Bronson Fabricators, Kalamazoo, Mich.

January 5, 2005

   Seven years later, Bronson has gone from being a successful restaurant owner to being the equally successful owner of a solid-surface fabrication and installation operation that added natural stone and natural quartz to the mix late last year.
   Today, Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Bronson Fabricators serves an area that encompasses southern Michigan and northern Indiana, where it’s carving a niche doing fabrication for less-automated stone shops.
   And, Bronson isn’t finished yet. As the new year begins, he and two partners are launching a new venture that he hopes will allow others to duplicate his success through franchising.

HITTING 50
   It’s probably safe to say that Russ Bronson’s been involved with Italian products for years. For many years, though, his focus was on pasta and pesto instead of granite and marble.
   When the owner of three Italian restaurants in the Kalamazoo area hit 50, he determined he’d had enough.
   “I decided I was going to change careers,” he says. “I just got sick of working on the weekends, working holidays, working until 3 a.m.”
   Rather than chucking it all and running off to the South Pacific, he took a more-conservative approach. He happened to know someone who installed Corian®, which got him interested in the countertop business.
   “I worked for him for about two years, and then I decided to start my own business,” he says. “It was the best thing I could have done.”
   Bronson Fabricators opened for business three-and-a-half years ago in a 5,000 ft² industrial-park space doing all types of solid surface work, with an emphasis on Corian. However, as the company expanded, Bronson says he began to see a shift in his clients’ needs.
   “Especially at the higher end, they were looking for stone or quartz products,” he says. “We evaluated the market for about a year before we actually did anything about getting into the stone business.”
   As with his initial career change, Bronson took a very studied approach to expanding his business. He hired consultant Art Attaway of Point Consulting USA to advise him on every step of the expansion: from the initial market survey, to the development of business and marketing plans, right through to the purchase of the shop’s equipment, as well as fabricator training and sales and marketing.
   “The first thing we did was a market survey of our area,” Bronson says. “In assessing the market we found we were in an area where it really made sense to go after the stone business. From there, we evaluated a number of pieces of equipment.”
   Because of his lack of practical experience in stone fabrication, he felt it was necessary to go with high-end automated equipment. In the end, Bronson purchased an Intermac CNC from AGM USA, and a bridge saw from Superior Stone Equipment.
   He adds the purchase of the saw wasn’t a difficult choice, given Superior’s location in nearby Grand Rapids.
   “It’s worked out quite well,” he says. “They’re only 30 miles from us, they’re really quite good with their service and the saw does everything they said it would do.”
   Bronson is equally pleased with the Intermac. He says AGM took about two weeks to get the CNC up and running, as well as providing training on it.
   “It was about 45 days from when the machinery was set until the time we cut our first countertop,” Bronson says. “We just took some of our solid-surface people and moved them over to working on the stone.”

SMOOTH EXPANSION
   Having existing employees to move into the natural-stone part of the business was only one component of a smooth expansion for Bronson Fabricators. For instance, the business grew into an adjoining 7,000 ft² of space that became available about the time the operation needed it.
   Bronson says there’s also good overlap when it comes to installation.
   “Our installers install both,” he says. “It’s been a really good fit. They already knew countertops and how to approach installations. Right now, we have four guys doing installation, and we’re looking to hire another three or four because we’re growing so fast.”
   A lot of that growth is fueled by the fact that the company doesn’t just limit itself to the immediate Kalamazoo area. Bronson says his service area includes Grand Rapids, Jackson, and Lansing, Mich., as well as along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The business also serves customers in northern Indiana, including South Bend.
   “We’re also cutting stone for people in Detroit,” he says. “They’ll send us templates, we have the stone shipped to the shop and cut it, and they pick it up.”
   In those cases, the clientele is often stone shops that don’t have the automation Bronson Fabricators does, and they’re looking to cut their labor costs and increase their volume by turning their own employees into installation crews.
   Bronson adds that he believes he has an advantage over some of his competitors, because with solid-surface fabrication and installation there has to be a lot of attention to detail. With that kind of a mindset, it’s not unreasonable to have a goal of 100-percent perfect installations.
   “Really, we want to be 100-percent perfect from the get-go,” he says. “To be 100-percent perfect from the time the slab comes in the door until the installation is finished is what we’re striving for, and we usually hit that mark.”
   Not only is his crew extremely skilled at templating, but every job is flow-charted so it’s possible to tell at a glance when the material is to be ordered, when it hits the saw, when it’s scheduled for the CNC machine, and when it’s staged for installation.
   One employee handles all scheduling, and Bronson says clients are told their jobs will be ready in 10 working days, although it’s usually faster.
   “We try to stick to our schedules,” he says. “There are always things that come up, but we really try to lay things out for each job and make that schedule a hard schedule. Right now, we can turn out two-to-three kitchens a day working one shift.”
   Additionally, Bronson says marketing the natural stone side of the business has just been an extension of the solid-surface part of the operation, which relies on strategic alliances with several of the large kitchen and bath shops in his area.
   “We also do some commercial work,” he adds, “but we haven’t attacked that market yet like we’ve attacked the kitchen and bath market.”
   However, he acknowledges that natural stone can’t be sold exactly the same as solid surface, or even natural quartz, which Bronson Fabricators also sells and fabricates.
   “With the stone, they do have samples in the different kitchen and bath shops we work with,” he says. “But, once a client gets to a point where they’re sure of the basic color they want, we’ll send them to different slab sellers to make a selection.”
   At this point, while the facility has a small onsite showroom, Bronson says he isn’t keeping an inventory of slabs. While that’s certainly part of his future plans, he prefers to put his available finances into other parts of the business.

