Making of a Millstone?

Gee thanks CNN, or at least CNNMoney.com, for this headline that appeared on Feb. 27, and quickly spread to several dozen home-improvement Websites. How about “Carry this industry out on a slab” while you’re at it?

Yes, I sent a missive to CNN about it to ask why, in an article about home improvements and subsequent return-on-value, stone took that nice hit. I didn’t get a reply, even in the vaunted interative world of Internet 2.0, and I frankly didn’t expect one. The stone trade is pretty small potatoes for the world’s 24-hour news conglomerate.

I don’t have a beef with the gist of the article. It’s that initial, big focus on granite as the symbol of excess and financial frivolity. The industry can make plenty of arguments against this – although, of course, we’re biased (as the general media notion goes) because we’re making a few bucks off stone.

In an era of stone countertops rolling down-market from high society to service displays at Sam’s Club and Costco, it’s an erroneous stereotype. It’s an image that’s grown in the past few years, with granite going on the list of items that are so passé by trendmongers looking for next big thing in interior design.

However, something else is at hand with the general characterization of countertops and other dimensional stone. It’s unintentional, perhaps, but far more harmful.

Stone’s not just a symbol of excess in taste. It’s also acting as a stand-in for excess in the general housing market and, without much of a stretch, the credit mess. As we grind further into what some call slowdown and others call recession, the gleaming granite countertop may become the poster child for today’s economic funk.

This may seem a bit over-the-top, but I’m not speaking about one Web headline here. Part of my daily routine is that, with a number of online tools, I collect hundreds of stories via the Internet about stone. I then sift through the lot, all of which only have some kind of “stone” reference in common.

This adds to my already bulging stores of useless information, such as:

• The world’s biggest selection of marbles – the shooting kind – and winners of international championships.
• The insightful utterances of Sharon or Oliver Stone on major topics of the day, along with wonderment that an oxygen breather somewhere finds them interesting.
• The granite backbeat of drummer Mick Fleetwood at a recent concert.

Occasionally, a few nuggets of news and information shine through to see the light in Stone Business. But, I also see more and more of something else – articles on foreclosed homes, condos at bankruptcy sales, housing built on spec and left abandoned, and pretentious surroundings of high-flying financial companies heading for a crash.

What’s the unifying item in all of those painful images, the thing that catches the eye? C’mon, take a guess.

Granite countertops.

Stone – very nice, polished, well-fabricated stone – is becoming as ubiquitous as confusing mortgage contracts and golden-parachute bonuses in describing circumstances surrounding the credit bubble. It almost fits into a mantra – chaos, risk, greed, granite.
As writer, I see why it’s done. The bit of detail about that shiny, shiny granite or marble can be descriptive in a number of ways. It sets a scene, using something that’s familiar to readers. The luxurious image of stone can also infer a buyer’s blind optimism, or a company’s ill gains.

It’s part of a word picture that usually brings praise from an editor. The first couple of times I saw it, it seemed to be good, descriptive writing.
At about the sixtieth viewing, I started to get perturbed. It ceased to be original and looked more hackneyed with each succeeding article. It also started to move across the line from being factual to pejorative.

In other words, stone getting a bad rap … and a stupid bad rap at that.

OK, maybe stupid is a bit harsh. But it’s certainly ignorant. If anything, granite countertops (along with other residential stone installations) are becoming more of a commodity than a luxury. Commercial installations take into account the stone’s longevity; it may denote status, but there’s a value consideration as well.

Granite countertops didn’t have anything to do with the housing/credit disintegration, any more than other non-essentials such as home-theatre rooms, turbo-spa tubs, multi-head showers or $3,000 barbecue grills. They went along for the ride as homeowners and Wall Street financiers turned single-family houses into personal ATMs and the units of a vast, murky securities pool where, in the end, just about everything sank.

Since it doesn’t get repossessed or stolen, stone stays after the people are gone and the resale/credit bubble bursts. Whether we like it or not, stone gets whipped for just being there.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that we can do about it. We’re the innocent bystanders, much like those folks who get their faces digitally disguised in news footage of a crime scene. Countertops, however, can’t call the newsroom and complain that they weren’t a willing partner to greed and overindulgence.

It’s something for all of us to remember, though, in our everyday business. Our customers – especially the first-timers – come into the showroom with yet another layer of less-than-charitable images of stone. We have a product that’s attractive and durable, and today’s buyers are getting some of the best values ever offered. It’s not overselling to tell clients, and more than once.

We won’t beat the bad news with a mass protest or a lawsuit. It’s a job that calls for one-on-one action, and telling the truth.

Because, after all, that’s how you defeat ignorance.

Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net