Hue Wish

This was no run-of-the-bleachers tifoso with just a few blazing-red hand towels, either. The entire bathroom took on the theme, from a circular black-granite tub deck to simulate a racing tire to countertops matching – as best as possible – Ferrari’s dominant red.
The decor overwhelmed the room’s other elements, including some very pricey Dale Chihuly glass artwork. This motor-racing fan knew what he wanted – to make a statement in stone.
I looked at that cover (September 2006, if you’re interested) recently and recognized those bold, defining colors.
And, then it hit me: colors.
Regular readers know that one of my favorite topics (to the point of reaching a mania) involves the almost total lack of consistent identification for natural stone. Save for a couple that are almost clichés because of their popularity, such as Uba Tuba or Baltic Brown, nearly identical stones get tagged with a variety of names.
In a brand-name-conscious world, the lack of strong identity for many stones can be a serious setback for any kind of branding. It’s one thing to promote natural stone as a concept, but it’s another to guide a purchase to a certain stone.
It’s where the countertop competitors with solid-surface or quartz materials – and even those with laminate – can score some big points with consumers. Not that the names carry from line to line; there are plenty of different names for a mottled-brown surface in going from producer to producer. Instead, it’s a consistency with brand identity.
Take Cambria, for example. Purists can easily get in a lather about all of the company’s product names, which seemingly come by tossing darts at maps of the English countryside. The Kensingtons, Yorkshires and Windsors mean virtually nothing when compared to a descriptive – at least for the average stone guy – Rosso Verona.
Cambria’s name game, though, isn’t meant to offer some geological description; it’s aimed at consumers to sell a product. The use of English towns and counties infers a stately, upper-class, high-quality image. It also enables a Cambria fabricator to know exactly what a consumer’s talking about, whether that end user saw the material in a magazine ad, on the Web or in a mock-up kitchen.
It also illustrates where branding natural stone has the farthest to go in the market. The breadth of the stone palette is breathtaking … along with the individual choices. Going through a medium-sized stoneyard is akin to a wander down the aisles of a large wine discounter, or the galleries of a major art museum – there’s so much good stuff that the mind goes into information overload.
Manufacturers of mass-market products realized this conundrum nearly a century ago with more-pedestrian fare like soap and canned soup. Specific names and labels cut the clutter, allowing anyone to ask for a product by name or easy description.
I can’t tell the difference between laundry detergents, but Proctor and Gamble made billions with an orange box and a name completely non-descriptive of the product and its effect. “Washed in with the tide” doesn’t exactly evoke a clean, fresh feeling – or a sanitary one, for that matter – but that powder keeps running through millions of washing machines a day.
The simple answer is a unifying naming scheme for natural stone. Given the sometimes chaotic nature of the industry, this will likely remain a dream I’ll carry to the grave.
A stone’s name can be assigned by a quarrier, changed at the factory, reassigned by a distributor and possibly christened again by a supplier.
Add in differences in languages and culture, and there’s plenty to be lost or confused in translation. You might scratch your head now with some Portuguese names, but you’ll be thoroughly thrown as more indigenous tags are applied to Chinese stone.
The result is that a walk through a typical stoneyard finds stone stacked by type – a good start – but then arranged by country of origin or given name, which means nothing to a consumer. Websites often offer everything alphabetically, resulting in a hodgepodge of swatches and customers clicking through countless pages until … “What’s that other stuff we saw yesterday? Kensington?”
That’s where color comes in. It’s the easiest way to separate choices, based on the dominant hue of a stone. Customers can coordinate a stone with other known elements, from appliances to cabinets to wall paint; they also get the opportunity to appreciate the nuances of different stones and narrow down choices quickly.
It’s not all red, brown and green, either; a secondary classification can be pattern, as in none, light, medium, etc. The term may be a bit too open, but it brings the idea of movement into the mix, which remains as difficult to describe in words as the taste of chocolate but easy to perceive with some simple guidance.
Color and pattern also fail to take price and scarcity into account, which strikes a blow against the notion of offering a wonderful superexotic stone. Unless you’re specializing in the unusual and offbeat, however, mixing the grand with the bland is a great idea.
Really? Consider that segregating that incredible stone denotes exclusivity, which is good; it also says the material is expensive, which chills consumers (especially in today’s economy). The ability to compare the unique right along with the old standards only accentuates the difference and convinces more than a few customers to shell out more for the premium product.
Admittedly, this approach isn’t perfect, but it’s a different way to get consumers from the concept to the specific in choosing natural stone. We’re getting better at getting people in the door to consider stone; keeping the current confusion only serves to send buyers down the street for easy-to-remember brand names.
We’re not selling soap. But, we need to make stone easier to buy … or we’ll see more competitors cleaning up.