There is a Difference with Brian Miller, SVP ARCAT

January 7, 2025

What is the story of your career?

I have been very privileged in this space. I went to school at Miami of Ohio, got a job at Xerox, participated in their sales training that got me the job at McGraw-Hill Sweets, which at that time was iconic in the days of print. Manufacturers either did binders or they did sweets or they did both. That gave me a lot of training in how the market operates and the complexities of product selection. In those days there were no metrics and you pretty much just had to go to market based upon how things worked. Rick Jannott was my boss. He ran Sweet’s ARC Records, a Dodge and E&R, and the whole construction information group. He left in ’91 to start ARCAT. I left in ’92 to do building product sales and marketing consulting for nine years and then he convinced me to shut that business down and joined him in 2001. I was with ARCAT for 15 years. Rick retired. I got a little entrepreneurial, worked with some friends in the construction tech arena for about five years. Came back four years ago and here I am.

I am the Senior VP of ARCAT and in this role I manage both marketing and sales product development. I’m kind of the public persona of ARCAT and social media and speaking at conferences, local, regional, national.

What is ARCAT?

ARCAT stands for the Architects Catalog. Initially, when it was introduced in 1991, it was a print directory. The idea was a suite catalog file at the time, which I mentioned before was dominant. Was to be found in a central library and Rick came out with a desktop directory. In ’94, ARCAT created the first library of proprietary guide specifications. It was distributed on a CD-ROM much like build Netflix. In ’95, we created the first website of its kind, a true building product sourcing platform. So what ARCAT is today is a compendium of building product information. We pull forward content from over 500 manufacturers websites and we index their product information so that if you’re looking for any one of their given products on their websites, you can find it on ARCAT, immediately click through to that product location deep within the client site. And then beyond that, we pull forward digital catalogs, videos, technical data sheets, sustainability documentation, anything that’s used in informing that decision. And then we complement that with libraries of specs and CAD and BIM objects.

Can you give us an example or two of how your experience makes a difference?

I think in this space, experience means so much. I mean we’ve talked in the past. Whenever manufacturers are seeking counsel either from an agency or a consultant, I always recommend that they engage with somebody that has experience in this business. It is highly unique. It’s different from business to business because if you don’t, you know a lot more than the person you’re working with that you’re paying and they are just winging it. And so experience is key. I benefit from having that Sweets experience and then the consulting experience. One, because what we do at ARCAT today is really no different than what we did in the print days at sweets because of value premise. That being that to get specified in the US market, in the North American market, you have to make sure that your product content, your information is available when somebody has a need for it.

That access is what drives everything else. It’s the start point, it’s a point of discovery. Most of these decisions in this space are informed and because there’s an element of risk and unless they have access to the content when they need it, your odds of being selected for that job are pretty limited. So really based upon what I learned at McGraw Hill, what I learned as a consultant, and what I’ve learned through literally thousands of meetings with building product marketing executives and sales executives, that informs my ability to help our clients and to develop products within ARCAT.

Having said that, experience is only limited if one loses their sense of curiosity. Everything changes. Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary. And what informs decisions is based upon not only what you retain from the past, but it’s what you’re learning in the present. One of the things that really makes our podcast detailed so successful and we have a podcast for the design community called Detailed. It’s hosted by Cherise Lakeside. Cherise is naturally curious and so every one of those conversations is engaging and informative. That’s where the experience has really paid off for me.

Examples are, there’s too many … I can give examples of say there’s companies in this space that are hoping to create the next ARCAT and I see them run through millions of dollars’ worth of venture capital, and at the same time I sense that they’re still trying to feel their way. It’s not just about the funding, it’s about a sense of direction. And that typically comes from experience and knowing where the pitfalls are and knowing where the opportunities are.

What do you see ahead for 2025?

I think the exciting thing about 2025 is kind of the continuation of what’s happened the past few years. There’s been a renaissance, say, a rediscovery of the importance of building product-sourcing platforms. ARCAT’s not alone in this space and we haven’t been, but you’re seeing investment in the space coming from startups, coming from other types of products like spec editing software products that are trying to come into our direction. People realize that it’s not just good enough to have content on their own website. For that content to have any worth, much like say a binder on the shelf, it’s worth is going to be determined based upon how often it is used to drive project activity. That content on the site is important as long as somebody’s accessing it when they have a need for the product.

Google is fine. And maybe I shouldn’t just limit it to Google. Any generic search engine is fine if you know the brand, but more often than not, people are looking for a type of product and those search engines don’t do a very good job because of all the retail and everything else that kind of gets into the results. Sourcing platforms, you can find it immediately. The good ones.

