Marble Source Unlimited, Annapolis Junction, Md.

   But, by taking a slightly different approach to business, John Congedo is generating his own boom with the opening of a new fabrication facility and design center this fall, and plans on the drawing board for at least two more.
   By refining his production processes, he’s also developed a business that’s turning out a superior product in a cost-effective manner. And, he’s always done it by paying close attention to what he always calls his best assets: his employees.
  
IN THE BLOOD
   Talk with John Congedo for any length of time, and it quickly becomes apparent that the man is passionate about what he does. And, he’s also a firm believer in the American Dream.
   Both Congedo and his wife and partner, Linda, descended from early 20th-century immigrants. Congedo tracks his own love of stone to his Italian grandfather who followed Congedo’s great-uncle, a monsignor in the Catholic Church, to this country.
   “My great-uncle settled in New York and he realized the kids in the street didn’t have anything to do, so he had the idea to start a boys’ camp,” Congedo explains. To make the camp a reality, the great-uncle sent for Congedo’s grandfather, who was in the process of being discharged from military service.
   “After he came to this country, my grandfather developed close friendships with several others who had come here,” he says. “One of them was an Italian stone mason who taught him how to lay stone. They built all the stone walls around the camp, and many of the buildings the kids lived in.”
   Growing up, Congedo’s late mother predicted he would be the stone person in the family.
   “When I’d come home from the playground, I’d have a pocket full of rocks,” he says. “She felt there was something between me and stone, and the Italians say it’s either in your blood or it isn’t; it’s clearly in my blood.”
   While Congedo took geology classes in college, his major was medical technology. After finishing his education, he went to work for a large construction supplies firm and began importing and fabricating stone from his garage.
   Ultimately, some lengthy visits he paid to friends and family in northwestern Italy helped him clarify his ideas about the stone industry, and how to move the fledgling business.
   “I began to look at what the Italians had developed for mechanization for working stone, and I learned very quickly that the raw material costs are not terrific,” he says. “It’s the value-added, the time it takes to make things. I began watching closely how the Italians had their machines oriented in the shop.”
   At that point, Congedo began working with his friend Ubbo van der Valk, who specializes in the design of manufacturing plants. “I took my ideas that I had gotten in Italy and Ubbo helped me formalize my ideas for the first plant we built,” says Congedo.
   That plant, which opened in a rented building in 1988, was the genesis for Marble Source Unlimited, although Congedo really didn’t have the opportunity to fully put his ideas into practice until the company built its own 20,000 ft² building across the street in 1996.
  
CAREFUL PLANNING
   Congedo calls the Annapolis Junction headquarters, “state-of-the-art” and, with van der Valk’s assistance, it was built with the employees in mind.
   “We realized early in the game that the greatest asset we have are the people who work here,” says Congedo. “We felt that an environment that provided no airborne contaminants was key. And we were sensitive to noise levels and sensitive to the effort involved in having to pick up heavy materials.”
   Early on, research was done on how best to capture dust particles and create a dust-free environment. The answer: Developing protocols that every step of every job had to be done with water, and the shop floors needed to be cleaned every night.
   For worker safety, every workstation has mechanical lifting devices with specialized pneumatic suction cups. Those devices, like the company’s mix of Bisso saws, Comandulli edge machines and Intermac CNCs, are purchased in Italy.
   “I became very careful about what machines will give us the absolutely best throughput,” he says. “That means reducing the time that a slab spends in our factory before it goes out the door.”
   That’s crucial, because the company has a zero-defects policy, even though each factory turns out as many as 12 finished kitchens each shift.
   Congedo says its possible to reach that goal, and pay his employees – now numbering more than 100 – some of the highest wages in the industry because each job step is carefully choreographed.
   “We do it right the first time,” he says. “We have well-thought-out policies and procedures. Each job is done a certain way, and the employees are brought into the process and trained on it. Then, it’s their responsibility to adhere to that process.”
   Not that Congedo and his management team aren’t continually open to hearing suggestions for ways the process can be improved. All employees have the opportunity to introduce new ideas, but decisions on whether to make a change are made at the corporate level.
   “What we don’t want is people on the shop floor changing what we do,” he says.
   Congedo’s commitment to continuous improvement is obvious when he tells the story of Marble Source’s second plant, which opened in Bridgeville, Del., in mid-September. The 16,000 ft² facility is designed to turn out up to 100 kitchens a week.
   “I hired a guy by the name of Paul Michalec, who’s a brilliant, self-taught industrial engineer,” Congedo explains. “He looked at the Annapolis Junction plant and said, ‘This is great, but I think you overbuilt it. I think we can do it cheaper and keep the same protocols in place.’ So, I let him do it.”
   Not only was the Bridgeville facility built for less money than the original plant, but rather than being totally linear, the workflow is designed around a horseshoe shape. Also eliminated were some of the cranes utilized in Annapolis Junction; the equipment lineup now includes GMM saws.
   “It’s a nice working facility,” says Congedo. “We’ve just been getting it online after the opening, but after a month we’re probably three-quarters sold out of our production capability.”
  
