Custom Fabrication: Setting The Table

It’s the rare countertop fabricator who isn’t asked to turn marble or granite into a piece of furniture from time to time. The job may involve matching the tops being installed in a client’s kitchen … or creating a multi-slab conference table with book-matched pieces and built-in electronics ports.

Or, it could involve replacing an antique marble top that’s been cracked or stained beyond a simple repair,. Or, possibly, developing a cutting-edge design for an exclusive client.

Whichever segment a stone shop tackles, the furniture market is a custom niche that offers plenty of opportunities – from picking up a few extra dollars to a whole new direction.

SOLID BASE

For Steve Bowker, furniture – particularly tables – is taking on a life of its own.

Bowker, the owner of BowStone in Ball Ground, Ga., started doing inlaid tops with his WARDJet Inc. waterjet – another good option for using the smallest remnant pieces – but that’s become only one part of his furniture work.

“We’re still doing the inlays and that’s a pretty big part of our business because we do it better than a lot of other people out there,” he says. “However, we’ve moved into making end tables, coffee tables and café-style tables.”

When Bowker talks about making the tables, he’s talking more than just tops. Initially his employees created bases from metal or stone; after recognizing those materials don’t work in all applications, BowStone invested money in woodworking equipment.

“We work with cherry and oak and walnut,” he says. “We started making the bases out of wood so that people can actually move the furniture themselves. Then, we put a 2cm top on it, and maybe some accent stone.”

Despite the fact that a lot of his customers could go to the local furniture stone and buy a table for $200, Bowker says his woodworking capabilities give him a small edge … because the wood is still less expensive than a base made of metal or stone.

Bowker says he’s also trying to tap into a specific market with his wooden tables: patios.

“People now don’t have the money to go out and do some of the things they’ve done in the past, so they’re getting more into their outdoor living spaces,” he says. “There’s a lot you can do with remnants for that, and it’s a pretty good market.”

Not that Bowker expects to toss out the rest of his product mix in favor of tables. He says he’s found some space for a few in the showroom, and much of his advertising is via word-of-mouth and over the Internet.

“We’re already spread in six different directions, and this might become a bit much for us,” he admits. “But, I think it’s a good opportunity.”

An opportunity is probably how Norman LaPenna and Joanie Krukowski-Whitt would describe their niches in the furniture industry.

LaPenna, owner of Stanstead, Que.-based Dominion Granite, is essentially a countertop fabricator. However, he adds, “Everything we do is custom, and if they can draw it up, we can fabricate it.”

Over the years, he’s become acquainted with many cabinetmakers, and when it comes to creating one-of-a-kind pieces for what they’re building, they give a call.

“It’s all the same material,” he says. “They’re all using 1 1/4”, although we get some pretty exotic granites going on top of furniture.”

Because of that, LaPenna says it’s not something where he can often turn his remnants into profits.

“Anyone with a budget already has a granite they’ve fallen in love with,” he says.

LaPenna doesn’t expect furniture to be a booming part of his business in the future. Not only is it difficult for cabinetmakers to create pieces ahead of time, but he notes anyone can go on the Internet and find low-cost options if they don’t have a budget for his custom work.

Krukowski-Whitt describes her company’s foray into conference tables as “an add-on,” and with good reason. Mosinee, Wis.-based Krukowski Stone Company Inc. is primarily a supplier of architectural and landscape stone, and only recently added slabs to its product mix.

“We’re always looking for ways to promote our products,” she says. “Over the course of our business, we’ve been asked to make tabletops for several of our customers, and we have the ways and means to do it.”

For instance, a recent project had the company taking a glacial boulder and sawing it to a 2 1/4” thickness, leaving the natural shape of the stone except for a dressed edge.

“A customer may see one of our tables, or we might mention it and it ends up being incorporated into a project,” Krukowski-Whitt says. “We do display a couple tables in our showroom. and we have it in the material that we send out to architects and our dealers.”

As for the possibility of doing more furniture in the future, Krukowski-Whitt is doubtful.

“If a customer would request something, definitely we’ve got the capabilities of doing other furniture work,” she says. “We’d look at something, but we’re not going after the market ourselves. But, I’ll never say never; stranger things have happened.”

NICE NICHE

Not everyone treats the manufacturing of stone into furniture as a way to just add a little black to the bottom line. For Spring, Texas-based Fulbright and Co. and Puma Marble Co. of Miami, furniture is the product.

Puma’s Mary Ellen Seitz says the company, since its 1969 inception, always had strong relationships with the Miami design community, particularly furniture design companies.

“My dad would produce parson’s tables for the companies and they’d just keep ordering them in different varieties,” she says. “We became known for our furniture and also design.”

Over time, Seitz adds that Puma became known for its ability to create custom pieces for designers; not just tables, but credenzas and floating credenzas. Designs would often incorporate chrome legs or inserts, and more than one color of natural stone.

While Puma sells some furniture from its showroom, much of its marketing is done through design magazines.

