Remy Leger (sales) and Andre Doiron (operations) of ALLSCO Windows & Doors sit down for a supplier-side hour that covers more actual building science than most contractor training days: how to spec glazing by elevation, why a 5–7% triple-glaze premium pays itself back, what aluminum grills quietly do to a federal energy grant, and why the island province is all-in or stay-out for any regional manufacturer.
Not many windows-and-doors episodes turn into a physics lecture. This one does — and that is the point. ALLSCO is a 40-plus-year family-owned New Brunswick manufacturer with roughly 120 employees, a 77,000-square-foot plant in Moncton, and a regional retail presence in HRM through the All Weather brand. Remy Leger runs sales out of Moncton; Andre Doiron manages operations and has worked nearly every position in the company on his way up. Between them, they cover terrain that rarely surfaces in a construction podcast: glazing coatings, federal grant thresholds, the physics of superheating vinyl frames, and the cold logistics of shipping product to an island with one-way freight.
The episode is dense. Here is what a builder or specifier takes from it.
Spec glazing by elevation — and know what it does to the heat pump
The most practically useful section of the episode is also the one contractors most often skip. Leger and Doiron describe staying current through Fenestration Canada, the national industry association whose annual conference brings in government members to preview where Energy Star is going. That institutional knowledge filters back to the sales floor — and it matters because customers now arrive pre-researched. Some, Leger says, have surpassed the supplier's own knowledge because they had done a lot of research. That is a sales asset, not a problem: informed buyers are ready to spend.
The technical core: you do not spec the same low-E coating on every elevation. Passive solar glazing makes sense on north-facing walls where you want to capture heat; solar-blocking coatings belong on south exposures now that Maritimes cooling costs are overtaking heating costs in the heat-pump era. The window package changes the HVAC sizing decision — as Doiron puts it, the glazing choice modifies your heat pump, and it either can bring down or increase your decision. That is a meaningful number on a new build, not a rounding error.
On triple glaze: the premium runs about 5 to 7 percent over double. The payback in energy savings absorbs it and then some. On the federal retrofit grant side, the minimum Energy Rating is 34 — and here is the detail that costs customers money they do not expect to lose: decorative aluminum grills conduct heat across the glass unit and can quietly drop a window below that threshold. A customer selects a grilled window for aesthetics, assumes it qualifies, and discovers at audit that it does not. Know the ER of every SKU before you write a quote that includes a grant.
One line, not a ladder
ALLSCO runs a single premium window line rather than the good-better-best structure common among competitors. The commercial logic is tight: as Leger puts it, “competitors still have a a good better best window right we only have our window” — that forces the comparison to be about quality and fit rather than price position. A builder quoting a competitor's mid-tier against ALLSCO's only tier is comparing different things; a builder comparing ALLSCO against a competitor's top tier is where ALLSCO wants to be.
The engineering follows the same philosophy. Their sashes carry 14-gauge galvanized steel reinforcement — more material than the field strictly demands, but the result is that callbacks for bowing sashes essentially disappear. Over-engineering at production volume costs little per unit and buys something real: no one calls back about the windows.
There is also a physics argument for why hybrid (aluminum-clad) frames exist, and it is not aesthetics. Low-E glass recessed deep in a vinyl frame bounces solar energy back onto the frame itself. As Doiron describes it, “the frame starts to superheat and the frame starts to weaken out” — temperatures reaching 120 to 140 degrees Celsius in direct sun. Aluminum cladding handles that heat load. It is not a premium product for its own sake; it solves a thermal problem that the physics of energy-efficient glazing creates.
Code reshaped an entire product category — and doors took the longest to catch up
Before 2015, doors were largely untested in any rigorous sense. When the new building codes came into effect in 2015, NAFS — the North American Fenestration Standard — arrived, and the product category had to rebuild around tighter tolerances and dual weatherstripping. The door shop takes the most floor space in ALLSCO's 77,000-square-foot plant and requires the most specialized hands, which is a direct result of how demanding the post-code product is to build correctly.
