Annapolis Marble and Granite, Edgewater, Md.

   Instead, a lot of the business practices that made him a success with large corporate operations followed Garcia to his (much) smaller company – and provided steady growth in clients and services.
   Annapolis Marble and Granite just moved into a 4,800 ft² expansion, and while Garcia admits he may have to finally start advertising, he says he isn’t concerned about the biggest operation. He wants future growth to come slowly, so the company can maintain the level of quality and service his customers expect.

CORPORATE MIND
   A New Jersey native, Garcia is quick to point out that his background is really in corporate manufacturing. He began his career with RCA’s broadcast division, which became part of the broadcast division at General Electric Co. in a corporate buyout.
   From there, he moved to Fremont, Calif., and started three computer-industry companies before returning east to manage another corporation in Richmond, Va.
   “At that point, my wife and I decided the best thing to do was get out of the corporate world and buy a company,” Garcia says. “I went up and down the East Coast before buying this business in 1995. It was very small, but I saw potential in it.”
   As with so many others drawn to the industry, what attracted Garcia was the product itself.
   “Part of it is that stone is a product of nature, and I’m intrigued by that,” he says. “Then, there’s the beauty of the product. I also like the fact we’re able to turn it into a permanent fixture in a home.”
   Plus, he adds, it’s still a manufacturing business.
   However, the business Garcia took over was modest, to say the least. At that time, it only had four employees, and he says that previous ownership probably didn’t have the background to make it a larger operation.
    “Even before I made an offer on the business,” Garcia said, “I had some good plans and knew exactly where I wanted to take the company.”
   And, while he and the previous owner figured on a three-month transition, Garcia says it took much less time because he picked up the ins-and-outs of the operation pretty quickly.
   From the beginning, there was no question that Garcia had one thing on his mind: making life easier for his customers, especially the company’s custom-builder clients.
   “We’re on-time producing a high-quality product,” he says. “Our clients know we’re behind them all the time. We’re always telling them we’ll be there on a particular day, and these are the things they need to have ready for us.
   “A lot of times, our customers just forget about us, because they know we’re going to remind them when it’s time to do the part of their job that concerns us.”
   A lot of that is getting a good workflow from all concerned, which Garcia found key in the corporate world. That includes paperwork that reminds customers before it’s time to do the template; lets them know the template is done; and keeps them updated both before and after the installation.
   “They’re very impressed with that,” he says.

A DIFFERENT WAY
   From an initial workforce of four, the staff at Annapolis Marble and Granite now numbers 26. Garcia is proud of the fact that some of his employees were with the company before he bought it, and he’s not anxious to grow much larger.
   How did they react to a guy coming out of a corporate environment to sell, fabricate and install stone? Surprisingly well.
“These are skilled craftsmen and I deal with my employees in a different way,” he explains. “The employees don’t work for me; they work with me, and that’s a mentality that’s been here since the beginning.”
   For instance, one of the first jobs Garcia took on at his new business was the task of cleaning the toilets.
   “I wanted them to see that I’m not exempt from anything,” he says. “Just because I own the business, I didn’t want them to think I can do things that they can’t.”
   In the shop, every employee is allowed to call a time-out if they think something is wrong. Garcia says it may only be a hunch or an inking, but the response is the same.
   “If they sense something is wrong, we take a look at it,” he says. “Not only does it give them a sense of importance within the company, but it also makes them feel like they’re responsible, and the responsibility is taken seriously.”
   Surprisingly, he prefers not to hire experienced people. And, because the shop’s mechanization extends to only a pair of bridge saws and a couple straight-edge polishers, his employees are expected to master skills that aren’t always strong in technology-oriented operations.
   Garcia says he’s observed that hiring people with a background in the trade often means they’re bringing their own bad habits with them, and it tends to create animosity and turnover in the shop.
   “The first thing I have to have is a sense of trust with the person,” he says. “Obviously, they have to have the dexterity to do the job. But after we hire someone, we train them from the very beginning.”
   Not only does it help make sure that each employee is on the same page, but Garcia says it helps develop loyalty to Annapolis Marble that doesn’t come with a person moving from job to job.
   “We train them from the first day, and they develop roots in this company,” he says. “They’re being taken in as a novice and they’re being trained; they grow roots here and develop friends.
   “By the time they’re skilled, their loyalty is undeniable; our turnover ratio is very, very low.”
   Not only that, but because word-of-mouth is strong among potential employees, Garcia says he always has applications on file, and a strong list of candidates to draw from when there’s an opening.
   Another thing that he’s adamant about is scheduling. The company operates a single shift, and people work eight hours a day, Monday through Friday.
    “This is a family company,” Garcia stresses. “I’m a strong believer in making sure that every one of our employees is home with their families on weekends, and they’re home with their families at night.
   “If we need to put in any overtime, we come in an hour early. We may work an extra half hour at the end of the day, but that’s the extent of it.”

