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True Blue Surfaces Find Key to Growth Through Procedure and Analysis
Blue Bahia granite Island is the colorful centerpiece of this La Vaca Hotel Suites kitchen, with Silver Storm marble perimeter countertops as an elegant, neutral color contrast
By Peter J Marcucci Photos Courtesy True Blue Surfaces and Bellezza Artisan Stone Surfaces
In the past, I’ve seen many stone companies that were owned by craftsmen who had all the right credentials to fabricate but, to their detriment, started out with little or no knowledge of how to navigate the complicated world of running a business. Conversely, I’ve seen stone companies founded by those whose skills were developed through attending accredited business schools. These folks came into the stone business world with a slew of tools to grow a company and must now learn the particular demands of stone fabrication. True Blue Surfaces is one of these companies. Its personality is one of accelerated growth through procedure, analysis and good business sense.
The original True Blue Surfaces, located in San Antonio, Texas was founded in 2007, and acquired by Tom Callahan and Eric Cole in 2016. The two men came from well-regarded positions in the business world, bringing their years of business knowledge with them into a totally new challenge, recalled CEO and President Tom Callahan. “I had spent fourteen years traveling around the world, running the different manufacturing and supply-chain organizations that I was involved with," he said. "In 2016, I then decided it was time to go back and enjoy my wife and get reengaged with my kids and my life, so my friend Eric Cole and I bought True Blue Surfaces.”
Even though Callahan and Cole came to stone fabrication with no prior experience, it was their life experiences that gave them the tools needed to succeed. Yes, making things from stone is different than making things from metal or plastic, but it’s basically the same process – sort of – he explained.
“Since college, every company that I was involved with effectively required you to continually improve the product for the end customer. You always had to find ways to take costs out, be more efficient and improve your fill rates," Callihan said. "So when Eric and I started looking for a company to buy, those were skill sets that were effectively tattooed into our brains from our prior experience in manufacturing consumer products, and we had to find a business that allowed us to do that.”
And they found one. They saw the same basic processes used to make consumer goods from plastic or sheets of metal, used in making countertops from slabs of stone. Machines that cut and shape were in their realm, both different, yet both the same. “The type of equipment is a little bit different, but the process of converting a slab of stone into a product is very similar to machining consumer products," Callihan said. "There is a level of overlap, which then led us to a level of comfort, which then led us to how to sell to the big guys that are volume builders and are more corporate-driven.” Callahan and Cole pursued a strategy of making relationships with onsite builders and their purchasing people who managed housing developments. From then on, sales simply grew by word of mouth. “We could communicate in the same language with those folks," Callihan said, "and it was an easy adaptation and a good fit for me and Eric, with only a couple of degrees of separation from where our core skill sets were.”
Coming soon in the May 2024 issue of the Slippery Rock Gazette.
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Are You the Superhero in Your Business?
by Ed Young Fabricators Business Coach
In the chaotic world of countertop fabrication, where every day brings a new set of challenges and hurdles to overcome, maintaining order can feel like an uphill battle. As a fab shop owner, you’re no stranger to the chaos it brings – from broken splashes to scheduling snafus, the demands of running your business can be relentless. It can feel like you’re always trying to be a superhero, rushing to solve problems left and right. It’s all too easy for fab shop owners to fall into the trap of playing the role of the superhero – the one who swoops in to save the day whenever disaster strikes. Yet, in the midst of juggling countless tasks and responsibilities, it’s essential to ask yourself: Is this sustainable? And at what cost? The Toll of Chaos While you may thrive on the adrenaline rush of being the superhero, it’s essential to recognize the toll it takes on your business and personal life. In a perpetual state of crisis management, there’s little time for strategic planning, process improvement, or personal well-being. Your employees may feel the strain as well, grappling with uncertainty, inefficiency, and burnout. And what about your family? Are they getting the time and attention they deserve, or are they left to contend with a perpetually stressed and absent partner or parent? This is just a partial list of the negative impacts of being the superhero in your business: Burnout Constantly being in superhero mode means you’re always on high alert, ready to swoop in and solve any problem that arises. This level of vigilance can lead to burnout – a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.
