Know What’s Coming Before It Gets There

Yes, it gets a laugh, but it’s true. Most fabricators can’t afford to fabricate the same kitchen project a second time because it was templated wrong, or the grain of the stone was running the wrong way, or for any other number of reasons.
This leads me to validate why it’s so important to have customers know what they’re getting before it gets there. We fabricators spend so much time in the details of the project (Einstein said, “God lives in the details”) that we sometimes forget to do a fundamental check of our customer’s knowledge base. The sooner that this is done in the life of the project, the fewer problems occur throughout the course of the project.
It’s like another saying I use frequently: If your customer knows what’s coming, they won’t be surprised when it gets there. Let me give you a few examples of real-life experiences ….
How many times have your customers asked, “When are you coming back to fill in all of the pits in my new Baltic Brown granite counters?” Or complained about “the glue lines in the seams – oh, I thought they’d be invisible like the ones that were in my Corian®.”
Every time you clue in a customer about both the positive and negative qualities of a stone they propose to use, you’ll save yourself a bite of granite that you may have to eat to settle a dispute. Once again, knowing what’s coming will eliminate any surprises at the installation.
Now, how can a stone person know about all of the pitfalls and avoid the potential disasters waiting for you out there? The answer (although somewhat simplistic) is in education – first for yourself, then for your customer.
Where can you get some quality instruction to keep your diet free from quartz, limestone and granite? Well, how about starting with the annual shows that feature informational seminars, such as StonExpo, Surfaces and Coverings? (And of course, every issue of Stone Business has a new treasure trove of information that’s useful for everyone in the trade.)
The more you can learn about the products you’re fabricating on a day-to-day basis, the better you can avoid the pitfalls that are out there.
Unfortunately, experience – in most cases – is the best teacher. Here’s an example of something that more and more fabricators are going to be experiencing in the near – no, very near – future, as in maybe this afternoon.
The use of surface resins in the production of newer species of granites that would otherwise be unsuitable for slab production has changed the complexion of the natural-stone industry. What was once considered “unworkable” gets a second chance to be sold as usable product.
Many stones that are not “true” granites, but are sold as granites nonetheless, are being used in increasing numbers, due to the ability of a finisher to surface-resin the slabs and reinforce the stone. Some of the products are known as a gneiss or a schist – metamorphic stone with some, but not all, of the characteristics of granite. And here’s a tale from true life to show the significance of “true” granite.
A friend of mine bid on a job where the customer wanted to use a “brand-new granite” that was absolutely gorgeous with lots of color and character. My friend assisted his customer when it came time to select the slabs of this material and the project began.
When it came time for the job to be installed, my friend started to notice that this “brand-new granite” literally fell apart on him as he worked on the separate pieces in the shop for fabrication. Being the quality conscious fabricator that he is, he instructed his shop personnel to insert rods in the backsides of all of the pieces longer than 2’.
By the time installation day came around, the job looked pretty darned good – in spite of all of the grief he’d experienced back at the shop. But, things got worse when one of the upper bar sections decided to have a fissure open up just as it was being set into place. And of course, the stickler-for-detail customer had to be standing there right when it happened.
By this time, the dream job had turned into a full-fledged nightmare. But wait, as the TV pitch goes, there’s more … the customer now accused my friend of installing “defective” granite.
What’s wrong with this picture? Three words for starters: “brand -new granite.”
Everybody in this little scenario had some fault. The customer selected a stone they knew nothing about – other than it “looked good.” The supplier offered a “brand-new” product with no background information, other than it “looked good.” And after the fabricator shipped the slabs in and began noticing fissures in the slabs, he kept going; because, after all, the customer selected these slabs because the material “looked good.”
Nobody bothered to explain to the customer that the slabs had fissures; when a fissure opens up, it can be glued back together and resurfaced. (That surface polisher sitting in the corner and gathering dust can really save your butt in a pinch.) All of these oversights were honest mistakes that added up to disaster for my friend.
The worst part of this little story is that the customer took my friend to court, accusing him of installing defective granite – and that a piece of granite that breaks during installation should not be repaired and installed anyway. (The customer got their information from a “very reliable” source.)
By this time, my friend was starting to sweat bullets and dreading the heaping serving of granite du jour. However, in something less than a Matlock moment, the stone selected by the customer was revealed to be not granite, but gneiss. It had fissures in it when the stone was in the ground, when it was in the block, in the slab and when it got to the customer’s home for installation.
The whole episode boiled down to this simple fact: Nobody knew, so nobody said anything. Nobody knew about the inordinate amount of fissures in this “brand-new granite” that was really a gneiss that strongly resembled granite.
If only somebody would have said to the customer that, “You know, this stone has fissures in it, and if these fissures open up, we’re not going to throw the stone away – we’re going to glue the fissures back together and re-polish the piece. The fissure was always there; we’re just making the piece stronger if it opens up.”
The customer didn’t know what was coming, and was shocked when it got to his home. So, make sure the customer knows what’s coming – before it gets there.
Until next month – Happy Fabricating!
Kevin M. Padden operates KMPadden Consulting in Phoenix.

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