Exotic Stone: Jewels Of The Slab

    With some granites are now selling for $7-$10 ft² and showing up in three-star hotel baths and tract home kitchens, that image might not apply to all stone anymore. But, there’s still a strong demand for what the industry has always offered: a unique look for those willing to pay the price.
    If anything, availability of higher-end – or exotic – stones is growing. An increase in quarrying worldwide is revealing an ever-broadening range of less-common granites, marbles and limestones.
    At the same time, certain semi-precious stones, such as onyx, are becoming more available. And, man and nature are working together to offer both precious and semi-precious materials in slab form.
    Driving the demand for these special stones, suppliers say, are high-end clients and their designers who want the look that only these exotics can provide, and who have the money to get it.
   
RARE BREED
    While there are 15-20 stones on the market today with pricing at an almost commodity level,  the other end of the spectrum remains solid as companies around the world bring new – and sometimes rare – stones to the market and use what’s been available in new ways.
    Rupesh Shah, of Orange, Calif.-based MS International (MSI) is fairly representative when he notes tha, in recent years, his company has gone from carrying about 100 slab colors to more than 200 colors, many of them exotics.
    “We’ve developed what we call our Platinum Collection specifically for the slab market,” Shah says. “It includes about 55 colors from all over the world of very high-end slabs. What makes them high end is the color, the formation and the variation. It’s colors you won’t normally see or movement you won’t see in other stones.”
    As for price – some start at $30 ft², but others reach $150 ft² or more.  However, he says it’s the look of the stone, rather than the price, that’s designed to get buyers saying  wow.
    Darlene Spezzi of Mystic Granite and Marble in Orlando, Fla., says she also carries slabs that may wholesale for several hundred dollars a square foot. What drives the price is more than great looks, however.
    “Normally, these are materials that are difficult to get out of a quarry,” she says. “It may be high on the side of a steep mountain and hard to get out. Sometimes, they’ll only quarry a block of two a month so as not to damage the stone.”
    Shah says some of these stones may not even have been viable until resin technology became sufficient to get them through the manufacturing process. And, in other cases, the actual deposit may be limited, or change enough over time to become less-marketable.
    “A lot of them don’t have a regular granular structure,” he says. “You’ll see a lot of waviness or bands of different colors going through them. After quarrying it for a while, the movement may stop. The background color may remain the same, but you get movement that may not be as attractive.”
    Among the colors that are particularly hot in the exotic market are the whites, the greens and especially the blues.
    “People like to see the blue,” says Spezzi. “It’s just like jewelry in the stone.”
   
NEW TWISTS
    While granite is offering more colors than ever before, it’s not the only staple stone in the showroom that’s taking on exotic and expensive twists.
    David Havens of St. Louis-based Global Granite and Marble says among the high-end stones in his showroom are marbles with exotic veining, a rainbow sandstone from India and limestones with fossils that are millions of years old.
    “They’re really like works of art,” he says. “You can put a frame around it and hang it on the wall, but we’ve also put it in bathrooms.”
    Scott Primmer of Dente Trading Co., in Cedar Grove, N.J., says that company markets its exotic stones through what it calls its Rodeo Drive line. Many of these are marbles, a fact he attributes to the company’s proximity to New York and Philadelphia.
    “A hundred years ago, people here were building buildings where the product of choice was high-end marble,” he says. “For that reason, people here are a little more aware of it than in some parts of the country. We’re seeing a large increase in marble countertops in high-end kitchens.”
    Across the country, Albert Ganjian of North Hollywood, Calif.-based Stone Mart says his customers are drawn to the same fossil stones Havens mentions.
    “These stones used to just be in museums,” Ganjian says. “Now, we have collections of stones with creatures from 100 million years to 500 million years ago. Now, these mountains are being cut away – they enhance the fossils and it’s very vivid.”
    Semi-precious stones are also finding their way into these suppliers’ showrooms in slab form. The most frequently cited is onyx in a 2cm-thickness that can then be backlit.
    While the granites, marbles and limestones are finding their way into people’s homes, onyx is likely to appear in residential projects mainly as inserts in backsplashes and decorative mosaics, or framed on a wall.
    However, it’s certainly filling a niche in commercial projects. Ganjian, for instance, says it’s utilized in the reception desk at the Beverly Hills Hilton, and many say they’ve sold it for bars and restaurants.
    “We just did a project here locally where they put onyx on the bar and then put different lights under it,” says Mystic’s Spezzi. “You get the feeling that it’s alive, and the natural look of the stone is so beautiful.”
    While cutting semi-precious stones into slabs is one thing, some people upped the ante further by combining them or even precious stones with resins into slabs that can then be fabricated.
    Possibly the best-known brand of these products is Concetto®, by Sun Valley, Calif.-based CaesarStone USA. That company’s Arik Tendler says Concetto utilizes the same technology as CaesarStone quartz surfaces, except that it incorporates higher-end stones such as apple jasper, petrified wood and carnelian into the resin product.
    Tendler attributes the development of Concetto to the company’s Southern California location and the demands of high-end clients for something different.
    “They want something that’s not like anybody else,” he says. “This is definitely a niche product. People need to know how hard it is to find these stones, plus it’s handmade, piece by piece.”
    Concetto utilizes the same technology as CaesarStone, Tendler says.
    However, that’s not the case with the line being offered by the Denver-based Dorado Soapstone.
    All that company’s Steven Chavez will say about the product is that it’s being made by an artist outside the United States who’s contracted to make 30 slabs a year using stones such as emeralds and amethyst.
    Priced at more than $900 ft², these are definitely works of art, and Chavez describes them as such. Buyers are taken to the artist as part of a five-star experience, and should a purchaser choose to have such a slab processed – rather than framed – it’s babied all the way.
    “We’ve been working to understand the fabrication process,” says Chavez, noting that Dorado both supplies and installs stone. “There’s a lot of extra care and a lot of extra insurance coverage for every step along the way.”
    Should a buyer choose to have another fabricator work on one of these slabs, Dorado will send one of its trained employees to supervise the process.
    Nor are these isolated cases of selling handmade stones to select customers. Global’s Havens says his company is working with an Italian firm that does the same type of thing with fossils, and will likely add it later this year.
   