“We’d rather do custom pieces,” Seitz says. “We do have a few hotels where we’ll end up doing the furniture pieces, and we do get some bigger orders that we produce because purchasing agents know that’s what we do.”

Although the market for custom furniture took something of a beating in the recent recession, Seitz adds that it’s also provided some financial buffer with the increased competition in the countertop market.

“I’m glad we do furniture, because I wouldn’t want to be caught just fabricating countertops,” she says. “The price wars are hard right now; it’s getting to the point where if you only do countertops, you can’t survive.”

Like Bowker, Seitz says creating furniture with natural stone provides a cost-effective way to utilize remnants. However, she believes anyone looking at serving the furniture market also has to have a good eye for design.

“There are little tricks to creating pieces with angles and bends,” she says. “To create little round pedestals from slab work can take experience and practice, but with time anyone can make the pieces. However, it’s good design that makes good furniture.”

Jeff Fulbright, president of Fulbright and Co., would likely agree; stone-topped furniture is definitely his specialty.

Or, as he puts it, “We can do countertops, but we really don’t want to.”

Nor does he need to very often, unless the company’s doing other work for a client, such as multiple large tables.

Fulbright grew up in a family of general contractors; after training in woodworking, he went to work for a national furniture company. It was there that he learned to create stone tabletops, before leaving to open his own business.

“We do very-high-end furniture with an emphasis on stone,” he explains. “We do stone tables that are huge – big boardroom tables and things like that – as well as smaller tables. We have a metal shop and a full-service wood shop where we do our bases and sub-tops, and then we have a full stone shop with a bridge saw, a waterjet and an edge machine.”

Although he has some sales reps, Fulbright adds that most of his work is driven by word-of-mouth among designers and architects doing very, very high-end jobs. For instance, he recently completed a $250,000 order for multiple tables for a client in France. The largest was 306” X 72”, all book-matched.

They are, Fulbright says, the types of table jobs that can require an engineer just to design the bases.

“Your standard stone fabricator or your standard furniture manufacturer won’t take on a job like that,” he says.

For another large corporate client, Fulbright did a 34’ X 9’ conference table where the client selected the granite in California, then had it shipped to Texas for fabrication.

“The grain of the granite went all the way down one side, turned and came back the other side,” he explains. “We put a stainless-steel band on the interior of that, and we had touch screens and ports that popped up for power and data. Then, in the center of the table, we had back-painted glass.”

It took six men two days onsite to assemble it, but since the client has 32 other offices around the country, the job was definitely worth the work, Fulbright says.

However, for Fulbright – as for the others – the bottom line is pretty much the same when it comes to furniture: “It’s a very niche kind of business,” he concludes.

OFF-THE-RACK

It’s also a fickle one, especially when working to fill someone else’s designs, where today’s work may be tomorrow’s ghost order. Just ask Len Malave.

The owner of Greensboro, N.C.-based Granite and Marble by Malave says that when he opened for business in 1996, he immediately went looking for opportunities to mass-produce stone items. One of his first big orders was for 100 dresser tops from Thomasville Furniture in nearby Thomasville, N.C.

While proximity was certainly in his favor, Malave says it took more than that to close the sale.

“We had to show them what we could do,” he says. “I brought people from the company here and showed them how we do it. I showed them how we produce the tops, showed them the capabilities of the machinery. and showed them the packaging – because not only do you have to be able to make it, but you have to be able to ship it.”

Thanks in part to furniture manufacturers in his home state, Malave says he was able to buy more machines and add people and shifts. However, furniture is now less than 20 percent of his business.

“That part of the furniture industry has primarily gone to China,” he explains.

That doesn’t mean Malave isn’t still topping furniture pieces with stone, though. He estimates as many as 80 percent of the remodeling jobs his shop handles involve some small furniture work, be it a coffee table, dining-room table, night stand or dresser.

“When they go into somebody’s home to do an estimate or measure, our staff is taught to look around for other opportunities that complement the room in which we’re doing the work,” he explains. “If someone spots a table, for example, they might say, ‘Did you know we can make a top for this for $150?’ People generally have no idea.”

The approach has several benefits, Malave adds. It helps bring sales numbers up while getting rid of remnants. And, it gets customers thinking of other areas where they can add stone to their homes.

Nor does Malave’s interest in furniture stop there. He has mass-produced items for corporate clients, and visitors to the company’s showroom will always find a few furniture pieces in stock and on display.

“We always have something lying around,” he says. “There are at least 25 round tables, and we keep round tables in stock all the time. We also have a bunch of square ones, and if we have a nice remnant we make it into a top and put it in the rack.”

About the only thing different between creating a countertop and creating a table top, Malave says, is the edge treatment, since furniture tends to be more-decorative.

“With furniture it’s normally a Dupont edge or a reverse ogee, something like that,” he says. “Since we have tooling for our CNC machines to do those custom edges, that’s normally what our customers get.”

©2010 Western Business Media Inc.