Wholesale Marble and Granite, Brooklyn, N.Y.

September 6, 2004

Anthony Giammona, who started the business in Brooklyn, N.Y., with his late father 21 years ago, explains that Leo Giammona got his first taste of the stone business by importing a couple containers of slabs for a friend.
While Wholesale Marble continued importing some stone into the early 1990s, the younger Giammona says he and his father quickly realized that there was money to be made in fabrication, and they bought a bridge saw and some polishing machines – “and we’ve been growing leaps and bounds from there.”
Following his father’s death, Anthony Giammona brought in a high school friend, Ralph Baione, to take up the slack and help keep the company moving forward. Today the partners are focused strictly on custom projects, while working to integrate their latest acquisition – a line of Italian-made porcelain tile – into their showrooms and production.

IMPORTERS PLUS
The Giammonas’ move into the stone business stems from their background in the import business. Although the earlier emphasis was on importing a host of products, including foods, Leo Giammona delivered when a friend – a developer – needed stone.
As his son explains it, the senior Giammona bought a house, becoming good friends with the developer in the process.
“The developer was doing another home and it included specs for some stone from Brazil,” Anthony Giammona says. “My dad had friends in Brazil, so he went there, made the contacts and brought in a couple containers of stone for the builder.”
Doing some additional research in the market, the Giammonas realized that in an industry divided up among importers, fabricators and installers, the most-attractive financially appeared to be stone fabrication.
At that point that the two men invested in a bridge saw and a polishing machine, brought in a couple more containers of slabs, and began doing manufacturing. Things might have continued in that vein indefinitely, except that Leo Giammona passed away in 1988, leaving his son with a business that did a little importing, a lot of fabrication and some installation.
By 1993, Anthony Giammona realized he needed some help and reached out to Baione. A long-time friend, Baione also had his own experience purchasing stone for the hotel and restaurant industries and in real-estate maintenance.
“By that time, Anthony was pretty much running the company by himself,” says Baione. “He needed help, and wanted to grow and continue what his father had started.”
Among the first decisions the two men made was to quit the importing part of the business. Although it’s not something the two have totally ruled out resuming at some point in the future, “We’d need another 20,000-25,000 ft² to handle all the importing we would have to do just to supply ourselves,” says Giammona,
Considering that the current operation fills about 25,000 ft² – and while still in their original location, “we’ve grown sideways and across the street,” Baione says – that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

CUSTOM CUTS
Not only has the shop area more than doubled in the decade since Baione joined the operation, but they also have extensive covered storage for their slabs. The company is currently building a 4,500 ft² design center to better display the new porcelain tile line.
Currently, the company operates three bridge saws, one from Antonino Mantello and the other two from Techno.M.MAR S.r.l. The other production workhorses include four Marmo Elettromeccanica routers and a Flow International waterjet purchased five years ago in lieu of a CNC machine.
“We looked at a lot of CNC machines and we looked at several different waterjets,” says Baione. “We made the decision to go with a waterjet because the CNC is more for mass production, and we’re more of a customized shop.”
One future addition the two men are already contemplating is a second waterjet. For now, by working two shifts seven days a week, “we’ve been pretty much on schedule, keeping our clients happy,” says Giammona.
Wholesale Marble is able to make such a schedule work by cross-training many of the people in its 30-person workforce.
“It’s not like one person is doing the same thing every day,” says Giammona. “The person who’s templating today may be installing tomorrow or working a bench the day after.”
Not only does it keep people fresh, but Baione says it allows the business to focus on its real specialty, which is high-end fabrication.
“We work with companies where we’ll do the counters but the contractor wants to do the floor, so we’ll custom-cut material and ship it to him,” says Baione. “It’s not something we have to do. We have contractors who are very capable of making their own templates. They drop them off, we fabricate the job, and they pick it up. For them, it’s like having their own marble shop.”
Another Wholesale Marble specialty is crating. By having a small woodshop, Giammona says the company is able to cut jobs and then ship them literally anywhere in the world. While the firm’s main service area is from southern New Jersey north to Boston, it’s shipped cut stone to places as far away as Russia and Hawaii.
It’s not that they’re competing with local stone shops in those faraway locations, either. Among the company’s specialties are furniture tops, carved stone features such as fireplace surrounds and bathtubs, and even memorial stones for pets.
One of their customers is billionaire developer Donald Trump. Not only has Wholesale Marble done a wide range of projects for Trump – the latest is for a restaurant in the Trump Tower – but they’ve even created a custom edge for those jobs.
“It’s his own custom edge, a 3” we call the Trump edge,” says Baione. “We submitted plenty of detailed edges before they selected this one.”
The Trump Tower job involves cladding work throughout a café that includes several of countertops, as well as hot and cold buffets.
“One area is at least 40’ long,” says Baione. “There are a lot of cut-outs for the bain maries and other food service equipment, so the waterjet comes in handy.”
Giammona describes much of the work the firm does for Trump as similar to other projects it takes on, such as doing the tops for rolling bars and serving carts for a cruise line, or finishing out the presidential suite of a Manhattan hotel.
“It’s not like we’re going to do 100 vanities for a hotel remodel or create 400 tabletops,” he says. “We do custom, high-end stone work.”
Still another product the company is noted for is its mosaics.
“We mostly do Florentine mosaics because they use the larger pieces of stone,” says Baione. “Often the client will have some special stones they’ll want to use. We make our own grid using the waterjet, cut the stone, place it in the grid, and then mesh it.”
Giammona stresses that Wholesale Marble is well acquainted with special stones, since besides its marble, granite, limestone and travertine, the firm offers semi-precious stones, including onyx and lapis.
“They’re very fragile and you need to know how to work the stone, to reinforce it and polish it in order to use it in certain applications,” says Giammona. “A lot of shops just tell the client a stone is no good, but an architect or designer who’s creating something doesn’t want to hear that.”

