Pasvalco, Closter, N.J.

    During that process, the company carved out some interesting niche markets for itself, including the renovation of  historic buildings and landmarks.
    But for Pasvalco – short for Pascack Valley Stone and Slate Co. – the stone business isn’t so much about making a buck, but about having a positive influence on the industry as a whole and creating a culture within the company that supports its core values.
    “We call it Team Pasvalco,” says David Andersen, Pasvalco’s president. “And we understand that good, quality employees are what make this company a success. We have a climate that has been established within the company where we respect each other and the customers, and focus on honesty and integrity.
    “That is an integral part of the corporate culture that flows down through all of the employees.”
    This focus on positive values helped the company to realize considerable success in the decades leading up to its 50th anniversary in 2005.
    The company today employs a staff of 35—including stone cutters, finishers, yard workers, administrative staff and truck drivers—in a 12,000-ft² building with a 3,000-ft² showroom, all set on 2.25 acres.
    Those valued employees dutifully work on two Park Industries saws (one of which is the new Jaguar profiling saw, complete with 36-inch blade,) a Thibaut T 110 milling machine, and a newly installed Israeli-made Yonani 2000 saw, among others.
    While the company is now established and successful, its beginnings proved a great deal more humble.
    In 1955, Andersen’s father was fed up with the internal politics and overall poor business practices occurring in the stone business. Not willing to accept that situation as the standard, he and two partners branched off and started their own company, with one 3-ton dump truck and $300 borrowed from his mother.
    That first incarnation began selling building stone and slate to masonry contractors out of the back seat of a 1952 Ford. A few of its first customers wanted the company to succeed so badly they were willing to pay upfront for product to get the company on its feet. One quarry even gave the young company a forklift, when all previous work had been done by hand.
    From that beginning, Pasvalco moved its offices into its first yard behind the Limbert Bros. coal yard in Closter. The company’s main products at the time were slate from Vermont and Pennsylvania, and bluestone from New York state.
    It was during these early years that Dave Andersen would work with his father on days off from school, learning the ins and outs of the stone business while soaking up the core values that would shape how he would someday lead the company.
    And there would be times when he would need all the knowledge and direction he could find. When the company built its current facilities in 1987, for instance, the economy was strong and business was good for Pasvalco. Shortly after the new facility was complete, however, the economy took a turn for the worse.
    “That was a classic example of bad timing,” he now jokes, with the benefit of almost 20 years of hindsight. “The economy went to pot right after that. It was not pretty, but we got through.”
    And through those challenging times, it is Andersen’s personal faith to which he attributes the company’s enduring success, he says.
    “An abiding faith in Jesus Christ is the solid rock upon which our company is built, and that is the essence of our company today,” he says. “That is what carried us through the tough times.”
   