Microclimate matters on doors and windows alike. Halifax demands a performance grade of 35 to 45 depending on where exactly the building sits; Moncton needs PG25. Salt air on coastal sites forces stainless hardware throughout — standard hardware corrodes. These are not recommendations; they are code-driven specifications, and getting them wrong produces warranty claims.
Cracking multi-unit requires infrastructure, not just product
HRM is growing fast — cranes visible from the highway, multi-dwelling units going up across the peninsula. ALLSCO is working toward that market, and the conversation is candid about what it actually takes. The residential playbook does not transfer — as the episode puts it directly, “that market cannot be approached the same way we approach a residential Market” — and a GC buying hundreds of units for a mid-rise does not want a sales call. They want a dedicated project manager who owns the relationship, visits the site before and during installation, handles adjustments, and follows through after. They need to know someone is accountable.
Decision timelines compound the challenge. GCs and architects are making fenestration decisions at least two years before windows go in — which means a sales conversation today is for a building that breaks ground in 2027. The sales structure has to match that cycle: a project manager with three or four key GC accounts, depth over volume, and the fleet and site-visit capacity to service the relationship continuously between quote and install.
Patio doors follow a parallel arc. ALLSCO pulled back from manufacturing them to a knockdown kit program in 2018, then rebuilt a full in-house lineal program. Nine-foot and twelve-foot units are now the standard in new construction, including apartments. The market moved, and the manufacturer had to move with it.
The Newfoundland freight wall — and why PEI wins on relationships
The regional logistics section of this episode is as useful as the glazing science, and it applies to any Atlantic supplier making territorial decisions. Newfoundland is straightforwardly brutal: because there is no backhaul freight coming out of the province, the carrier charges both directions. As Leger explains it, “they're charging you the trip there and the trip back because they got nothing to come back” — the practical result is that shipping product to Winnipeg costs less than shipping it to St. John's. That fact forces any manufacturer to decide whether they are truly committed to the Newfoundland market or not. Half-measures lose money.
PEI is the opposite. ALLSCO runs two tractor-trailers to the island twice a week. The reason is not just volume — PEI is a tight market where, as Leger says, “it's a very very small community everyone knows everyone” — and the local rep who lives there is the asset. No external campaign replaces that. A regional supplier who wins PEI wins it because someone built relationships over years, not because the product spec was marginally superior.
An industry where competitors lend each other product
The episode closes on something that does not fit the usual competitive-market framing. When a window manufacturer runs short, they call a competitor. Remy and Andre describe it plainly: “we have competitors that call us hey uh I ran out of this” — and they fill the order. The competitor does the same when the situation is reversed. In a small regional industry where shop-floor tenures run 30 to 40 years and craftspeople take genuine pride in driving past buildings where their windows are installed, the relationship between companies is not purely adversarial. The industry retains people because what they build is tangible and visible — most guys have been in the industry for 30 40 years — and that culture of staying and building something worth pointing at extends to how companies treat each other.
Windows are also, as the episode notes, increasingly structural. Units 20 by 22 feet now replace stud walls. The building envelope argument for spending on glazing is stronger than it has ever been — yet homeowners still routinely under-invest in windows relative to countertops. The supplier-side job, in part, is helping the trade make that case.
About the companies featured in this episode
ALLSCO Windows & Doors is a New Brunswick manufacturer and wholesale distributor of PVC, hybrid (aluminum-PVC) and wood windows, steel and fiberglass entrance doors, PVC patio doors, and vinyl siding and cladding products. Sold through a dealer network — not direct-to-homeowner installation — across Atlantic Canada. allsco.com
Alweather Windows & Doors is an Atlantic Canadian retailer and installer of residential windows, doors, garage doors and exterior siding, serving Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island through regional storefronts since 1973. awwd.ca
Kohltech Windows & Entrance Systems manufactures custom, energy-efficient windows and entrance and patio doors for Canada and the Northeastern United States, including Passive House-capable and ENERGY STAR certified lines, sold through a dealer network. kohltech.com
Guests: Remy Leger (sales manager) and Andre Doiron (operations manager), ALLSCO Windows & Doors. Episode 61 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Watch the full episode. Energy Rating threshold sourced from Magic Window.