N & G Soapstone,Stouffville, Ontario

December 11, 2007

Other fabricators in the area weren’t sold on the material, but Frank and his wife, Noreen, were willing to give it a try. Six years later, the cabinets business is gone – replaced by N & G Soapstone Countertops, offering a range of countertop substrates with a focus on the dense, dark stone.
Although Noreen Frank says there was definitely a learning curve with the material – from needing different fabrication equipment to requiring her to rethink the company’s marketing – it’s been well worth it.
Late last year, the company moved into a new 10,000 ft² facility, they’ve added employees, and they’re selling soapstone countertops all across Canada.

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY
Noreen and Gaetan Frank have always operated their businesses together since their marriage 20 years ago. At that point, Noreen Frank says her husband had been building custom countertops for about seven years, while she worked in marketing for DuPont Canada and later as a movie casting director.
“When I met him, he taught me about the cabinet business, and we did custom cabinet work until about five years ago,” Noreen Frank explains.
As a cabinet maker, Gaetan Frank prided himself on the quality of his work, and on the countertops he often made for it from solid-surface materials, including Corian®. Then a Brazilian soapstone supplier approached them about adding soapstone to their countertop line.
“It was a new product in Canada, and the suppliers were contacting the granite people, but they didn’t want anything to do with it,” says Noreen Frank. “They contacted us, and I was a little skeptical, but Gaetan thought it was a great opportunity. We did some investigating and testing, and said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’
“It was the best move we’ve ever made.”
The decision to add the soapstone came at a good time for Gaetan Frank. His wife explains that he had grown dissatisfied with making custom cabinets as the demand for handcrafted ones had been replaced by computer-designed, CNC-cut, mass-produced ones.
“It seems like there’s a cabinet maker on every corner,” Noreen Frank says.
While the addition of soapstone also played on some of the couple’s strengths (they were one of the first to do fabrication of Corian for residential purposes), it also brought its own surprises.
“We were told it could all be done using woodworking tools,” she notes. “We soon found out that it can’t be. Every soapstone product we get from Brazil has different strengths. Some are harder, but you need wet saws and the proper equipment to fabricate it.”
Once the couple made the investment in equipment capable of fabricating soapstone (Achilli saws and a mix of Park Industries and GranQuartz machinery, including a CNC), it was only natural to go the rest of the way with stone fabrication.
“We decided to put the skills and the equipment we have with soapstone into granite and marble fabrication,” says Noreen Frank. “Actually, there’s a little more work to soapstone. There’s more handwork involved; it’s a little more labor-intensive.”

FINDING THE RIGHT TRACK
Still, basing a business mainly on soapstone – and it accounts for about 95 percent of N & G’s sales – could be seen as a gamble. However, Noreen Frank says early on the company benefited from, of all things, an infectious disease.
When the mysterious pneumonia known as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) arrived in North America in early 2003, Canadian public health officials did a study of bacteria on countertops. A resulting newspaper article touting the benefits of soapstone did much for the business.
“I still have people coming in because of that article,” she says.
More recently, the company has continued to expand because of the marketing skills she honed at DuPont Canada. Early on, Noreen Frank says she began advertising the business using photos of the product. She soon found it wasn’t enough.
“Being Canada, a lot of people think soapstone is soft, like the carving stones that come from the Inuit Indians,” she says. “And, I’d go to the kitchen shops, and they’d say, ‘No, we only offer granite.’ I realized this wasn’t going down the right track.”
Frank decided she would have to educate her customers about soapstone, and she began writing longer ads – paid articles, really – all about soapstone.
“I needed to get people to see what soapstone is all about,” she says. “I want them to love it like I love it. Once people started reading about it, they’d go to our Web page and check it out and that’s where all the growth came from.”
Business reached the point that in May of last year the couple began looking for a new location for the operation, which had been located near their home in Whitby, Ont. The main need, Noreen Frank says, was for more fabrication space, which would also allow the company to add employees.
In late December 2006, the couple moved N & G to a 10,000 ft² facility 45 minutes away, and considerably closer to downtown Toronto.
“We’ve got about 1,800 ² in the showroom, and the balance of that is the shop,” she says. “It’s a beautiful move, and even though it’s a smaller community, we’re in the greater Toronto area and much closer to the high-end-building clientele.”
The fact that the landlords – who happen to be custom-home builders – have their own 20,000 ft² home décor center in the same building doesn’t hurt, either.
While she started her marketing focused primarily on the Toronto area, the couple’s horizons expanded along with the business. Ads seen Canada-wide have allowed N & G to sell jobs to clients as far away as the Cayman Islands and Vancouver, and these days she believes the company is one of the largest fabricators of soapstone in Canada.
Although Noreen Frank says it’s not unusual for the shop’s crew to travel four hours for some jobs, more commonly cabinet makers send templates to the shop, which then cuts each job to spec and ships it back out.
“We will then walk them through the installation,” Noreen Frank says. “We get with them on the phone and tell them if they have a problem to give us a call. We’re available by phone so they’re not getting stuck with a question at an awkward moment.”
Sales have been brisk enough in eastern Canada that N & G has recently added a two-man templating and installation crew, and the Franks plan to eventually offer the same convenience to their west coast customers.

