Ike Floods Texas Dealer with Desperate Buyers

When hurricane Ike began bearing down on Texas, Eddie Russell's phone started ringing off the hook. Russell, the president and owner of Sunset Glass Tinting in Stafford, Texas, says he was suddenly inundated with requests for impact-resistant film. This presented him with somewhat of a dilemma, you see, his company's schedule was already booked for more than three weeks with solar film customers.

"I told our installation manager, 'You need to move every solar installation project," Russell says. "Call them and apologize; tell them we will give them a discount; but we have got to move them."

Russell says the decision was easy when he realized-these weren't just everyday anxious customers; they were desperately trying to protect themselves.

"Yes, in a situation like this, the business could go away instantly if the hurricane changed paths, but it's about more than that," he explains. "On the flipside, if it doesn't change paths and these folks want to protect themselves, we have got to get it on for them-no matter what it takes."

Russell and his crew worked literally around the clock in order to meet all of the requests. He says the results can be extremely gratifying. His company installed impact-resistant film on a nearby hospital that received severe damage from hurricane Rita. Following Ike, Russell says he frantically phoned his client to see how the hospital fared, but received no answer. Finally, the client called him.

"I wasn't able to get him on the phone for a week, but he eventually called me and said, 'Man, that impact film didn't work worth a darn!'" Russell explains. He says his heart sank, but after a pause, his client continued, "Well, we had 60 windows break, but not one of them was punctured!" The client was only fooling him. In reality, he was ecstatic. Russell says the feeling was incredible.

"Nobody even had to leave the hospital," he explains proudly. "And we're talking about occupied hospital rooms--in a hospital that you evacuate to, not that you evacuate from."

There are many unfortunate homeowners in the area that no window film could have helped. He says the coastline has receded more than a hundred yards in places.

"A guy that was once six, seven houses from the beach--when he rebuilds his home, he's now on the beach," Russell explains. "The other houses are gone. The sticks are gone. There's nothing. It's like placing all the houses in a Monopoly game on the game board and then swiping them off into the trash. They're gone."

Once the storm had come and gone, you would expect that Russell and his crew had done all they could do to help, but that was not the case. Russell's company was just as busy after the storm as it was before and not, as you might expect, with all of those delayed solar film customers. To read about the opportunities and potential niche that Russell discovered, look for this story, in greater length and detail, in the November-December issue of WINDOW FILM.