Marble Concepts LLC, Philadelphia

August 5, 2005

Given that attitude, it’s not surprising he started Marble Concepts LLC more than a dozen years ago because his tile business couldn’t get the stone caps and flutes he needed for a big job.
Although he was so naïve about stone at the time that his first big problem was figuring out a way to get his initial order of slabs off the truck, he’s been learning ever since. One of his current challenges is finding enough space to house the burgeoning operation that now includes close to 20 employees and a CNC machine.
DiDonato acknowledges big jobs doing identical countertops and vanities for subdivisions and condominiums go a long way toward bringing money through the door. Still, his preference is for the higher-end, one-of-a-kind projects such as marble fireplace walls and slab showers where he and the people in the shop can do some real, well … problem solving.

NATURAL PROGRESSION
DiDonato grew up in the tile business; he explains that his father, a World War II veteran, returned home to cash in on the building boom of the post-war years. Al DiDonato started as a helper, and worked his way up before launching his own business in 1955.
As soon as they were able to push a wheelbarrow or mix thinset, John and his two brothers (one now owns his own tile company, the other a landscaping firm) were put to work during the summer.
“At my house, if it was summertime you couldn’t sit around and watch TV; you had to be working,” John DiDonato explains, adding, “I did the same thing with my kids (son Gabriel is a partner in Marble Concepts); they’re all working and they’re all doing fine.”
He acknowledges, too, that both sides of his family had a history of working in the stone and masonry trades. His great-grandfathers worked the quarries both in their native Italy and after emigrating to America, and his maternal grandfather was a stonemason.
“I worked with him in the summers, too, so it’s kind of a natural progression,” DiDonato says.
Still, after finishing high school, DiDonato started attending a nearby community college. Even though he was doing well, he says he was undone by his class schedule, which gave him too much free time in the middle of the day.
“My father would come home from work and I’d be sitting around with my friends shooting pool or playing chess,” he says. “He’d say, ‘What the heck is this college stuff? You’re never in school. You’d better come to work.’ It was only $50 a semester, but he got tired of paying for it, so I had to go to work.”
DiDonato is quick to add that he wasn’t opposed to the idea. He says he enjoys that it’s a family business and working with his hands. When his father “semi-retired” in 1991 – “He still comes to the shop three or four days a week at the age of 80 to tell me what I’m doing wrong” – John DiDonato took over the ceramic-tile business.

NOT-SO-SUBTLE PUSH
As early as the late 1980s, DiDonato says he began to notice problems with one important part of his operation. Because the company does higher-end commercial projects such as hotels and office buildings, it needs items like fluted door moldings and stone planter caps, and they were sometimes difficult to obtain.
He explains that at the time there were only a handful of stone fabricators in Philadelphia, and much of their emphasis was on items like stone steps and tombstones. The other option was to work through a broker and have the job cut by someone in Barre, Vt., Elberton, Ga., or overseas.
It was at that point that DiDonato began to look into the price of raw materials and how to get into the business. Finally, a large hotel job pushed him into it.
“I got the job contingent on having these cappings and nobody else would do it or had the time to do it, so I was forced into it,” he says.
DiDonato did have some positive things going for him getting into the business. One was his friendship with the late Vince Migliore, the longtime Marble Institute of America (MIA) technical director, whom he describes as a mentor. Another was his family background in stone and tile. Still another was Marble Concepts’ first employee, whom he hired away from a local marble shop.
However, he’s quick to admit he also had a lot of ignorance about how to do things. For instance, because he had no forklift, that first load of slabs was cut up with a Skill saw and taken off the truck in pieces.
“At that point, everything was done by hand, with belt sanders,” DiDonato says. “We started the business in a 600 ft² shop with belt sanders and a tile saw. The saw could only cut 84” lengths. If we needed longer pieces, we’d cut them on the floor with a worm drive.”
From the very beginning, however, DiDonato was committed to taking on the jobs that people tend to associate with older European shops. While he admits the money is in countertops, the jobs that brighten his day are often ornate and always more of a challenge.
“We do a lot of bathrooms where we do full slabs in the showers,” he says. “We’ve done showers where we hone the slab for the shower floor. We really like to get into the specialty stuff, and that was where Vince was so good. We’d come up with a job where we had no idea how to work it and he’d come and show us how to do something on the radial-arm polisher that was incredible.”

