Customizing the Countertop, Part II

February 4, 2003

By K. Schipper

The growth in stone fabrication isn’t all in large commercial projects and new housing projects – there’s plenty of production by thousands of small shops in custom countertop work.
Last month, Stone Business took a look at several fabricators carving out a profitable niche in one-of-a-kind work for residential and commercial customers. Now, meet some others finding plenty of business in the custom market.

Stonecraft Inc.
Knoxville, Tenn.
Rick Jones, Stonecraft’s president, knows the market for custom countertops is growing. Just ask him about the number of competitors he’s seen enter his market to handle the demand.
Stonecraft’s been in the business for decades, with a staff holding more than 35 years expertise in the industry. Even with plenty of new shops opening up in the area, the demand for custom countertops remains strong, especially among homeowners doing renovations.
“This last year has been more in the renovation market,” he says. “We’ve seen it grow at least 10 percent to 20 percent.”
While Stonecraft certainly works with local builders and designers, the company has other ways to reach potential customers. One is through relationships Jones has developed with some of the custom cabinet shops in his area.
“A lot of them have a supplier of solid-surface materials, but sometimes the customer is demanding the work be done in stone,” he says. “We try to have good relationships with the cabinet makers, so they feel comfortable sending their customers to us.”
The company also advertises locally, and gets a fair amount of walk-in business. Jones calls that part of his business “a double-edged sword,” since the popularity of do-it-yourself programs on some of the cable-television networks is making many of these potential customers instant experts.
He adds that some solid-surface manufacturers are even trying to mislead builders by stressing stone’s drawbacks to the point where even they aren’t necessarily comfortable with granite and marble.
“The misinformation is hard to overcome,” he says. “We spend a lot of time in the showroom on education. We’re spending three and four times the amount of time per sale that we did three or four years ago.”
And, Jones notes that because of greater competition, those aren’t costs that can be passed on easily to the customers.
On the positive side, Jones says walk-in customers especially are surprised at the price of natural stone, which tends to open up extra sales opportunities.
“We usually shock them because it’s so much less than they anticipated, so it does open up new sales avenues,” he says. “When you get to talking price, a lot of times they say, ‘I want this and this.’ In other cases, it’s still one bite of a larger project at a time.”
Jones also believes that it’s the personalities of the homeowners that really make some jobs stand out, whether they’re going with a traditional granite, or installing marble or limestone with the realization it will stain or spot in a few months.
“Some of our better jobs haven’t been the largest or most-expensive,” he says. “The taste of the owners and the quality just turns out beautifully. The right cabinetry with the right design just makes it.”
Stonecraft added a CNC machine at the end of last year, but Jones says it’s to keep up with the volume and replace skilled craftsmen who are retiring and really can’t be replaced. He certainly has no intention of abandoning custom work for a more production-oriented clientele.
“We’re a custom shop and we want more custom work,” Jones concludes. “We’ve done a few condo projects where we did all the kitchens and all the bathrooms in a couple buildings, and while we appreciate the volume, it’s really dealing with the people who walk in here that’s fun.”

