Idaho Granite Works, Naples, Idaho

January 4, 2009

In the process, he took a family business and turned it on its ear. And, he did it with the help of his wife and three daughters – a fact that’s probably no more surprising than his ability to replace one successful business with another.
“They started out running dump trucks and excavators,” he says. “I didn’t have any doubts they could do this.”

SNOWBALL EFFECT
   Talk with the Andersons of Idaho Granite Works, and it’s immediately apparent that there’s a lot of laughter involved in this family business. There’s no doubt that a lot of it comes from the top.
   When Oscar, a father and grandfather, gets asked about retirement, he says, “I might change occupations every 30 years, but I don’t think I’ll be retiring.”
   Actually, 2009 will mark the 40th anniversary of the incorporation of the family business. At the time, Anderson’s father ran a timber, logging and road-construction operation headquartered at the family farm near Naples, a small, unincorporated community 35 miles south of the Canadian border.
   Anderson’s first acquaintance with stone came working in the quarry the family still operates on the property, and from drilling and blasting road cuts – often through solid granite.
   “At that point, we were producing rock for the county, but the deeper we got into the granite, the better it got,” Anderson says.
   However, it took the interest of someone else to really get the ball rolling for Idaho Granite Works.
   Daughter Laree Liermann says the family was contacted eight years ago by a man interested in buying oversized boulders.
   “We thought that was great, because they were difficult to deal with when we were making rip-rap for road construction,” she says. “But, after he came back and purchased several loads, we wanted to see what he was building.”
   The man had a small wire saw to make steps and other unfinished pieces for the landscape market. Liermann says it piqued her father’s interest enough to order a granite coffee table for the family home.
   “From there, it was really a snowball effect,” she adds. “It got the family a little more interested in it, and we started thinking about what else we could do with the rock we have.”
   However, that coffee table didn’t immediately launch Idaho Granite Works.
   “We discovered our granite was pretty good and polished up pretty well, but at that point it was still just a hobby,” says Anderson. “Then, we went to slightly larger pieces and found a company that could cut some slabs for us, so we could make end tables and coffee tables.”
   Ultimately, concerns about quality control led the family to start buying equipment and installing it in a couple of remodeled barns on the farm.
   “In 2004 we bought a Pellegrini wire saw,” says Liermann. “That same year, Oscar and I went to North Carolina and attended classes on fabrication and finishing, and the business has gone on from there.
   “At that point, we were doing less site work and less road construction anyway,” says Anderson. “We started putting more of our time and effort into granite, and just ended up getting out of one and into the other.”

MORE THAN COUNTERTOPS
   Because of the Andersons’ background, Idaho Granite Works isn’t just about granite countertops – although that’s a big piece of the operation.
   “Most of the business is for finished product,” says Liermann. “We do some cubic stone, and we do some boulder-sized and slab-sized work, but probably 80 percent is countertops and finished products.”
   She explains it was a conscious decision not to go heavily into raw landscape stone. The reason: so many other people do it.
   “We try to differentiate ourselves by being able to finish the stone and make each piece unique,” she says. “We aren’t just selling a rock.”
   Following in the footsteps of the man who introduced them to worked granite, one of the company’s specialties is landscape steps, although it hardly stops there.
   “We enjoy being creative,” says Liermann. “People come to us wanting big boulder fountains of a particular shape or design and we tailor those for them. Another of our unique projects was creating a custom granite hot tub. It’s really a small pool, but we strive for unique products.”
   That desire to offer something unique also spills over into the monument portion of the business, which employs Anderson sister Lucinda McLeish and son-in-law Adam Krezman.
   Liermann says her sister handles the proofs for the memorial work and oversees the sandblasting, while Krezman selects the stones used for signs and monuments, gets them under the saw, and handles the sandblasting work.
   She explains that the actual decoration of the stones – be they for memorials or signage – involves creating the lettering in a graphics program, then cutting a Mylar® stencil of the design with a knife plotter.
   “The granite lends itself to memorials, and we try to offer our customers something creative,” Liermann says. “We just don’t have a book with designs in it. People can bring in photos or their own designs and we usually lay out three or four different versions so they get what best fits the bill.”
   Liermann herself is manager of the countertop-fabrication end of the operation.
   “Once someone purchases a job, I do the templating and see it through fabrication,” she says. “Then, I’m on the jobsite when the installations are done.”
   Does being a woman help in that tricky aspect of the job?
   “I’m sure there’s more attention to detail sometimes,” Liermann laughs, “and I tend to clean up after I make a mess.”
   As for the fabrication side of the business, Liermann knows that, too. Although Idaho Granite Works owns a GMM gantry saw and a polisher, when the operation started it was mainly hand tools and Liermann, Lucinda McLeish and their other sister, Julie Krezman, ran them.
   “It was Dad and us girls, fabricating countertops and installing them,” Liermann says. “Being girls, we preferred not to have our hair coated with granite dust, so we’d wear shower caps. It was a good joke when somebody’d come in and we’d be there in our rain gear and shower caps.”
   Today, Idaho Granite works has 16 employees on the payroll, including mom Shirley Anderson in the office. Son-in-law Daniel McLeish supervises site-preparation, and also works with Adam Krezman in going to other quarries and selecting oversized granite pieces to send through the Pellegrini saw.