COMPOUND PROBLEM
DiDonato’s approach is certainly one that’s paid off. If there’s one problem he’s still trying to get a handle on, it’s his need for more space.
From the initial 600 ft², Marble Concepts grew by opening up garages and renting more space. Today, the company is at 8,500 ft², and it’s still not enough.
“I’ve been looking for a bigger space,” he says. “I’d like to get something in the range of 15,000-20,000 ft², which should take care of my future needs. I have some irons in the fire, and I’m hoping in the next six-to-eight months, 12 months maximum, to have this solved.”
The need for space has become more critical for several reasons. One is that the company has just taken on a pair of contracts to do the kitchen countertops for approximately 300 condominium units being built in downtown Philadelphia.
While the size of the job is attractive, DiDonato says it’s not uncommon for him – because of his ability to do tile – to land jobs that include both products.
“These are projects where the kitchen counters are slabs, the bathroom vanities are slabs, and then there’s ceramic tile in the bathroom and on the floors,” he says. “It’s a mix that’s been done in Europe and other countries for years, but it’s only recently that it’s more-prevalent in the United States to mix granite and tile.”
Helping to stress his limited space is that the two products aren’t sold the same way. While the tile is always speced, to handle walk-in stone customers DiDonato’s currently taking 1,500 square feet and making it into a showroom.
“We have eight gondolas of 2’ X 4’ panels of stone on them so people can come in and see large pieces of stone,” DiDonato says. “We’re also in the process of putting up cabinets with countertops on them.”
While the company does inventory some slabs, DiDonato says the main role of his sales team, headed by Cindy West, is to help the customer pinpoint a selection. Especially if the choice has a lot of movement in it, the customer is then invited to visit one of several large suppliers in the Philadelphia area with whom Marble Concepts works.
“Our suppliers have people who will take them around the yard,” he says. “When the customer selects a slab, they tag it and fax the information back to us. It works well, and they absolutely get what they select.”
Then, there’s also the equipment Marble Concepts has added over the years. The belt sanders and the tile saw have been replaced with a Gmm Euro saw from Bergman-Blair Machine, two Marmoelettromeccanica 3500 routers from Regent Stone Products, and a Wizard from Park Industries.
The company’s newest acquisition is an Intermac Masterstone 4000 CNC, which DiDonato says is integrating into the shop well, although he says it’s taken awhile to use it to full efficiency.
“It’s working out really well with the jobs like those kitchen counters,” he says. “It’s great if you’re doing repetitive work. One of the main reasons I got it is for some of the developments we’re getting into that require 200 countertops with sink cutouts, or 150 vanities.”

STILL LEARNING
The other advantage to stepping up to that level of automation is that DiDonato says it frees up the shop crew to do the more specialized work in everything from marble and limestone to onyx that he still gravitates toward.
“The CNC is great because it gives my guys the time to work out how to do the fancy stuff that comes in,” he says. “It seems when that work comes in it can delay the shop’s bread-and-butter stuff. Now, we can put the kitchens on the CNC and give the guys who do the specialty work more time to do that.”
While he does serve those individual clients who come to the shop, most of them find Marble Concepts through recommendations. The same holds true with the company’s more-specialized projects.
“Typically we get our high-end jobs from general contractors we’ve done work with,” he says. “A lot of it comes from architects who know we can do this type of work.”
A good case in point, he says, is a recent call he had from an architect looking for someone willing to create a very special sink.
“They have an elliptical sink they want honed out of a 4” top,” DiDonato explains. “The architect called and asked, ‘Can you do it?’ I told him I’d work with him if they’d fax me the information. I don’t know if we’re going to do it; it’s a matter of getting the stone from Europe, and the architect isn’t sure the customer wants to pay that much, but we can do the work.”
That optimism comes in large part from the way DiDonato manages the business. He stresses his style is to keep everyone involved, and employees such as Dan Thompson, the shop foreman, and Mark Ostishefsky, the lead installer, have been with Marble Concepts long enough to become real artists, according to their boss.
“When something unusual comes in I take it down to the guys,” he says. “They like the fact that I have confidence in them that they can do it. They’re enthusiastic to try new things.
“The people we have, we enjoy working together, and I’m lucky for that, too,” DiDonato adds.
It’s certainly an attitude that comes from the top. DiDonato says he’s still learning about stone himself, an approach he picked up from his friend Migliore. It’s the reason he’s skeptical about putting sealers and impregnators on the projects that go out his door.
“I don’t recommend it,” he says. “I’m a believer that you should do normal cleaning and normal maintenance, but otherwise realize it’s like an antique. We have a pine table in our kitchen that went through four kids, and the meals and the homework are written on it. I tell my customers every nick and every stain you put in your stone is a memory.”
And, if a piece Marble Concepts fabricated and installed fails, DiDonato doesn’t hesitate to replace it and bring the offending stone back to the shop to figure out what went wrong.
“It’s important to explain to our customers about stone and let them know its limitations,” he concludes. “This business is a challenge, and I hope we keep it ethical for our customers. I think that’s important. I still learn something every day.”