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| Contrarian Metal Resources
it to market. After almost a year of research,
Halliday came up with a plan to create an
architectural materials division that would
focus on the construction market by making
flatter, more visually uniform products.
“
It was apparent to us that stainless
steel offered a tremendous amount of value
as a building material, but people weren’t
building buildings with it,” Halliday says.
“
Instead they were making appliances – per-
manent capsules to contain 15 years worth
of moving parts.”
Conversely, he adds, they were making
buildings out of materials that would need
to be replaced or maintained every couple
decades – while a typical building will last a
couple hundred years. “Why not match up
the life of the materials you use with the life
cycle of what you’re making?” Halliday re-
calls asking himself. “That was our vision.”
As proposed, the architectural materi-
als division Halliday designed would coach
architects on writing proper stainless steel
specifications, market to architects, and sup-
ply small and large quantities for a variety
of applications. At the time, however, those
activities were foreign to the way steel mills
were managed, so the proposal was turned
down. Halliday was initially disappointed,
but that disappointment quickly turned into