ONE-STOP SERVICE
   With the company’s strong emphasis on hand-crafting and -finishing, it’s not surprising that 40 percent of its business comes from custom builders. Most of the remainder is walk-in residential work; Garcia says he has no interest in mass-producing kitchens for subdivisions, or doing commercial work.
   “The only time we get involved with commercial work is if one of the builders we’re involved with is doing a commercial job and wants us to be involved,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of restaurants in the Annapolis area, but we’re very custom with the work we do. We may do three kitchens a day, but that’s all we want to do.”
   Instead of going for quantity, Garcia has opted to grow his business in other directions. The first was when he added Blake Paulson, his partner and company vice president. Garcia explains that Paulson’s background is in building, and he also owned a kitchen-and-bath business before joining Annapolis Marble in 1997.
   In 2002, the company moved to its current location; two years later, it opened the Annapolis Tile Center, which Garcia feels was a natural addition to the existing countertop business.
   “For a lot of people, tile comes before the slab,” Garcia explains. “We seemed to be coming to the job behind tile companies who had their own fabricators, and we said that shouldn’t happen that way.”
   Today, the tile center emphasizes natural-stone flooring, although it also offers ceramic and porcelain products. From there, it wasn’t much of a stretch to see that the next step – especially given Garcia’s focus on service – needed to be a design center.
   The Maryland Design Group, incorporated under a separate name but based in the same building, opened for business in 2006.
   “We started to think about providing a one-stop shopping business, and decided our best approach was to add the design center, as well as a line of cabinetry,” he says. “We like to think we’ve captured the market from start to finish.”
An additional piece of the puzzle fell into place earlier this year when the operation completed its expansion – adding more showroom space, a large conference room, and offices for the operation’s management team.
   “The designers and architects can now come here with their full staffs and their clients, sit in our conference room, and discuss their plans,” says Garcia. “They can also bring in anyone from any of our departments to answer questions. And, before they head out the door, they can touch the tile they’ve chosen, and the slab that’s going to be used in the kitchen, and even the cabinets.”
   The company also offers a full line of sinks and faucets for customers’ convenience, and Garcia says one of his goals now that the additional space is available is to add to the cabinet lines the operation offers. Before that, however, he wants to flesh out the staffing for the new design center.
   “In our business plan, we have six designers on-board, but we only have a couple at this point,” he says. “Our head designer used to own a kitchen-and-bath place, and we also have key people in charge of our slab-and-tile materials.”
   In another 10 years, Garcia can envision the company expanding to as many as 50 employees, and at that point the slab operation would probably move to another location just to free up floor space.
   However, none of that will happen if it doesn’t happen in the right way. He acknowledges that it isn’t always easy, especially as the economy has softened.
   And, while some 60 percent of the business comes from referrals, Garcia started advertising his business with the opening of the design center.
   Still, he believes his company has grown and stayed strong because it stuck to the basics, a part of his business plan he doesn’t intend to veer away from now.
    “We’re staying strong with our quality and service,” Garcia says. “It frustrates me when customers start to look at the bottom line, but in the end, if you ignore quality and service you’re going to pay for it. If you don’t pay for it now, you’ll pay for it later, and it’s going to cost you more.
“You can’t turn your back on those things.”

This article first appeared in the December 2008 print edition of Stone Business. ©2008 Western Business Media Inc.