Raccoon Stone and Tile Works, Byron, Ga.

   The owner of Raccoon Stone and Tile Works in Byron, Ga., readily admits that he likes to play around with things, which is how he first started doing stone fabrication.
   He’s also not a person to do anything half-heartedly, and when he saw the potential natural stone countertops offered as a business opportunity, he jumped in with both feet. Eight years later, the Coons and their seven employees are literally crammed into their 4,000 ft² shop, and among future plans is a serious building project to get them more room.
   The ingredients of Raccoon’s success aren’t easy to enumerate, but certainly among them is Coon’s willingness to keep playing around, and adding more products and services. And, he also attributes a lot of his business to Mary Coon’s ability to personalize the service customers receive in their showroom.
  
MAN OF MANY TRADES
   Rick Coon isn’t so very far afield from his first career. A mason by trade, he’s just kept on expanding his skill base and reinventing himself.
   “I’ve been in the masonry business for 30 years now,” he says. “I started with brick and concrete block, but then we got into ceramic-tile installation, and then stone-setting.”
   Coon describes himself as a detail person, and became frustrated with masonry’s emphasis on simplicity and repetition. Rather than simply brick up a house, he preferred doing inlaid floors or creating a tile mosaic.
   His forays into stone-setting prompted him to attend some of the industry trade shows, and he began thinking about working stone as well. Eventually he decided to sell his 1948 Harley-Davidson motorcycle and use the money to buy a skill saw and an 8’ rail saw.
   The backyard of the couple’s home in nearby Warner Robins, Ga., became his first fabrication site. Coon says he was so enthusiastic he’d come into the kitchen with his beard frozen solid from working away on winter nights. And, people began to hear about his hobby.
   “We really didn’t start to get into the countertop business,” he says. “We just started to play with the stone, but the next thing you know here would come an order for a kitchen, and then another one.”
   Because of his background, Coon was quick to see the potential in what he had. However, it also required the couple to make some hard decisions.
   “I said to Mary, ‘Do we have both feet in the door on this?’” Rick Coon says. “I told her that we should either rock with it or back out of it entirely. That’s when we started to buckle down and talk to the banks and get things rolling.”
   The couple certainly did get into it with both feet, starting with the purchase of  a lot in a commercial area of nearby Byron, Ga.. Located near Interstate 75, it provides good driving access from both Warner Robins and Macon, Ga., which furnishes a large part – although not all – of Raccoon’s customer base.
   “We also service a lot of the surrounding communities around here,” Rick Coon says. “We generally serve about a 60-mile radius, but I get referred jobs out of Atlanta from friends and companies we work with, and I’ve done jobs in Alabama and South Carolina. It’s pretty much wherever a job takes me.”
   On their lot, the Coons began by erecting a 40’ X 100’ building that incorporates the shop and showroom. A 4,000 ft² warehouse later joined it, and the couple is now planning an 8,000 ft² addition.
   “We’re just too small; we’re busting out of our space,” Coon laments.
   Perhaps because of his background, Coon took a year to build his initial facility; he was able to incorporate the needs of a bridge saw into its layout. He may have just started by playing with stone, but the building and the equipment reflect his belief that if you’re going to go into business, you need to go 100 percent.
   “I’ve seen too many shops open up with two or three guys and some cheap equipment,” he says. “They’re buying cheap saws that are almost the same price as a good bridge saw, but they aren’t going to last the years a bridge saw does.”
   Raccoon’s two main pieces of equipment are its Zonato bridge saw from International Machine Corp. and an edging machine. He recently went shopping for another piece of equipment, but opted not to buy.
   “I wanted a radial arm to help with bowl holes,” Coon says. “I’ve got guys who can pop a bowl hole and polish it in two hours, so why do I want to spend $50,000 on a machine for something my guys can already do?”
   Instead, he bought a crushing machine that will help the company utilize its waste by converting it to gravel.
  