NEW HORIZONS
   With his own shop poised to do $1.4 million of stone business in its first 12 months, Bronson is one of three partners planning to launch The Stone Shop International, a franchise opportunity, in early 2005.
   Bronson admits the idea of franchising reaches back to his experiences in the restaurant business, but he, Attaway and third partner Tom Wilson also believe it’s an idea whose time has come.
   “Art has been working on trying to put this franchise idea into motion for a couple years now,” Bronson explains. “With my experience with the restaurants, we both had the same flash of an idea as we were sitting around talking about how to expand the business.”
   After using Bronson’s shop as a prototype, the partners already have two other operations – in Michigan and Colorado – up and running. Other plans are to begin attending some tradeshows directed to small-business opportunities, and advertising in magazines aimed at the same market.
   “The timing is good and the opportunity is great,” says Bronson. “Probably the timing is the most important thing. The opportunity right now for people who want to get into the stone business is phenomenal.”
   People who contact the partners will receive access to branded products, national distribution and the option of three levels of start-up equipment. New franchisees will also receive a feasibility study and business plan; budgets and business forecasts; a shop layout; equipment financing (if necessary); training in fabrication and installation; estimating, templating and accounting software; and a marketing plan.
   “Basically, we are going to offer people the ability to set up a stone shop, develop their market and purchase their equipment,” says Bronson. “The buying power of a large group is what we’re aiming at. We’re looking at having maybe the largest buying group in the country. And, as far as the up-front costs, they’ll be minimal.”
   However, Bronson adds that the partners plan to be very choosy as to who may buy their franchise opportunity and where the franchises will go.
   “Getting the right people to run them is the key,” he says.
   Bronson believes what he can take to other The Stone Shop International franchisees is the expertise he developed during his restaurant career, especially regarding how to buy and sell a product and how to promote a business.
   “What sets us apart is we have a marketing plan and a strategy and we stick to it,” he says. “A lot of stone people are small operators. They don’t have the marketing plan or the will to stick to it, and that’s what being part of a franchise will be able to bring to some operators.”
   In other words, Bronson says the franchise means to simplify things for the small-business owner who’s already juggling the tasks of hiring and training people, helping with fabrication and installation, and paying the bills.
   “If we can streamline all that and make the accounting system easier and help develop a strategy on how to go after particular markets, it’s bound to help that business owner,” he says.
   In the meantime, Bronson, who these days describes himself as, “a young 57,” says he sees this as a really exciting time both for The Stone Shop International and Bronson Fabricators.
   He’s optimistic the franchise will be able to open as many as six more regional shops within the next two years, based on the tremendous opportunity the natural stone market offers. And, closer to home, he sees opportunity just as near as his bridge saw and CNC machine.
   “Kalamazoo is a fairly competitive market,” Bronson concludes. “I think we’ve just started to touch the growth potential here in the area. In the next two years I can easily see us doubling or even tripling our business.”