Sell Insulation and Drywall With the Fact Sheet Beside the Price

The fact sheet is part of the product. The FTC's R-value Rule, 16 CFR Part 460, covers "manufacturers, distributors, franchisors, installers, retailers, utility companies, and trade associations." It tells manufacturers to "give retailers and installers fact sheets for the insulation products you sell to them," and installers to show customers the fact sheet before they agree to buy. Its section on retailers, which opens with sellers to do-it-yourself customers, adds that online, "the product labels and fact sheets required by this part, or a direct link to this information, must appear clearly and conspicuously and in close proximity to the covered product's price on each web page that contains a detailed description of the covered product and its price." Whether a downloads tab at the foot of the page counts as close proximity is a question for your compliance team.

The same rule governs what the fact sheet says. The rule lists what a fact sheet contains and, beyond required disclosures, says "Do not add anything else." A foamed-in-place product's fact sheet must show its R-value at 3 1/2 inches. The rule also says "In labels, fact sheets, ads, or other promotional materials, do not give the R-value for one inch or the 'R-value per inch' of your product," with two exceptions. Whether that reaches a storefront filter is your compliance team's call. And home insulation "does not include pipe insulation," so a catalog that also carries mechanical insulation has to know which products the rule covers.

Blown insulation is counted off the manufacturer's chart. Under the rule, loose-fill labels list the "number of bags per 1,000 square feet" at set R-values. Owens Corning's AttiCat data sheet lists 19 bags per 1,000 square feet for R-38 and 25 for R-49, with a maximum net coverage of 52.6 and 39.9 square feet per bag, and says "Stated R-value is achieved by installing the minimum required number of bags per 1,000 net sq. ft. at a thickness not less than the label minimum thickness." A 1,600 square foot attic takes 41 bags at R-49 (1,600 divided by 39.9 is 40.1, rounded up) and 31 at R-38 (1,600 divided by 52.6 is 30.4, rounded up). The sheet also carries Minnesota-only columns, since "Minnesota Administrative Code requires insulation products to provide their stated R-value(s) at Winter Design Temperatures." At R-49 that adds 3.7 bags per 1,000 square feet, or 5.92 for this attic: 47 bags in Minnesota, rounded up from 46.02.

Type X is a board type. The fire rating belongs to the assembly. USG's fire safety information for 5/8 inch Type X says the board "is manufactured for use as one component of an assembly/system (such as a wall) where a fire resistance rating is required," and that fire tests are "conducted on complete building assemblies/systems and not just on the wallboard by itself." Calling it "one-hour board," USG adds, does not mean an assembly or a given piece will necessarily last for an hour in a new laboratory fire test or provide one-hour fire protection in an actual fire. A contractor filtering for Type X still needs the tested assembly.

A sheet of Type X can weigh a hundred pounds, and it has to land on the right floor. CertainTeed's submittal for its 5/8 inch Type X panel lists 4 foot and 54 inch widths, lengths from 8 to 16 feet, 2.2 pounds per square foot and two pieces per bundle. A 4 by 12 sheet comes to roughly 106 pounds, and a hundred of them weigh more than five tons. One national gypsum distributor's delivery page lists "boom trucks for high-rise applications," "job site unloading and stocking schedules," and crews that "place materials exactly where they're needed on your job site." Which floor gets how many sheets, and when, is part of the order.

Ceilings can sell as a system, panel to grid. USG's data sheet for its Mars high-NRC acoustical panels lists, for each item, an edge detail and the grid profiles that edge fits, and notes that "It is not recommended to mix panels with varying NRC values in the same ceiling plane."

Fact sheets as product data, next to the price. Each insulation SKU carries its label chart and fact sheet as product data, and the product page shows the fact sheet, or a direct link to it, beside the price, configured during implementation. Whether a page meets the rule stays your compliance team's call; the storefront gives them one place to check.

Bag counts read from the manufacturer's chart. The contractor enters net square feet and a target R-value. The site reads that product's chart row, rounds up to whole bags, and uses the Minnesota columns for a Minnesota ship-to where the manufacturer publishes them. The calculator is built during implementation from your manufacturers' charts, because a bag count is a minimum, not a measurement plus waste. Each order line keeps its chart row, and the rule tells installers to figure R-value from "the data that the manufacturer gives you" and, for loose-fill, to show "the number of bags used" on the receipt.

Board by type, thickness, width, length and edge, with the assembly attached. Those attributes, plus weight per square foot, come from each manufacturer's submittal and are configured during implementation as filters. The tested assemblies a board is used in are attached as documents, built during implementation. Ceiling panels carry their edge and the grid profiles it fits, with a panel to grid check before checkout built during implementation.