And then you add the component of the generational aspect of younger generations not necessarily willing to see people as often as they may have in the past or the expense of trying to do box lunch presentations all over the place. The element of timing is only perfect with building product sourcing platforms because all the activity is based upon people sourcing product, your specific product at that very moment. I tell people at trade shows, you might be lucky if one out of 10 people who come to the booth have a need for your product at that moment. If you’re doing box presentations, maybe one of eight in the room has a project that involves your type of product at that moment or the odds that they remember you six, seven, eight months from now when they actually do have a need for the product.

I think the primary reason that people have done say sweets catalog for 100 years prior to the internet and is certainly ARCAT since then is that there are limitations of time and there are with any tool, its use is driven by efficiency and effectiveness. And if you can have one site that indexes hundreds of manufacturer sites so that every time you search for a product you could find it, not just one manufacturer of that product but several competing brands, it is going to be a win for the user and it’s going to be a win for that manufacturer.

What is your forecast for both commercial and residential construction in the year ahead?

Well, I wasn’t ready for that question. That wasn’t the question I thought you’d give me. No. My take on residential and commercial I think for 20 straight months the ABI index was negative, it was below 50 and now it’s above 50. I think there’s some … The way projects are coming into play, residential is all messed up. I can’t predict what’s going to happen with residential. We have a huge housing shortage, but it’s going to take time for the home construction to catch up. There’s issues with affordability. And my take is, I wonder at some point do people kind of go back to 1950 zero track homes, GI bill homes for star homes instead of everybody wanting a small mansion when it comes to affordability. So I can’t really speak to residential as well as I do commercial.

I think commercial is fine. The one thing that always struck me when it comes to manufacturers determining their budgets and looking at one or two or three-point fluctuations in market size is this market is absolutely huge. Of course, I’m a marketing guy and I’m a sales guy and I like to win and I like to grow market share. It always surprised me when people would play hide and seek as soon as the clouds came. Every marketer will tell you that when you have fewer people playing, your odds of winning increase, your odds of being seen and noticed and discovered and your messaging getting through increase. So the very last thing you’d want to do is trim budgets when times look worse. But back to my main point, it’s a giant industry. There’s tons of activity and usually what we’re doing on the commercial side are projects that won’t be built or completed for a year out. So there’s that side of it. There was something else. I can’t remember what it was.

What is a piece of advice you can share with others?

This kind of gets back to experience, you kind of learn as you walk life’s rocky road. There’s two things that really drive me. There’s more than two, but the things that I appreciate the most at this stage in my life, one is finding one’s tribe. People that you can be really close to. I’ve associated with a group of artists every Saturday morning at 10 AM for probably 10 years. And in good times and tough times, when you have people that you can turn to and depend upon, that’s irreplaceable.

Beyond that, and I think this ties more to the products that one represents and being in the sales profession, I think it’s really, really important to stand upon the vantage ground of truth. It’s an old Francis Bacon quote I think. “If the truth is on your side, it’s only really a matter of discovery.” Every objection is no longer an objection. It’s an opportunity to clarify. Every competitive setting is an opportunity to win if the truth’s on your side. I could never be in sales if I had to misrepresent anything. And there’s a bunch of players out there that just do this for a living. I love those engagements and I welcome them.

So, find your tribe. Live the truth. And then there’s another thing that I picked up as a young salesperson. Og Mandino had a book called The Greatest Salesman in the World. And in the first, it was like a set of 12 scrolls. It was written as a parable of a junior salesperson traveling with the senior salesperson. And the junior salesperson was supposed to memorize a scroll every month. And that’s actually how you’re supposed to read the book. I had no patience. I read through six chapters and I don’t think I finished it, but the very first scroll was Greet This Day with Love in Your Heart. Speaking of which, because that is what connects everybody and that’s what excites me. I get all my energy from the people I engage with. I think we see this in our industry now, especially after COVID, you see more conferences, you see more personal engagement. On my best days, I can’t believe I get paid for what I’m doing, like an athlete I suppose. But it is really through the people side of it.

And so, I encourage our reps to get out and meet people face-to-face. One of the few companies that still do that. You’ll see in the industry … like I was at Entree architect not too long ago, and a lot of the smaller architects, everybody plays the 80/20 rule. And so nobody calls on these smaller firms. And the smaller firms are doing most of the work that we see around us. They have a need. Some of the trade shows aren’t going to come back to where they had been. But a lot of these local and regional conferences that are strong as ever and getting stronger.

Thank you, Brian.