A HISTORICAL NICHE
    Today, while the company works mainly with domestic stone, it also imports flagstone from China, India and Brazil. And another of the company’s imports – brownstone from England – is used in one of the company’s most-profitable niche businesses: performing restorations on historic buildings.
    In the early days of the company, Andersen put himself through college by splitting and sawing brownstone his father purchased from the demolitions of aging New York tenement buildings.
    “The guys from the city would truck it over to our facility and dump it, and my father would buy it by the truckload,” says Andersen. “It was perfectly good stone, and I would go out and split it early in the morning with a sledgehammer. When it got too hot, I’d go in on the saw and saw it into veneer stone.
    “That was a very historical brownstone, and I’d always had an interest in it, and pretty soon the brownstones in New York became very, very valuable,” he adds. “So they stopped tearing them down and started looking to restore them.”
    When that shift occurred, Andersen and Pasvalco were perfectly positioned to become one of the city’s premier brownston- restoration companies.
    “We started getting calls for restorations, and I had a very good working knowledge of the material by that point, and we realized that this was a niche that was worth pursuing,” he says. “From then on, we pursued more of that work, and New York City has been very good to us ever since.”
    And it doesn’t hurt that Pasvalco’s headquarters is a mere 20-minute drive from downtown Manhattan, allowing city-based architects and contractors to take convenient day trips to the company to examine work being done.
    Andersen says the company’s reputation for high-quality restoration work generates many new jobs, without Pasvalco advertising much outside of annual restoration tradeshows along the Eastern Seaboard.
    “The jobs come to us now, for the most part,” he says. “There is very little competition, even in the New York metropolitan area. Most of the jobs come from reputation.”
    That word-of-mouth only gets louder as the company racks up awards for its restoration work. Last year, the company won the Lucy B. Moses Preservation Award from the New York Landmarks Conservancy for its work on two armories in Brooklyn and a seminary in Manhattan.
    But historic restoration work isn’t without its challenges. Matching stone, for instance, can be incredibly difficult on a structure that might be 150 years old. Suffice it to say, that type of stone very likely isn’t being quarried today; to overcome this challenge, Pasvalco again relies on its long history in the business.
    “We have a library in our building with samples of stones from all over the world that we’ve accumulated and cataloged,” says Andersen. “An architect or contractor will send us a piece of stone and we’ll identify it. And if it’s no longer quarried, we’ll send them what we believe to be the closest match.”
    And those architects and contractors have very strict demands that must be met, which poses another formidable challenge.
    “It needs to be a very close match, and that’s the whole trick,” he says. “The reason there isn’t too much competition for us is because it’s very detail-oriented work. If you’re mind is set on volume and pushing out a certain number of dollars worth of stone, then you’re not going to make it in the historical-restoration field. You’ve got to understand that these people are looking for an authentic restoration, not just a patch job.”
    Today, Andersen estimates that between 10 percent to 15 percent of Pasvalco’s workload is related to restoration work. Over the years, that’s included jobs as varied as the New York Botanical Gardens, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, the Westfield Train Station in Westfield, N.J., and international projects restoring the San Juan Governor’s Mansion and an Old San Juan sidewalk restoration in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
   
EDUCATING THE INDUSTRY
    While historical restoration work may be, to a great extent, self-generating through word-of-mouth, Pasvalco also markest its services in other niches. The company also does marble and granite countertops; concrete pavers and retaining walls,; and custom cut-stone work.
    One of the ways the company markets itself is by offering seminars for masonry and landscape contractors, and architects. Andersen says these seminars, generally held during slower winter months, serve a dual purpose: They help to educate the industry’s finest builders, architects and artisans about common practices and techniques; and they also keep the Pasvalco name common within the industry.
    “We hold these seminars on a lot of different areas of the business, and some of them are hands-on and others are more technical/educational,” he says. “Some will cover how an independent contractor should run his business, or how to install concrete pavers. Others cover the engineering of a segmented retaining wall, or a hands-on seminar for other installations, to show them little techniques to make the installations better.”
    Seminars for architects are often conducted by certified speakers, which in turn allow attendees to earn continuing education credits through the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for attending.
    “We realized that it’s very beneficial to work with the architects,” he says. “And if you give a seminar that gives AIA credits, they will come.
    Regardless of the topic being taught, Andersen believes that the seminars have been a valuable marketing tool for Pasvalco.
    “That’s one of the most-effective methods we have for marketing our business,” he says. “We’ve been doing it for seven years and I don’t see us stopping any time soon.”
    Judging by the success and longevity Pasvalco has experienced over the past 50 years, they could probably teach seminars on plenty of other business basics as well. And attendees would be well served to take notes.
    “Maintaining a high level of integrity and honesty when dealing with customers and our employees has always been a vital part of our success,” he says. “We want everyone involved to know that we mean what we say, at all times.
    “We’ve lost jobs in the past because we refused to promise something that we couldn’t deliver, and we’ve lost them to other companies that will promise the world and then not come through,” he says. “We do that because of our inner faith in Jesus Christ, which is what drives me. And, on top of that, it’s also good business.”
    Dually noted.
    Jake Rishavy is a Denver-based writer covering industrial-design topics.

This article first appeared in the May 2006 print edition of Stone Business. ©2006 Western Business Media Inc.