FOCUS ON CUSTOM
About the only group the Franks aren’t very interested in serving is homebuilders where the numbers are large and the look is cookie-cutter.
“Usually we work with homeowners or their designers or architects,” says Noreen Frank. “For instance, we seem to do a lot of high-end condos. We’re also developing our commercial business.
“ Soapstone is very attractive for bars, and right now we’re specing a job for a bed-and-breakfast in Newfoundland. It’s very popular for floors in public places, such as bathrooms, because it doesn’t harbor bacteria.”
One of its other advantages, she adds, is that it fits in kitchens with a variety of looks, from very-old-fashioned to modern.
“We do a lot of modern-looking kitchens because people want something they don’t have to worry about when they’re entertaining,” she says. “You don’t have to worry about it staining, or about etching from acidic foods.”
That may be a subtle dig at some of the other stones on the market, but products such as granite and marble are also-rans at N & G. In fact, the shop’s showroom shows only samples of those products, and there aren’t slabs of them waiting for customers, either.
“Marble and granite have been around a long time, and people see if wherever they go,” she says. “If we have a customer who wants that, we have our suppliers. Obviously, if someone comes in and tells me what colors they’re looking for and what they want, I’ll try to steer them in the proper direction.”
The Franks continue to offer other products, from solid-surface to quartz to Vermont slate, and they’re looking at adding one of the green recycled-materials products. First and foremost, however, they’d rather be selling and fabricating soapstone.
“When we started with soapstone, we checked it out as much as possible, and we went to Brazil to see how our sources work it,” Noreen Frank says. “It we like something, we sell it, but I want to let my customers know – if they ask if I’d put it in my own home – that I’m able to say, ‘Yes, I would.’”
It’s that sort of personal touch that – along with Noreen Frank’s marketing skills – has enabled the business to grow, she believes. For instance, the couple’s photo is on their Website, and she says when people come in for the first time, they feel like they know the Franks.
Although they haven’t been selling soapstone countertops all that long, repeat business is important to them, too.
“I think people find us easy and friendly to deal with,” she says. “They’ll come back years later and give us hugs and tell us we’re just like family. They’ll tell us they love the product and they love working with us.”
However, Noreen Frank adds that the couple puts a lot of heart and soul into the business, and so do their employees.
“Gaetan does our templating, and he has a real eye for detail; he’s a perfectionist with the countertops and we make them art pieces,” she says. “It’s the same with the guys in the back. They all work well together, and I have no fear about sending any of them out on an install.
“I often get calls from customers saying not that not only is the installation beautiful, but they’ve left the house cleaner than when they went in.”
N & G currently boasts a staff of four in the shop, plus a sales assistant and an accountant, along with the Franks and their new east-coast team. Among them is one of their grandsons, who’s an apprentice sawyer.
Noreen Frank says full retirement isn’t in the cards for the couple, who have been accused by some clients of carrying on a three-way affair with the two of them and their soapstone.
“I think we’ll be in the business right up to when we fall asleep and don’t wake up again,” she says. “People tell us we radiate love for each other, for our business and for the people who work for us.”
Still, when the Franks take a less active day-to-day role in the business, it will be the employees who take it to the next level.
“We have a great staff, and without them, we wouldn’t be able to do this,” Noreen Frank concludes. “I suspect our employees will take it on further.”