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
    While it’s easy to envision Tendler’s Hollywood customers clamoring for something expensive and unique to grace their multimillion-dollar homes, these suppliers say that’s pretty typical of their exotic stone customers in general.
    “People want something different,” says MSI’s Shah. “If you’re building a custom home that costs a minimum of a million dollars, you need something higher end than Tropic Brown or Uba Tuba. They’re looking for something that – when people walk into the home – they’ll say, ‘Where did you get that? I didn’t even know that color existed.’”
    “There are some stones and some customers where price is not an issue,” says Global’s Havens. “For most people, when they’re building an expensive home, they want nice things. They want these stones because they make an impressive statement.”
    There’s certainly some commercial use of these higher-end stones. Along with onyx, extremely high-end granites have made their presence felt in the highest-end Las Vegas hotels, says Stone Mart’s Ganjian, giving one example.
    However, a lot of the exotics tend to go into people’s homes, and many times it may be a designer who’s encouraging a particular selection.
    “We have clients who will go to a friend’s home, take pictures, then hire a designer and say, ‘I want to top this,’” says Ganjian. “The designer will come and put together some stones and tell them that this is what they want to use. They don’t start with the price.”
    That’s why some of the suppliers give special names to their lines of exotics, and why they’re displayed separately. Stone Mart, for instance, opened its Designer Collection late last year with different applications created by some of the designers working with the company.
    “We built it to show how they could be used in a home, whether in the kitchen or the master bath or the entry, in ways that are spectacular,” Ganjian says. “We take the designers there to show them these stones and it’s had a tremendous effect.”
    These are the stones that are also always stored under cover. Mystic’s Spezzi, for instance, keeps the slabs in her warehouse so buyers can see the whole slab, and she doesn’t cut them up for samples.
    “Instead, I have an in-house photographer,” she says. “He’ll photograph the slab as a whole sheet, and then he’ll do a close-up so you can see the grain and the actual color. Then, we either print it and mail it, or we e-mail it.”
    The rarity of these stones puts constraints on both suppliers and fabricators. While some fabricate and install much the same as less-expensive stones, others are naturally less easy to work.
    Dente’s Primmer, for instance, suggests finding someone used to working with delicate stones – such as marble — before jumping into fabricating exotics.
    “These are less forgiving than granite, and there are different aspects in handling and polishing them,” he says. “There’s also different tooling involved. Because these aren’t commodities, there’s also not as much competition as there is in other parts of the market. If you can fabricate these, it gives you a bit of a selling edge.”
    Spezzi says she believes fabricators know – just by the price – that these had better be handled carefully. She adds that if there is a mistake, it’s unlikely the supplier is going to be able to provide another slab to complete the job.
    “Normally, when I buy exotics, I don’t buy in bulk,” she says. “I’ll buy a bundle, or enough for two homes, and then I replenish it.”
    The cost factor of these products is a key reason why fabricators wanting to sell them and install them for their customers will likely find it beneficial to work through a supplier, rather than importing them directly.
    “It’s not something you’re going to bring in by the container-load,” says MSI’s Shah. “Smaller- and medium-sized fabricators should hesitate to import colors that cost so much money and won’t turn as quickly, sucking up cash flow.”
    Still, Shah agrees with Primmer that it’s an area of the market where fabricators skilled in working with exotics can build their profit margins, especially since the suppliers expect to see it continuing to grow.
    Global’s Havens, for instance, notes that not only is he looking at adding the fossil stones, but he expects precious and semi-precious stones will be making more of an appearance in showrooms as trims and accents.
    “This won’t be for the whole countertop, but it will be an insert in a backsplash or mosaic,” he says. “These will be used to make more of a designer statement.”
    It is, says Stone Mart’s Ganjian, simple human nature to go for the new and different.
    “This is going to keep growing by big steps for years go come,” he says. “People are trying to get away from the colors that have been used in every tract home and office building. They want to be different and unique. It’s like when people go to buy a car; they want the latest model.
    “Once people see these stones, they wouldn’t think about using something everyone else has.”

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