A MATTER OF EDUCATION
   Both the purchase and the non-purchase fit in well with Coon’s overall business philosophy. While he appreciates the need for good equipment, he says too much technology isn’t what Raccoon is about.
   “The technology isn’t there for my shop,” he says. “We’re not a repetitive shop. Everything we do is so personalized, and we give value with our product. We like to give each job a personal touch, which is why we work so well with homeowners.”
   In fact, that individual homeowner coming through the showroom door is the backbone of Raccoon’s success. Rick Coon moved to Warner Robins while still in grade school, and he’s had more than three decades in various occupations to develop a reputation in the community.
   “I’ve been called Raccoon for more than 30 years, and all my businesses have been with the name Raccoon,” he says. “When we opened this, I started with a bunch of 50-cent signs and put them all over the place with the name and phone number. There are people who don’t even know my name, but somebody will tell them, ‘Call the Raccoon; he’ll get it right.’ Word gets around.”
   It may be his reputation that initially gets customers in the door, but Rick Coon says it’s his other half that keeps them there. Mary Coon spent more than 20 years working at the Warner Robins city hall before going to work with her husband. Between that and membership in organizations such as the local chamber of commerce and the homebuilders’ association, she’s also well known.
    “She’s awesome with putting kitchens together,” Rick Coon says. “When it comes to coordinating the backsplash and countertops with the walls, floors and cabinets, she really helps these people out.”
   Mary Coon says the secret to her success is pretty simple: She talks to customers like they’re neighbors, and she keeps good records.
   “I don’t try to tell them what they want,” she says. “I want them to tell me what they want. A lot of it is just personal. When they come to the door, I know who they are. After their first visit, I have a file on them, so we go back to where we ended instead of having them start all over with a new person who doesn’t have a clue as to what they want.”
   Often, she says customers come in with no information about stone other than they know it’s expensive, but they want to see it anyway. Once they see the different looks they can achieve and the benefits of stone, it’s not that difficult to convince them it’s a good choice.
   And, both Coons admit that it’s probably easier for many of their customers to deal with Mary.
   “Probably 90 percent or 95 percent of the people coming in are women, because it’s their kitchens,” says Rick Coon. “I think there’s a woman-to-woman thing that really does prevail. They connect.”
   A big part of that, Mary Coon says, is that she makes sure people understand what they’re getting ahead of time. Raccoon stocks some 150 different colors in samples in the showroom, and has slabs outside.
   “We want the customers to be very hands-on,” she says. “And, because we go through so many colors, it’s easy for me to tell them a samples looks like this but the slab is going to look a little different. Having that knowledge makes people really feel comfortable.”
   In fact, a major goal of both Coons is to reduce the level of frustration and anxiety in their clients as much as possible.
   “When they come in, we say, ‘We’re the only people you’re going to see. There won’t be strangers coming around and if we have questions, we’ll call you,’” says Mary Coon. “We don’t take anything for granted and everything is done in-house, from the templating to the installation.”
   That level of service also continues after the job is done. Rick Coon says he realizes a seam may break or caulking might come out. However, all it takes is a call to Raccoon and the problem is repaired promptly.
   “People will offer to pay me, but I tell them, ‘Just tell your friends,’” he says. “That’s gotten me a lot more than a $75 check would.”
   That’s not the only payoff Rick Coon sees from taking such an approach. While he says some shops might balk at the idea of spending so much time educating their clients, he believes it’s time well spent.
   “From start to finish, our customers know what’s going on, have feedback on decisions and are involved in their projects,” he says. “Once they understand what we’re offering, the pricing doesn’t affect them so much. We may be $500 more than the next guy, we might even be $700 more, but when we’re finished their response is, ‘I’d rather pay you more because of what I’ve seen and gotten here.’”
  
SO MANY AVENUES
   Despite a workload that has the company just swamped at the moment, Rick Coon is still finding time to play around with things. As with the crushing machine, he’s always looking for new and interesting things to be doing with his business.
   Thanks to what he describes as “an awesome shop foreman” and well-trained employees, Coon says after eight years he’s able to devote some of his time to more than just helping with the templating and installations.
   “I do specialty jobs, such as fireplace surrounds,” he says. “I also do a lot of high-end work, such as replication of old-world furniture. We’re on a list at Warner-Robins Air Force Base so that when people return from Europe and have broken furniture with stone pieces, we repair, replace or replicate it.”
   He adds that such jobs play into his love for doing detailed work, and the guys in the shop enjoy the challenge of scrolled corners and ogee edges.
   More recently, he’s also begun working with stone sculpting, taking on other types of repair work such as marble statues, columns, pedestals and balustrades. And, he’s begun working with sandblasting.
   “We’re not a lot into the sculpting,” he says. “There are certainly other companies that can do it, but I bought some chisels and sculpting tools at one of the last shows, and I bought some files the last time I was in Italy. I’d like to think there isn’t anything you can put in front of us that we can’t handle.”
   Some of the couple’s other plans for Raccoon are slightly less hands-on. One involves becoming a regional distributor for one of the industry’s better-known adhesive manufacturers. Still another is adding more slabs and creating a convenient way for customers to see them.
   “We’re going to start stocking some bundles, and I’m creating a rack system so we can take clients out to look at them,” he says. “I’m not going to open a warehouse, but I want to have enough material so they can walk through and look at full slabs.”
   One thing they’re uncertain of is whether they’ll be adding employees. Because of the effort they put into training employees, they’re not real interested in adding semi-skilled, temporary help.
   “Adding people is a very, very hard thing to do,” says Mary Coon. “You don’t want to get them in and work with them and then have nothing for them to do. I’d rather keep the guys super busy and pay them overtime.”
   Ultimately, the couple is preparing for what they believe will be a slowdown in new residential construction. And, while fully 50 percent of their work is in home renovations – a hedge in itself – Rick Coon says he doesn’t plan to wait to see what the market is going to do.
   “We’re at a point where we can take it as it comes,” he says. “When we opened up it was a question of how we were going to pay our bills. Now, it’s a matter of how we’re gong to get these jobs out. We’ll always cut stone, but whether it’s ornate or typical, I don’t know.”
   Mary Coon is confident that Raccoon Stone and Tile Work is here to stay, and confident her husband’s myriad plans will help them weather even a major downturn in home construction – but she says they’re not going to be resting on their laurels, either.
   “We’re just trying to stay on top of what people are looking for and bringing them what they want,” she says. “We don’t know where the market is going, but we do plan to stay on top of it. We won’t just sit down and die if part of the market fizzles. We’ll always find something to do.”
   Rick Coon echoes his wife’s statement about the need to keep on top of the market and keep growing, but along with the person who goes at anything 100 percent is also the part of his personality that likes to play. And, ultimately, it sounds like he’s having fun and looking forward to enjoying whatever the future brings.
   “I just have all these things going through my head and things I have to think about,” he says. “There are so many levels to this business and so many avenues we could take. The real bottom line is that we love what we do.”

This article first appeared in the December 2003 print edition of Stone Business. ©2003 Western Business Media Inc.