Cutting Edge Granite, Largo, Fla.

   Try this: A combination of South America, market demand, and a conversation with his wife took Crowley from flooring to fabrication in the late 1990s.
   “From the late ‘80s to the late ‘90s, we were doing a lot of flooring business for developers,” Crowley says. “By ’98-’99, the developers were asking why we didn’t do granite countertops.
   “At the same time, my wife was flying back and forth to South America, and she talked to pilots who were bringing slabs of granite back to the United States in the belly of the planes,” he adds. “She said that I ought to get into it. After that, we figured out that there was simply a very high demand for what we do – and the demographics were there.”
   Today, Cutting Edge Granite manufactures custom kitchens with a keen focus on production, which is key to the company’s ability to secure plenty of business.
   “Our competency lies in our ability to facilitate the customized-kitchen process,” says Crowley. “When I first got into the business, local competition was 8-10 weeks to get a kitchen fabricated. We came in with automation and grabbed the market share with a two-week turnaround. It doesn’t take long to leap ahead when you grab a hold of that sort of tiger by the tail.”
   However, before making the leap from flooring to custom kitchen fabrication, Crowley first visited a colleague to get a close look at how another successful kitchen customization organization worked. The trip and the look-see proved to be monumental to the company and to Crowley.
   “I’d read about Len Malave of Malave Marble & Granite in North Carolina,” says Crowley. “He had talked to us about the granite business and graciously asked if we wanted to see his facility. We went the next day.
   “When we saw it, it was overwhelming,” he adds. “We realized that we could be the same way, and we had the demographics and had the demand in our area. He helped us see all that. We left the flooring business behind in 1999, bought our first CNC machine and saw, and switched to the production of customized kitchens.”
   Fortunately, for Crowley and his partners, a decade of installing floors had produced an entire network of business contacts. And though Crowley naturally turned to colleagues to help build the customer base for customized kitchens, he also employed other marketing avenues.
    “We first marketed the business through contacts I’d had in the flooring business,” he says. “We also did some local advertising, through the Yellow Pages and mostly in the newspaper.
   “But word-of-mouth plays a big part in generating business for us,” he adds. “My partners and I are all from this area, and so we have a good networking group.”
   Cutting Edge Granite also draws from a wide client spectrum, from builders to the burgeoning boomer market.
   “We have a broad customer base,” says Crowley. “We have customers who build multilevel units, office buildings, and condos. We have customers who manufacture cabinets and install cabinets – cabinet companies. We have residential customers. We have a retail showroom, and we have builder business.”
   And that customer base is sophisticated – growing more so with each year, to hear Crowley tell it – and that’s a very good thing.
   “As granite became a standard offering, it certainly fueled our business,” he says, “and as the consumer became more educated, that also fed the business.
   “As the condominium buyer became more -sophisticated,” he says, “the evolution that happened was, certainly in Florida, that you have consumers who are coming down here to purchase condos on the beach or a vacation home. They come from many different parts of the country where they may have a primary home with granite, and so they want that in their vacation home.
   “The numbers are something,” says Crowley. “You’ve got 70 million boomers retiring. What they want – what many are trying to do – is to emulate or repeat what they left. That’s the type of consumer that has created the demand for granite countertops.”
   Numbers aside, it’s a different 2007 customer than it was for Crowley in 1999. Not only has the product become more-sophisticated, the people Crowley sells and fabricates for are more-knowledgeable and -demanding than ever.
   “Probably in 2001 or 2002, people were going from Formica® or Corian® countertops, where it was man-made and everything was consistent. There was discussion at that time that that was the beauty of those products – it was consistent. That was what you paid for.
   “Today, it’s very interesting in that it’s almost a business where you spend time lowering the expectations of customers, as opposed to upselling,” he says. “The product today sells itself, but the consumer has to understand that it is a natural product. You spend time talking to them about what they call ‘imperfections’ and what we call ‘beauty marks.’ We’re spending more time now educating the consumer so they get a realistic approach to the product.”
   Moreover, that unique product is all part of the desirability of the Cutting Edge Granite install – a very intentional desire to secure the more-beautiful, more-distinguished stone.
   “My partners and I spend a fair amount of time in South America, in Italy and in Spain procuring unique materials,” he says. “That’s all part of the sophistication of the consumer.
   “In the late 1990,s when the customer appeared to be grateful and enthusiastic about having granite countertops; their expectations were lower. Now, we spend a tremendous amount of time explaining the natural characteristics of a product. Today’s trend is that the consumer is sophisticated; it helps us, to a certain extent, that they truly understand granite.”
   And though Cutting Edge Granite does, indeed know, and educate its customers on the nuances of granite, the company is also a Silestone® distributor and familiar with other market-demand products.
   “We do a little soapstone, and we do some marble and, of course, the Silestone,” says Crowley. “And though we do mostly countertops, we’ll do fireplaces and furniture pieces. We also have customers that want their showers done in granite, or onyx or marble.
     “We’re very customer-oriented,” he adds, “and we’ll usually provide a customer just about anything they want. If they want something done in granite, we pretty much know we can do it. I think that’s because of the automation and waterjet technology. The technology allows us to do all of that, to be versatile.”
   The Cutting Edge Granite operation is no one-man shop. With a large production operation, the company is able to commit to a wide geographical area that goes well outside the Largo, Fla. region.
   “We have 135 employees,” says Crowley, “and we service the entire state of Florida. The reality is that we often go outside the state, and we’ve done projects in New York, Iowa, Kansas, New Orleans and Atlanta.
   “Of course, with that large an operation, we handle the manufacturing, installation, logistics, finance, and administration internally,” he adds.
   While the company currently uses close to 40,000 ft² to run its operation, Crowley has secured more than twice that space, with plenty of room to grow – which he and his partners very much plan to do.
   “We own 87,000 ft², though we presently use just the 40,000 ft² of that,” he says, “so we have room to grow. And, 10,000 ft² of that current 40,000 ft² is an indoor slab showroom.
   “And, we do have a growth plan that involves having additional facilities throughout the state. Our Silestone territory will certainly expand.”
   In the meantime, Crowley and the Cutting Edge Granite operation work to stay ahead of customer demands and industry trends.
   “The customer is always looking for more customization,” he says. “They are no longer first-time granite consumers. We routinely work with second- and third-time consumers.
   “And we always have to address the pricing challenge and will continue to do so in the future. We’re dealing with a weak dollar right now, so margins are being squeezed. Also, being in this industry, there’s always a newcomer in the area that is selling strictly on price, not on quality or value.
   “In the meantime, we know – and are always looking for – something new in the market. There is always new product and we have to stay awake and pay attention. It’s critical because, like now, there’s a proliferation of stones grabbing market share.
   “We just work hard and work stay ahead of the curve.”
   Cathie Beck is a freelance writer based in the Denver area. She recently completed a memoir, Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship.

This article first appeared in the October 2007 print edition of Stone Business. ©2007 Stone Business