SITTING PRETTY
Wholesale Marble’s willingness to work with designers and architects on those special projects plays a big role in the company’s marketing efforts.
The partners maintain a showroom in the Architects and Designers Building on 58th Street in Manhattan; many clients are introduced to the firm by their designers or architects.
“Once they’ve worked with us once, they come back on their own or they’ll tell the designer, ‘I know a place,’” says Giammona. “They may start by going to the A&D building to pick out a stone and get the ball rolling, but eventually many of them come to the gallery.”
The gallery, which is how the partners refer to their indoor warehouse, is well-swept and carefully illuminated to show the best of what they offer, including a good sampling of the approximately 250 different colors of stone they offer.
“When you walk up to the client entryway, we have raised panels on display and a catwalk that’s about 30 feet long,” Giammona explains. “Along the same wall and above the panels we have the medallions we make with the waterjet.
“Not surprisingly, when the come to see us, a lot of people go, ‘You can do this?’ or ‘You can make that?’” he adds. “Then, their designers or architects will advise them on how they can get when they’re drawing up plans.”
Currently, the partners are developing 4,500 ft² of that storage space into what they’re calling a design center, with the goal of better displaying the line of Italian porcelain tile they began offering two years ago.
“We know just showing a tile on a rack is a difficult sale,” says Giammona. “With the design center, we’re incorporating the porcelain tile floors with natural stone counter and vanity tops and bathroom surrounds.”
Baione says the design center will include a full working kitchen where the partners hope to give seminars for architects and designers, as well as attracting guest chefs. It will also feature wood, gas and electric fireplaces, three other kitchens, five or six bathrooms, a tub area and a library.
Another one of the company’s advertising approaches is to put its name on top of its trucks.
“People in Manhattan can look down from their terraces and see our name,” says Baione. “We get calls from all over the place that way.”
The Yellow Pages and a company Website also help, but the two men say what really keeps Wholesale Marble going and growing is good word-of-mouth. One of the better ones was a job the company did on an apartment that – unknown to them – was being remodeled by a real-estate writer for the New York Post.
The writer mentioned, in a subsequent article, the possibility of saving money by going to something such as Formica – and then she plugged both their Brooklyn warehouse and the competence of the crew that first made the templates and later came back and did the installation.
“We get at least one letter a week from a customer who’s satisfied and wants to tell us what a great experience they had dealing with somebody here, whether it was in the showroom or on the phone or during an installation,” says Giammona. “They always tell us we’re helpful and polite and they haven’t had such nice experiences with the other trades on their jobs.”
As if the partners don’t already have enough to do – they still do all of the estimating and much of the scheduling for the company – they expect to generate some more publicity with a spec house they’re building on Long Island.
Baione explains that because of the property’s nearness to the ocean, the entire building will be steel and concrete and clad with plenty of stone (including a carved limestone/flamed granite exterior).
Although the partners expect the finished price to be well into seven figures, they’re already eyeing other properties in the same vicinity.
Whether it’s completing their new design center or building more stone homes, their main goal is to have Wholesale Marble and Granite continue to grow bigger and better.
“Of course, this is something new for us,” says Giammona. “Once we have the design center going, it will put us into another level of developing homes for our clients.”
“We’re hoping to reach people we’ve never reached before,” Baione says. “Then, we want them to have a great experience with our company.”