Delivery with a placement plan. The order carries the jobsite, the requested date, the delivery method and a stocking instruction by floor or area, built during implementation. Load weight, summed from each item's weight per square foot, is also built during implementation. Boom delivery and stocking can be sold as services through the same checkout as the board, because Uncap Portal lets a Shopify store "sell services and rentals alongside standard ecommerce products, through one checkout." On BisTrack, Epicor says its Journey Planner "simplifies the critically important tasks of delivery scheduling, vehicle selection, and manifest creation." Writing the order to BisTrack, so the schedule is made there, is built during implementation.

Contractor pricing, job quotes and reorders. Uncap Quotes runs configure, price, quote inside the Shopify admin. Negotiated prices, tiers and volume breaks apply automatically, quotes carry validity windows and a full revision history, and an approved quote becomes a Shopify order in one click. In Uncap Portal, contractors get real multi-user accounts with roles and permissions, each buyer sees their assortment and pricing, and joint compound, tape and framing accessories sit on reorder lists.

The platform question, answered on architecture. The case for staying on your ERP vendor's own commerce product is that its link to the ERP is the least fragile. Uncap's published products do not include fact sheet placement, chart-based bag counts or stocking instructions; on Shopify, they are built during implementation from your data. Uncap Connect runs inside Shopify rather than as separate middleware, keeps pricing, inventory, customers and orders current on both sides in real time, and syncs customer-specific pricing, credit terms and tax rules. BisTrack stays the system of record. Epicor's BisTrack API page says the API can "Push quotes and orders into BisTrack with payment details" and "Deliver personalized pricing using BisTrack's existing pricing tables." It names no specific protocol, so discovery on your instance comes before a fixed scope.

Fact sheet beside the price. The manufacturer's fact sheet, or a direct link to it, next to the price on each insulation product page, configured during implementation.

Rule-aware spec table. Label chart fields by insulation form, pipe insulation flagged, and R-value per inch shown only where your compliance team approves, configured during implementation.

Bag count calculator. Net square feet and a target R-value in, whole bags out, read from each manufacturer's chart with state columns where published, built during implementation.

Board filters and assemblies. Type, thickness, width, length, edge and weight from the submittal as filters, with tested assemblies attached, configured during implementation.

Panel to grid check. Ceiling panels matched to the grid profiles their edge fits before checkout, built during implementation.

Placement on the order. Delivery method, date and a stocking instruction by floor or area, with load weight from item weights, built during implementation.

Services at checkout. Boom delivery and stocking sold as services alongside the material, through one checkout with Uncap Portal.

ERP sync, Connect or managed iPaaS. Pricing, inventory, customers and orders kept current between Shopify and the ERP, through an owned Uncap Connect app embedded in Shopify, or a managed iPaaS integration.

The line between product and build, in writing. Account pricing, approvals, validity windows, one-click conversion, reorder lists and services ship in Uncap Quotes and Uncap Portal. Fact sheet placement, bag counts, board and ceiling filters, assemblies and stocking instructions are built during implementation from your data, and the scope says which is which.

Credentials you can check. Uncap is a Shopify Platinum Partner, on Shopify since 2013, with 380+ unified storefronts launched on Shopify.

Scoped before it is built. The Uncap Blueprint is a fixed-price, four-week Shopify migration plan, credited 1:1 toward implementation. It covers solution architecture, a data migration taxonomy, an ERP integration audit, UX and flow prototyping, total cost of ownership and a risk register, and ends with a fixed-cost implementation estimate. For an insulation and drywall distributor, that architecture work can cover fact sheet data, coverage charts, board attributes, delivery data and the BisTrack connection. You walk with everything you need to brief any agency or your in-house team.

This page sits under building materials ecommerce, which covers selling by the square and linear foot, the waste factor, rounding to sellable units, submittals and lead time from the ERP. This page goes one level down, into the fact sheet, the bag chart, the board's assembly and the drop on the floor. Both sit within building and construction. See also roofing and siding. If the same branches sell fasteners, tools and rentals with will call, see construction supply. For moving phone and fax orders online, see the field notes on building materials ecommerce from offline to online. For the ERP side, see the Epicor BisTrack integration, the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations integration, or the full list of ERP integrations.

Bring two documents. The first is the coverage chart for the blown insulation you sell most, with a few bag counts your counter quoted from it last month. The second is a week of delivery tickets with the stocking notes your drivers work from.

Book a strategy session with Uncap, or start with a Blueprint if what you need first is the fact sheet data, the charts and the delivery logic written down and costed.