Dushi Marble & Granite LLC, Stamford, Conn.

As the firm observed its fourth anniversary early last month, brothers Pjeter and Pal Dushi were already looking ahead to the day – hopefully within the next year or so – when they’ll buy their own building to further expand their showroom, fabrication facility and corporate offices.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

The very existence of Dushi Marble & Granite owes itself to the Old World craftsmanship of Pjeter Dushi. As brother Pal says, “When you know you have someone who knows what he’s doing, your life is easier.”

Pjeter Dushi’s expertise is in design, fabrication and installation. The Dushi brothers are Kosovo Albanians; in the early 1990s, with ethnic and political unrest in the former Yugoslavia, the family moved to Germany.

After the relocation, Pjeter Dushi went to university and discovered his passion for working with natural stone.

“We moved to Germany when I was 16,” he says. “At that point, I started working for a stone company. You have to go to school to become a stone worker, and I fell in love with stone. Now, 17 years later, here I am in the United States working with my family in our own business.”

Pal Dushi was the first family member to come to the United States. He married into a family that already had a daughter living in the Stamford area.

“My sister-in-law lived here, so that’s how I ended up in Stamford,” he explains. “Then, about a year-and-a-half later my brother Pjeter moved here as well.”

Pjeter Dushi immediately put his training to work with a New York-based stone fabricator. However, Pal Dushi’s work career was a bit more-diverse; he worked as a landscaper, a roofer and restaurant manager.

Eventually, the brothers ended up working at the same natural-stone fabricator. Pal worked as an estimator in the office, while Pjeter did fabrication and installation.

It’s Pal Dushi who first thought about going from employee to business owner.

“You get to the point where you know you’re good and you just want to make a difference in the business,” he says. “You know you can offer a little bit more than the competition, and you want to own your own business because you feel comfortable doing what you do and know so well. We had the guts to do that.

“You know, this is the land of opportunity,” he adds.

Ironically, Pal Dushi first proposed that the brothers open a restaurant based on his experience in that industry. However, Pjeter Dushi didn’t like the idea because of the long hours required.

Ultimately, Pal Dushi says he told his brother, “‘Either you follow me or I’ll follow you, but we need to do something.’

“Then, we started looking at options for a facility to open our stone-fabrication business. I’m good with sales and administration, and Pjeter is very, very, very good at executing our natural-stone products. Finally, I said, ‘I’ll bring the jobs in and you execute them.’”

Committing themselves to the idea they would offer a quality product at a fair price – while providing excellent service no matter the size of the project – the brothers took a disciplined approach to going to work for themselves.

Pal Dushi says among the questions they tried to answer were whether they should buy or rent a building, how much money they had to spend, and what equipment they would need to get started.

“We didn’t have much money saved,” Pal Dushi admits. “However, we were a bit lucky because we owned a house which enabled us to get an equity loan. We decided that however much we had, we would use it for the startup expenditures.”

The brothers were also lucky in that commercial space, previously occupied by a carpet store and within walking distance of the house, became available for rent. They took possession of 4,000 ft² on Jan. 1, 2006.

The home-equity loan financed a bridge saw, their first piece of production machinery. The rest of their initial equipment included hand tools and a radial-arm polisher, supplemented with hand-built worktables.

“The beginning was very hard,” says Pal Dushi. “We had to turn a carpet store into a marble-and-granite shop. We were here at least 16 hours a day. And, while we were not new to stone fabrication, we were new in the business. So, we had a lot of questions like, ‘How do we do this?’”

The brothers had two big advantages, though, as they worked at launching their new venture. One was family members willing to come in and do whatever was necessary to get things going.

The other was Pal Dushi out on the road every day.

“As soon as we started doing our own thing, I was out cold-calling, trying to meet with people,” he says. “I spent endless hours every day introducing myself and telling them who we are and what we do. Our first kitchen was cut in March 2006.”

DELIVERING SERVICE

From the beginning, the brothers had the services of another Dushi brother: Simon, who today primarily operates the CNC machine purchased about 18 months ago. And, within a matter of months of their opening, the company started growing.

Today, it encompasses a staff of 10, including another brother, Nick (who’s an installer), as well as their father, an uncle, a nephew and a brother-in-law.

“We have two other people that we didn’t know,” says Pal Dushi. “They’re not family members, but we’ve adopted them.”

Pal Dushi admits that in his mind the best customer is every one of them. However, to get the business off on its best foot, he concentrated his sales efforts with contractors, interior and kitchen designers, kitchen-and-bath shops, architects and cabinetmakers.

“Those were my targets, basically,” he says. “I would hit one after another. Sometimes I would drive around and see who was doing what, whether it was new construction, a spec house or home renovations. If there was a name on a project, I’d stop and say hello.”

However, what really sparked repeat interest among those who tried DMG’s services is the company’s commitment to delivering on every promise it made.

“If we said we were going to be there on Monday to template, we were there Monday,” Pal Dushi says. “And, ten days later we’d be back to do the installation. It has never been 11 days; sometimes it’s nine. We’re always there either one day before or exactly on the day. We keep our promises.”

While ten days is pretty standard, the Dushi family knows rules are made to be broken. “If I promise something in three days, we deliver it in three days,” Pal Dushi says. “We’re a family-owned business. If that translates to our working around the clock, we just do.”