Rock Solid Surfaces
Virginia Beach, Va.
You might say that Dave Winfree, Rock Solid’s owner, knows custom countertops from the floor up.
The owner of a custom cabinet shop, Winfree opened his doors three years ago with one employee to do his tops. “We were purchasing tops from someone else,” he says, “and we couldn’t get the people to get them to us on time.”
Although his initial plan was just to make tops for his own cabinets, today Rock Solid features both a CNC machine and an inline machine from Park Industries – and the countertop business is five times the size of the cabinet shop’s former production.
Not surprisingly, custom countertops are a big part of his workload, with about 40 percent of them coming from renovations.
“On the remodels we mainly work directly with the homeowners,” he says. “Most of these are primary residences, although we’re in a tourist area, and in the wintertime we do a lot of work on rental properties in the Nags Head and Hatteras areas of North Carolina.”
Most of the company’s new construction involves working directly with the contractors. On renovations, the homeowner will do the design work, but it’s up to Winfree’s staff to educate buyers on the finer points of all its products.
“We supply three different products: Corian®, Zodiaq® – which is which is engineered stone – and granite,” he says. “They come in with some idea of what they want, but they want to be told all the pros and cons of the three products before making a decision.”
Currently, Winfree says the split between manufactured and natural surfaces is about 60-40, with natural stone taking the smaller share of the market. Of the other 60 percent, he says the bulk of that demand is for Corian, since consumers in his area still aren’t very familiar with engineered stone.
And, of course, the natural stone isn’t exclusively granite.
“We try to do any natural stone the client wants,” Winfree says. “We do marble and we do limestone; it’s still mainly granite in the kitchen, though.”
It would be easy to assume that because of Winfree’s background with custom cabinets, kitchen countertops would fuel his other stone business. And, while new countertops can generate demand for something in the bathroom or a high back-splash, he says sales can also flow in the other direction.
“A lot of times our work starts in the master suite,” he says. “We may start by doing a tub surround, or we do the master bathroom in granite or do a surround for the master bedroom fireplace. That’s when the ‘honey-do’ list can become one of, ‘While you’re here, we might as well replace all the kitchen countertops.’”
Despite the headaches such projects can generate, Winfree believes his greatest challenges come from some of the multimillion-dollar homes designed by architects.
“The architects can kind of get out in left field with their designs,” he says. “That’s where the CNC machine comes in handy. We can put anything up on that. A job that would take six hours by hand will take an hour on the CNC machine.”
Still, Winfree says he’d rather be doing the custom jobs.
“It seems to keep the guys in the shop motivated,” he concludes. “It gives them more of a sense of pride in what they’re doing. They’re not just stamping out cookies all day long.”

White’s Marble
Madisonville, Tenn.
When it comes to the history of White’s Marble, countertops are more than just a fairly new item – they’re more like a revolution.
The Madisonville, Tenn.-based company was founded in 1870, and six generations of Whites fabricated and sold stone monuments since that time. The company only added countertops in July 1998, when Matthew White joined his brother Allen in the business following the death of their father.
However, Matthew White says the timing couldn’t have been better.
“Our economy in east Tennessee is growing much faster than the rest of the nation right now,” he explains. “We have a lot of migration from the north, as people move in from Michigan and Ohio to take advantage of the four seasons and the very nice lake system we have here. There are a lot of new homes being put in.”
Even better, many of those new homes are selling for $400,000-$1 million, which is the range the brothers targeted as their countertop market. White estimates he could easily sell $2 million-$3 million worth of stonework if the shop’s production capabilities would allow it.
That’s a pretty substantial figure, considering that the countertop portion of the business started with the Whites doing work for friends and family as a way to perfect their techniques and build word-of-mouth.
“Then, we started working with some local contractors,” says Matthew White. “We have contractors where we do 100 percent of their local business. Then, in the last 18 months to two years, we’ve partnered with some kitchen-design companies, and that’s the biggest part of our business now.”
He explains that the company puts in a sample display at the kitchen-design company. As clients come in, their designers fax White’s a layout with the dimensions of a potential job and the granite color the client is requesting. Using a computer program, a quote is then faxed back to the client within 15 minutes.
“I have zero cost to those sales; it’s just like having an outside sales force,” White says.
In addition, these are often customers where a successful kitchen project can lead to secondary sales.
“The person comes in with a $5,000 kitchen budget, and before we’re done we’ve got a $15,000 sale with fireplaces, bathrooms and floors,” he says. “It’s generally bathrooms and fireplaces. The fireplaces are great because we try to use material left over from the kitchen, and that minimizes our waste costs.”
White’s biggest concern is continuing to upgrade his production capabilities. When the company began offering countertops, they were cut by hand. The addition of a bridge saw eliminated a lot of that work, and he says the next thing on the purchase list is an inline polishing machine.
While he enjoys doing the custom work, White’s goal is to have the production capacity to mix that with more commercial work. The company completed its first commercial job in late 2002, and he says it was a learning experience, particularly regarding contract issues.
“Right now, the custom work is a little less stressful for us,” White admits. “The time expectations aren’t as great as they are on commercial jobs.”