For Manufacturers
Protect Your Products, Empower Installers
Partner with EHCI to ensure your exterior hardwood products are installed by certified professionals who understand your materials.
Ensure Proper Product Usage
When exterior hardwood products fail prematurely, the cause is almost always improper installation — not material defects. EHCI-certified professionals are trained on correct fastener selection, moisture management, ventilation requirements, and species-specific handling procedures that ensure your products perform as designed and specified. This means fewer complaints attributed to your materials when the real issue was installation error.
Reduce Warranty Claims
Installation errors are the leading driver of warranty claims in the exterior hardwood industry. By partnering with EHCI and directing your installer network toward certification, you build a documented layer of protection: installers who understand your products' specific requirements, best practices, and limitations. Over time, this translates directly into reduced warranty processing costs, fewer product returns, and stronger brand reputation.
Sponsored Learning Modules
Create manufacturer-sponsored learning modules that are integrated directly into the EHCI curriculum alongside the independent core content. Your modules can cover product-specific installation guides, technical data sheets, approved fastener systems, recommended finishing protocols, and maintenance schedules. All sponsored content is clearly disclosed per EHCI integrity guidelines, ensuring your brand gains visibility among committed professionals without compromising certification independence.
Bundle Assignment Links
Generate unique enrollment links to assign specific certification tracks to your approved installers, dealer networks, or distribution partners. Track enrollment and completion rates, manage who gets access, and ensure every installer in your network meets your performance standards. Bundle links can be free (manufacturer-sponsored) or paid, depending on your partnership arrangement.
Transparent Brand Disclosure
EHCI maintains strict brand disclosure guidelines to preserve the integrity of the certification program. All manufacturer-sponsored content is clearly identified as such within the platform. This transparency actually strengthens your position — installers trust content that is upfront about sponsorship, and the EHCI brand lends credibility to your training materials by placing them alongside independently governed certification standards.
Why Manufacturer Partnership Matters
The exterior hardwood market is growing rapidly, driven by demand for premium, long-lasting deck, cladding, and marine installations. But growth also means more installers entering the market without formal training in tropical hardwood species — and that creates risk for manufacturers whose products end up in the hands of contractors who don't understand the material's unique requirements.
Ipe, Cumaru, Garapa, Tigerwood, and other tropical species have specific density, moisture, and thermal expansion characteristics that differ significantly from domestic softwoods and composites. Without proper training, installers make preventable mistakes: wrong fastener types that cause corrosion, insufficient ventilation that leads to cupping and warping, improper finishing that accelerates UV degradation, and inadequate joist spacing that creates structural failures. Every one of these mistakes generates a warranty claim — and the manufacturer takes the blame.
EHCI's manufacturer partnership program addresses this gap directly. By sponsoring certification modules and directing your installer network toward EHCI credentialing, you create a documented standard of competence that protects your products, reduces your warranty exposure, and builds lasting trust with the professionals who specify and install your materials.
Interested in Partnering with EHCI?
Submit a partnership inquiry and our team will reach out within 2 business days.
Apply for Partnership