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD
   Creating great products in a timely and cost-effective manner goes a long way toward making the business a success, but it’s only part of the story – because it means little if the finish piece of stone isn’t installed properly.
   Just as with the people on the shop floor, everyone who does installations for Marble Source is a company employee rigorously trained in installation procedures.
   “When we make a new hire, the person has to serve an apprenticeship program where they’re closely supervised by one of our artisans in the field,” says Congedo. “They also have to keep a written journal that’s turned in weekly and reviewed by the supervisors. The journal provides reinforcement for what they’re learning and forces them to review the day and what they learned.”
   Installers are sent out in company box trucks (maintained by on-staff mechanics) that are air-conditioned and include on-board generators and rollout A-frames.
   “That way, the work gets done cleanly for the customer and safely for the operator,” Congedo says.
   To further guarantee the work gets done properly, company supervisors inspect installations. And, to back it all up, Congedo’s policy is to either remove the work or not charge for the job if the customer isn’t 100-percent satisfied.
   “Over the years, that standing behind our work has developed a no-risk environment for people to buy stone from us,” he says. “Consequently, we have a very close, loyal following.”
   Marble Source’s customer base is a mixed one, with only a small percentage of its products being sold directly to end users. The company focuses on selling through kitchen and bath shops, large tract developers and a New York-based home-center support network.
   Then, there are the upper-end residential jobs and commercial jobs, including the Baltimore stadiums of the football Ravens and baseball Orioles.
   “When we move into a market, we don’t aspire to do it all,” says Congedo. “We want the top 15 percent to 25 percent of users who have discriminating taste and don’t mind paying for things done right. This is a growing industry and the need for high-quality product is an absolute.”
   Helping to fuel the company’s high-end work are the design centers attached to the two plants. Linda Congedo, who has a design background, is the driving force behind the design centers, although John Congedo says they reflect something else the couple learned on their Italian travels.
   “We wanted to bring European taste products to everyday users in this country,” he says. “Years ago, my Italian friends would say that people there shop at the Gucci stores, but in the United States they shop at Wal-Mart. It’s a bit of a jump to go from Italian design protocols to the American public, but the American public is becoming much more sophisticated.”
   Above the entrance to the design center at the Annapolis Junction facility is also carved the inscription, “Dedicated to our immigrant forefathers whose perseverance provided us with the American Dream.”
   Not only does it reflect the Congedos’ life story, but it also expresses their philosophy of continuing to hire workers from all over the world. However, John Congedo says that unlike some of his competitors, whether his workers are coming from Italy, Greece, Turkey, Central America or South America, he goes to great pains to make sure they’re following U.S. immigration laws.
   “We absolutely know our workers have legitimate work permits because we hire a law firm to make sure of their backgrounds,” he says. “If they don’t want to play by the rules, we have to make sure they’re not here. Legal immigration is my heritage and it’s Linda’s heritage, and we want to support other people who are interested in that.”
   The Congedos may have kept one eye firmly on the past as they’ve built the business, but these days they’re definitely looking ahead, too.
   With the success of the Bridgeville facility all but assured, work is set to get underway this winter renovating a 14,000 ft² building in Maryland’s westernmost county, where Marble Source will serve the Pittsburgh and West Virginia markets. A little further in the future is a Virginia-based shop to carry the company’s name at least as far as Richmond, Va., if not all the way into North Carolina. 
   The company already does engineered-stone fabrication and is looking at becoming an authorized distributor for one of the natural-quartz lines.
   “We’re refining that fabrication process and developing a protocol on how to work with engineered stone,” says Congedo. “We’ve been offered several different lines, but I’m not sure our model is really what they want.”
   The engineered-stone manufacturers may question his business model, but Congedo certainly doesn’t. He sees it fitting in well in a growing industry needing consistently high-quality products.
   “This isn’t something that you can develop in a day or a week or even a year,” he says. “It’s taken time to figure out all these moves, but we’re ready for growth. I have a very young group of upper and middle managers and for them, opportunity is growing. I say, ‘Tell me how many more you want to do and we’ll do them.’”

This article first appeared in the November 2004 print edition of Stone Business. ©2004 Western Business Media Inc.