Midland Marble and Granite LLC, Independence, Mo.

February 5, 2004

In 1996, Caton opened Midland Marble and Granite LLC. Now eight years into his initial 10-year business plan, he’s pretty much where he wants to be – with multiple locations, 100 employees and plans for growing still larger.
Midland may be big, but that very size helps Caton promote some areas of his operation that are more-often associated with small business. In a competitive market, he emphasizes service to set him apart from his competition, and he believes the people who work for him may be his most-important asset.

EYE ON THE PRIZE
Caton, Midland’s president, is a goal-oriented guy – something that stems from a personal friendship that began when he was nine.
“We grew up together, and when we were 17 years old we sat down and put together a plan, a written set of goals of what we wanted to do with our lives,” he says. “One of the things was we wanted to own our own businesses by the time we were 35, be millionaires by the time we were 40, and then be able to retire at 55.”
What makes these young entrepreneurs-in-waiting more amazing is that they recognized the importance of owning their own businesses as the vehicle for their future success.
“If you’re going to be a millionaire, you have to either hit the lottery or own your own business; you can’t work for somebody else and be that successful,” Caton says. “The only way we figured we could own our own businesses was to get into a trade, learn everything they was about it and then start a business.”
His friend went into printing (and started his business at 32), but Caton wasn’t sure what direction to take toward his goals. However, only a few days after completing military service, a bit of fate intervened. Caton had gone to the local unemployment office to get on a hiring list.
“I’m a pretty big guy, and while I was there in the office, a tile-company owner came up to me and asked me how much I could lift, and then offered me a job right there,” he says. “It was basically to go and lift stone on some of their jobs. I started there, and once I got into it I was pretty good at it, so I stayed with it.”
Caton actually started with an apprenticeship with the local tile-setters union as a tile and marble helper. From there, he became an installer; after working for a while in that area of the trade, he became a job foreman, than a superintendent. His last job working for someone else was as a company vice president.
“I worked my way from the very bottom up,” he says proudly.
Though all this time, Caton and his friend remained focused on their goals.
“Each year we still have written goals we want to achieve,” he says. “It gives you something to shoot for, and every time we achieve a goal, we come up with a new one to reach for. Plus, we give each other somebody to compete with. It’s friendly competition; we’re both happy when one of us reaches a goal. If he gets there before me, it’s okay, because he’s my buddy.”
At the age of 34, Caton felt ready to start his own business. However, he admits he approached the start-up a little differently than most people armed with some skills and a $20,000 nest egg. He took half of his funds and hired one of the top accountants in the Kansas City area; in turn, the accountant helped him find an attorney.
“What we did was put together a business plan, and then we went and shopped that plan to venture capitalists,” Caton explains. “We didn’t find a venture capitalist, but we found what they call an ‘angel.’ This man came in, guaranteed a half-million-dollar loan, and put up about $300,000 in operating capital.”
To guarantee an income stream, Caton began bidding commercial tile jobs. Because of the length of time between when a bid is submitted and actual work begins, he had more than a million dollars in contracts before he opened his doors.
He adds that he was fortunate because at the time he was starting his business, another tile company in the area was going bankrupt. Caton hired the company’s employees (and the former owner as an estimator), and took over its on-going jobs.
“The first year we were in business, we did about $3 million,” he says. “It wasn’t like we started small; I had plans to jump in half way up the ladder.”
As soon as Caton opened the doors of Midland, he set up a fabrication shop to do stone. He says during his years as an installer, he’d helped set up fabrication plants for some of his employers and he knew how well it worked with ceramic tile.
“We let the ceramic tile get us into the business, but today, we probably do 80-percent stone,” he says. “It just happened that in 1996, the hole in the market was on the ceramic-tile side, but once we built brand reputation, it was real easy for people say, ‘Why don’t you do our stone, too?’”