A HINT OF GREEN
   Within its business mix, countertop fabrication is the biggest part of the operation. Idaho Granite Works serves an approximate area within a two-hour driving radius of the shop, but that encompasses a wide variety of business opportunities.
   Part of the market is north of the border.
   “The fabrication shop is about 45 minutes from the Canadian border,” Liermann explains. “We’re so close that a lot of times the Canadians can come down here, purchase items for their homes and spend less money, even when they have to pay the duties. We can’t work in Canada, but we have a contractor who templates and installs the countertops we fabricate.”
   On this side of the border, the shop is within easy driving distance of the Idaho communities of Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene, which haven’t seen too much drop-off yet from the slowing economy.
   “We’ve lost some of the entry-level spec homes that were so crazy for awhile,” Liermann says. “But, people are still building a lot of big homes on the lake, and that’s driving the market. We know a lot of contractors with homes to build, and we do a lot of remodels, as well as new construction.”
   The market remained strong enough that Liermann says the company does little advertising, instead relying on good word-of-mouth and visitors to its showroom.
   The company’s shop is a 45-minute drive from the showroom in Sagle, Idaho, a resort community on Pend Oreille Lake about five miles from Sandpoint. After initially leasing showroom space, Idaho Granite Works opened a new company-owned 3,000 ft² facility adjacent to U.S. Highway 95 in June.
   “We have a lot of countertop vignettes, but we also have a big cubic fireplace on display,” says Julie Krezman, who manages the showroom. “We also have a room devoted to memorials, and then outside we show our landscape steps and palletized materials.”
   While the company’s specialty is the gray Idaho granite from the Andersons’ own property, that certainly isn’t the only slab stone it offers. Idaho Granite Works carries a full range of other granites, and initially Liermann says there was some concern about how well the local product would fare against brown-hued stones that are currently popular.
   They needn’t have worried. In fact, their stone is developing its own reputation, and their wholesale supplier offers the locally produced slabs, as well – with good reason.
   “We’re finding that in the Spokane (Wash.) area, and in some of the resort areas of western Montana, they’re concentrating on green building,” Liermann says. “They consider our stone green because we’re less than 500 miles away.”
   In the meantime, a lot of their local customers like the company’s quarried stone for much the same reason.
“A lot of people gravitate toward stone that comes from their own backyard,” she adds.
   Idaho Granite Works remains interested in expanding its repertoire by buying those huge boulders from gravel producers in the area.
   Liermann says the movement of the stone changes considerably, from salt-and-pepper all the way to some grained materials. Oscar Anderson, the Pellegrini’s chief operator, knows it’s a good way for his former competitors to get rid of those oversized pieces they can’t use.
   Other than simply getting through the current economic slowdown, Anderson says at this point his main goal is to maximize the stone and the equipment he has.
   “We’re trying to stay versatile in the products we have,” he says. “I certainly don’t see us going to doing all kitchens. I’d like to see us probably be half (in) finished products and half (in) cubic products, and then we’ll see how the market goes.”
   Come what may, though Oscar Anderson knows Idaho Granite Works is already a success.
   “I have a business all my family can be involved with,” he says. “That’s really what I worked for all these years, and that’s what’s happened.”
   “It’s really fun to work with the family,” Liermann agrees. “We have really good relationships and we’re able to work together and still have fun together.”