That includes working 36 straight hours to deliver the stone kitchen Dushi Marble & Granite donated a couple years ago for an episode of ABC-TV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition set in Bridgeport, Conn.

When customers are clamoring for their projects to be finished before Christmas, it’s also not unusual for them to work until 2 a.m (or later) to meet promised deadlines.

“We have our vacation after that,” Pal Dushi says.

While the Dushis originally focused on marketing their work to builders and other professionals, these days the company’s customer base also includes a larger volume of individual homeowners.

Pal Dushi says the reasoning for this is simply the drop-off in larger developments and new construction due to the volatile economy. He feels that many individuals are still active in the market, whether it’s new construction or remodeling.

“A lot of our clients are on the high end, but the lower-end work is very active with remodeling projects,” he says. “Certainly the higher-end clientele is very, very generous with spending their dollars; but, for a lot of people, this is the time to do their projects.”

He adds that Dushi Marble & Granite services the tri-state area including parts of New York, New Jersey, and southern Connecticut, as well as markets such as Newport, R.I., and Nantucket, Mass. Regardless of the location, people are still recognizing that natural stone is a good investment that will increase the value of their homes and pay off for them in the long run.

COMFORTABLE CUSTOMERS

The company’s growth has come strictly through referrals; they do no advertising, says Pal Dushi, except for the company’s Website.

“We firmly believe that a happy customer is the best endorsement,” he says. “One happy client will tell a few people, but an unhappy one will tell 20.

“We take care of our clients from beginning to the satisfied completion of their project. For instance, if a customer starts the job with me, the job finishes with me. If I’m the one who says ‘hello’ when they first walk in, I’m going to be the one to say, ‘thank you’ at the end.”

These days, Pal Dushi has help with his onsite sales thanks to Kathy Sepulveda, one of the two “adopted” employees. Regardless of who’s handling the client, though, the emphasis is always on having that person feeling comfortable with the entire fabrication and installation process.

Because of the shop’s location, with several suppliers within easy driving distance, DMG maintains a small slab inventory, but the brothers do have an extensive array of samples in their showroom.

Once the client has selected a slab and it’s delivered, it isn’t cut until the client has been in to see the layout of the templates on the slab.

“We want them to come in and see us lay it out,” says Pal Dushi. “We ask them what piece they like better for the front of the island, we show them where the seam is going to come in, and how it will look.”

This minimizes any surprise to the client on how the project will look cut and installed, and is a simple measure the Dushis feel ensures a satisfied client and successful transaction.

Pal Dushi adds that, just as people do when they’re buying a host of other services, they don’t always understand what’s going on when they’re buying a natural-stone project, but they want answers.

“If it’s necessary to ask thousands of questions, please do,” he tells all of his clients. “I don’t mind if they call me ten times or come to the shop ten times to look things over. If they need me, I’m there.”

Dushi Marble & Granite also offers its own warranty. However, what makes the company stand out from its competitors – aside from its comprehensive customer service – is one-of-a-kind edge finishes courtesy of Pjeter Dushi’s years of experience and craftsmanship coupled with the CNC production center the company purchased in late 2007.

“What happened is our name just jumped too fast onto the market,” says Pjeter Dushi. “We’re known for our service and our product, but we figured with a CNC machine we could do things faster and more efficiently.”

Along with the custom edges, Pjeter Dushi says the CNC has greatly helped in his part of the operation by ensuring fewer 12-hour days while keeping the company from having to add extra employees. The end result is a more-efficient and cost-effective operation.

Even in this volatile economy DMG managed to maintain its 2008 sales numbers last year. Looking ahead for 2010, Pal Dushi says the company’s next step will probably be looking to buy a building to provide yet more space.

The company’s rented facility underwent an expansion of their showroom and corporate offices into some adjacent space in late 2008. The company now operates in more than 7,000 ft², of which almost 2,000 ft² is devoted to showrooms.

“We have a very nice showroom, actually,” says Pal Dushi. “We have a couple kitchens on display, and a large kitchen island. We have a spacious reception area with an extensive array of samples for clients to view and select from.

“We also have a full master bath that has no tile. The walls, floor and ceiling in the shower area are full slabs.”

The lack of tile in the bathroom fits with the Dushis philosophy of doing one thing well – in this case natural-stone fabrication and installation – and leaving the rest to others.

“We’re old-school Europeans,” Pal Dushi says. “We believe you do one thing and you do it right. If you do one thing right, you’re going to go a long way. We’ll do just about anything in natural stone besides counters and vanity tops – fireplace surrounds, tub decks and even some outdoor fireplaces – but we don’t do tile work. It’s an attitude that works for us.”

Tonie Kooloian, (another of their “adoptees”) who’s worked with the Dushi family since July of 2006 as their financial officer and go-to person, has no doubt it will happen. She says the two brothers are perfectly paired for success.

“Pal has impeccable taste and is gifted with vision, genuine caring and honesty that most people don’t have in business,” Kooloian says. “He can verbally paint a picture for a customer who’s trying to pull something together and doesn’t know what exactly they want. Pjeter can design, fabricate, and install. He has the incredible ability to fine-tune what the customers want.

“Combine that with the personal touch they give to everyone who walks through our doors at DMG, and no one can compete with us.”

©2010, Western Business Media Inc.