UNDERGROUND ACTION
Today, the company’s headquarters is in Caton’s hometown of Independence, Mo. There’s more than a solid foundation in stone; Midland occupies about 50,000 ft² of an industrial park located in a former limestone mine.
Caton originally opened his doors in Lenexa, Kan., but he says he and the community weren’t a good fit. So, when his friend the printer – who was already working in what’s referred to as, “the caves” – needed to move to a bigger location there, Caton agreed to take over the 18,000 ft² he’d been using.
“I moved over here and my rent dropped from $8 a square foot to $2.50,” he says. “I’ve had the room to expand, and it also gets me close to a good blue-collar community where I have a pretty unlimited hiring pool.”
Working underground has other advantages besides a low rent, Caton says. While he’s required to filter his air and water, the industrial park also has its own air and water filtration systems; consequently, Caton says it keeps his own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements simpler.
And, at a constant 70°F, the only heating and air-conditioning required is for the office space.
Nor is the location a detriment to hiring workers.
“We’ve never really had any of the warehouse or fabrication people have problems,” Caton says. “A couple times we’ve had people apply for clerical positions and not want to work underground because of their own phobias. But, once you’re here a week you don’t even know you’re underground because the buildings are all block and sheetrock. You just think you’re in a building with no windows.”
The underground location also provides a slightly different setup for showing the company’s products. Caton says only about 2,000 ft² is devoted to a traditional showroom, but there’s also that 38,000 ft² of warehouse space.
“Because we don’t have any rain or snow to worry about, everything is out in the open,” he says. “It’s like a big showroom inside a huge cave. We probably have 300,000-400,000 ft² of marble and granite in slabs in stock here, plus the ceramic tile we distribute. The warehouse is laid out for customers to walk through and see all of it.”
While the Independence operation would be sufficient for many companies, these days it’s only part of Midland Marble. The firm also has showrooms and fabrication shops in Omaha, Neb., and Gladstone, Mo., and a showroom in Camdenton, Mo. Caton plans to add another showroom in the Kansas City area and shop/showrooms in Topeka, Kan., and Columbia, Mo., by 2006.
The Omaha operation is a good example of Caton’s thinking. The plant serves a market north of Kansas City and into Iowa, doing about 75 percent of its own fabrication.
“We’ll have one large fabrication plant here, and then each of the other showrooms will have a small one,” he says. “This shop will handle the overflow and the complicated projects. They’ll be able to go out 100-150 miles; rather than a 200-mile range, it might give us a 350-mile circle we can supply to.”
The Independence shop is both larger and better equipped than the outlying shops, as well. The Omaha shop operates a Matrix Stone Products saw and a Ravelli S.r.L. edger with five people on a single shift. Independence has two 20-person shifts to keep its Marmo Meccanica and Matrix saws, two Marmo Meccanica edge polishers, a Denver S.A. Quasar edge polisher and a CMS North America CNC machine busy.
The Independence shop is also responsible for most of the specialty fabrication Midland does.
“We do a lot of work for the casinos here in the Kansas City area,” says Caton. “They have a lot of complicated edges and a lot of complicated tops. However, with the CNC and the edge polishers there really isn’t anything you can draw up that we can’t figure out. We believe between our craftsmen and our equipment we can make anything.”

VALUE ADDED
There’s a commonly held belief that large companies can’t be service-oriented. Service, however, is a Midland specialty.
Caton says that even on a residential job – and about half of the company’s business these days is residential work – the completion time is two to three weeks. Not that his shop can’t keep it under that, but it typically takes that long for the client to get a sink and make sure the cabinets are ready to go on a kitchen job.
“We pride ourselves that we won’t miss a date,” he says. “We may have a contractor cancel on us, but if he tells us he wants it on the 10th and we have to work a weekend or a night, we’ll have it ready to go that day.”
Just to make sure things are done in a timely manner, Caton says the company runs as many as 40 installation crews, each assigned to a division manager. The managers meet once a week to discuss and coordinate the upcoming installation schedule, and crews are constantly being assigned and reassigned based on where they’re needed.
What makes it work is a secure portion of the company’s Website, where calendars are being constantly updated.
“Say we have a job scheduled for Wednesday, and the contractor cancels,” Caton says. “That frees up that crew and one of the other managers can say, ‘I can use that crew.’ They’re constantly checking and moving people around, but if somebody cancels we can tell them to drive to another job and help there.”
Caton believes he has to be service-oriented to keep ahead of his competition.
“Granite is granite and a bullnose edge is a bullnose edge,” he says. “We’re all really close on pricing, so the only thing I can offer above my competition is service.”
Caton says he prefers the word value, however. Not only does the company pride itself on good word-of-mouth, but Midland spends close to a quarter-million dollars a year on radio and television advertising to get its name out in front of potential customers. When a person begins bidding a job, Caton wants his to be one of the companies contacted.
“What we’re hoping is that while we’re doing the bid, our professionalism presenting the bid and our price will make the difference,” he says. “We might even be a percent higher, but the customer is more comfortable with us because of our reputation and because of our lead times. That’s better value.”
For all his emphasis on product and service, Caton says what really has helped make him a success is the people who work for him. The company is employee-oriented, because Caton believes that if they’re not happy they won’t provide his customers the level of service he wants Midland to offer.
“If they don’t believe in what we’re trying to do, then it’s not going to come across to the customer,” he says.
To keep morale high, he rewards outstanding performance with Rolex watches, and there are plenty of company-sponsored activities, such as the Christmas party held in the Pavilion at Arrowhead Stadium during a Chiefs game. In addition, managers who meet specified criteria are given an ownership stake in Midland.
“We do a little more to make our employees happy,” Caton says. “But, we’ve never lost a key individual. Once we get them, we keep them. We have a lot of good people here.”
In fact, if there’s one concern Caton has for the future, it’s finding quality people to step into key positions. While he’s still working toward completing the 10 years of his initial business plan in 2006, he says what happens after that will definitely depend on his ability to get good personnel.
As the trustee for the apprenticeship committee, he says Midland turns out about a half-dozen new apprentices every year, and he hopes some of them – including his 18-year-old son, Tim – will follow in his footsteps to assume more responsible positions over time.
“The opportunity is out there for all our employees, but I hope some of them will step forward because that gives me the opportunity to grow,” Caton says. “I can get good field personnel. I have problems getting good management people that know our trade. It’s not like working at Taco Bell and moving to McDonald’s. You have to know the trade before you can be a successful manager.”
As for that goal of being able to retire at 55 – while it’s still more than a decade away, Caton says the financial security will probably be there. But, he doubts he’ll be interested in just kicking back and relaxing.
“I wouldn’t have anything to do,” he says. “Sometimes I sit around on the weekend and I’m ready to go back to work because I’m bored at home. I’m having too much fun with what I do.”