fun and more recently we bought a ping pong table here at the office.

Speaker 3: 10:41

We've been playing ping pong almost every day. Whatever we can do to blow off steam. You know business is tough and it's stressful, but especially in this industry. But you know you have to keep things free and clear because at the end of the day, it's about spending time with your family and having fun Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 10:58

And you need that downtime once in a while too, to keep keep things in perspective per se. So is there. Is there one thing you wish our listeners knew about advanced hurricane technology that maybe they don't?

Speaker 3: 11:11

know, yeah. So things that people don't know about the hurricane industry is that there are very few vertically integrated companies that do it all. You've got 80 shutter companies between Marco Island all the way up to Port Charlotte, and when you're making a decision you need to know all the facts. Most shutter companies don't build their own products. Most of them don't manufacture or design their own products. They're buying things that other companies and other people have designed.

Speaker 3: 11:44

We're one of the few, if not the only, in Southwest Florida that actually designs engineers, manufactures, develops, tests everything here we do it ourselves. If you look at any other, you know maybe some of your friends have hurricane shutters on their home and they were installed by company XYZ. The chances are if you look at that bottom slat, you're going to see our name there, because we developed that technology and we have it registered with Florida State. So you know we do this gladly. We do it for the benefit of the public because at the end of the day, our job is to make products that save homes and save lives. You know, what we're trying to do now is we're trying to tell people work with somebody local. We're local. We design our products with Southwest Florida in mind for the solutions that are going to help Southwest Floridians, and I just want to make that call out there. People need to look at what companies out there exist, what they do. Go visit the factory, come visit ours. I'm sure you'll be impressed and we'll love to have you.

Speaker 2: 12:48

And that's important to understand, like I said, what's behind, because everybody else has a different product or service out there and they don't necessarily get it or understand it.

Speaker 3: 12:58

At the end of the day, most people know about shutters because of the marketing that's out there or because of the fear tactics that exist. But a lot of people are more willing to spend time researching a $15,000 car purchase than $35,000 worth of protection for their home Right, and that's just because of the availability of information. So do your research. Go out and visit a few companies.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Absolutely Great advice. Great advice. So how would our listeners go about contacting you if they wanted to learn a little bit more?

Speaker 3: 13:26

So the best way is probably to go to our website. It's www. advancedhurricanetech. com. You can also try us at roldownscom we own that domain. And take a look at what we've done. We've got over 500 dealers nationwide. We've done over 50,000 finished product installations and manufacturing and if you get a chance, please come to our factory so you can not only see what the products would look like, but you can also see how they're built. We'll show you the quality control that goes into every product and you can get to meet the people that actually make it Very nice.

Speaker 2: 14:06

So any last words for our listeners.

Speaker 3: 14:10

Yeah, the last thing is, you know, not only is protecting your homes and protecting lives important, but it's educating people about hurricane protection.

Speaker 3: 14:18

One of the things that we're most proud of is that we've started the AHT Education and Advocacy Fund. My sister and my wife actually co-wrote a book that tells kids what hurricane preparation is about, what it's like to go through a hurricane and, after a storm, what it's like to clean up, and that's one of the things that nobody ever talks about in hurricane preparedness. When people are doing their hurricane kits, they're never putting in little snacks for their kids or their little toys that they're going to play with. And it's one of those sad facts that kids are going to go through this and they're going to be much more scared and they're going to know much less about what's happening than the adults, and so don't forget them. We are looking for people that want to help us spread this book out to other schools. Our goal is to give a copy of this book to every kindergarten through second grader in Southwest Florida. So far we've gotten enough donations to do two schools and we'd love to do the rest of the public school system.

Speaker 2: 15:14

I love it Looking out for everybody in the community, especially the kids, very important. Yeah, it's been a. It's been a pleasure getting to know you.

Speaker 3: 15:23

Thank you for being such a good neighbor.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Yeah, and I hope to see you on the community here soon.

Speaker 3: 15:28

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, and I really enjoy the opportunity.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, estero. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpesterocom. That's gnpesterocom, that's GNPesterocom, or call 239-296-2621.