A production crew filmed the manufacturing process at Mouldex for a spot on How It’s Made. (Courtesy Davide Aternino)
If you’ve driven around the GTA, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the products of Mouldex Exterior Mouldings.
The innovative Vaughan company uses styrofoam filler instead of concrete in order to make lighter, cheaper mouldings for homes and businesses.
But if you haven’t heard of them, there’s a good chance you soon will. The company will soon be featured on How It’s Made, a television show that goes behind the scenes to explain the manufacturing process of various products, from toothpicks to Ferraris. Now in its 14th season on the Discovery Channel, it airs in 180 countries worldwide.
“It’s definitely great international exposure,” says Davide Aternino, partner and sometimes marketer at Mouldex.
But getting the company featured on the show wasn’t easy.
It started back in November. Aternino was watching stucco application videos on YouTube while he had the TV on in the background. How It’s Made was on and that’s when inspiration hit.
“Not many people know that when they see a stucco moulding on a project, it’s actually foam on the inside,” he says. “I thought ‘That would be interesting if we got our product on that show to show people how it’s actually made’.”
He had previous success gaining exposure for Mouldex, a company founded by his brother, Angelo and sales manager, Tony D’Apollonio back in 2001. The company’s products have been on shows like Home to Flip and Restaurant Makeover on HGTV. Aternino figured he’d take another stab at it.
He submitted an online suggestion to the company that produces How It’s Made.
“The producer called me the next day and said ‘Walk me through your process,’” says Aternino. The producer wasn’t sure the Mouldex process would be enough to fill the required four-minute piece, but invited Aternino to submit a formal proposal anyhow.
Aternino spent the next few days going through the plant photographing Mouldex’s production process. In a nine-page proposal, he described what the company’s 20 or so employees were doing in each shot.
The producer said while it looked great, it would be the Discovery Channel in the U.S. that made the final decision.
Having not heard back by mid-January, Aternino called the producers to see if they’d made a decision. To his disappointment, he was told she show had decided to focus on European companies for the time being and that the Mouldex proposal was at the bottom of the pile.
Aternino was surprised when he got a call two weeks later to say that they would be coming to film at the end of March.
Mouldex beat out some of the other 250 segment suggestions the show receives each week, he says.
Aternino points to a timely coincidence that may have helped to give the Mouldex proposal a push.
“When I submitted the proposal there was a job going on across the street from their office that had our products being installed,” says Aternino. “Our product is actually made of Styrofoam coated with cement, but unless you’re in the industry you don’t know that. It looks like it’s 100 percent concrete, so I think that sparked interest as well.”
Although Aternino says it took a team effort to show a camera crew a five-day production process in just nine hours, filming is now complete, styrofoam, concrete and all. At the moment, the footage is being edited so narration can be added.
“After it was done it was a big relief that everything had gone as planned,” says Aternino. “We’re hoping that it opens up more sales channels than what we’re used to now.
“Just to be able to attach their name to ours adds to our credibility.”