This will show up as fatigue, irritability, and a decreased sense of accomplishment, ultimately impacting your overall well-being and productivity. Limited Growth When you’re always the one swooping in to save the day, you end up being the limiting factor in your business’s growth. Your employees may become reliant on you to solve every problem, stifling their own growth and development. The business can only grow to the level you personally can handle. Tunnel Vision When you’re constantly in firefighting mode, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. You may become so focused on solving immediate problems that you neglect long-term strategic planning and goal setting. This tunnel vision can hinder your business’s ability to innovate, adapt to changing market conditions, and stay ahead of the competition.
Strained Relationships Being the superhero of your business often means sacrificing time with loved ones. Your family and friends may feel neglected or resentful of the time and energy you devote to your business, leading to strained relationships and feelings of isolation. Ultimately, neglecting your personal relationships can take a toll on your mental health and overall happiness. Reduced Creativity Constantly being in crisis mode can stifle creativity and innovation. When you’re always focused on putting out fires, there’s little time or mental bandwidth left for brainstorming new ideas, exploring opportunities, or experimenting with different approaches. This can hinder your business’s ability to adapt to changing market trends and stay ahead of the curve. Financial Instability Relying solely on your superhero efforts to keep your business afloat can create financial instability. Without clear systems, processes, and delegation in place, your business may struggle to maintain consistent cash flow, profitability, and sustainability. Additionally, the lack of scalability and growth potential can limit your business’s ability to weather economic downturns or unexpected challenges. Breaking the Cycle So, how do you stop being the superhero in your business? The first step towards reclaiming control is acknowledging the chaos that surrounds you. It’s about recognizing that there’s a better way to operate – one that doesn’t rely solely on your superhero efforts. But where do you begin? How do you shift from a reactive mindset to a proactive one?
Read more in the May 2024 issue of the Slippery Rock Gazette.
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Renewed Focus on Silica Exposure in the Stone Industry
An Interview with Ted Sherritt President, ISFA CEO, FloFlorm
There are a significant number of issues in our industry today around silica safety, government interference, and product bans. So many big picture problems, that I thought I could add some value to help our industry get through these things. These are risks, right? If engineered stone goes bad in North America, my business changes dramatically and so does everybody else’s and it would be a very devastating day for our industry. So we need to work in unison with the National Stone Institute (NSI), the International Surface Fabricators Association (ISFA) and the manufacturers to make sure that there is science around this, and we are not harming our workers with silicosis. If you’re doing it right, if you’re following the 2016 OSHA rules and the action level of dust in your work areas are safe, we need science to prove that we are not harming our employees by fabricating products out of engineered stone. The good actors, they understand these rules, and work every day to make sure that their work environment is safe for their employees. There is air testing, medical monitoring and using wet practices, all the things we need to do to make a safe environment. The good actors are doing that, and doing their best to make sure their employees go home healthy after working in a safe environment. On the flip side, there are two kinds of bad actors. There’s the bad actor who is uninformed and ignorant about the current laws, and the damage that silicosis can do. He’s happily working away and hoping that everything is going to be great. This bad actor needs education and awareness, and needs to understand that you have got to follow the rules or people are going to get sick. They need awareness from the ISFA, the NSI, and the manufacturers and their sales people to inform and educate them.
Then there are the worst kind of actors, the ones who know the rules, and know the damage that they are incurring by dry cutting and grinding. They also know it is cheaper and faster to do it this way, and there is more money to be made, but just don’t care and just keep on doing it with no regard to their employees’ safety. These are the ones who don’t and won’t follow regulations, and they need to be shut down! Enforcement needs to shut these guys down. The good actors, they understand these rules, and work every day to make sure that their work environment is safe for their employees. There is air testing, medical monitoring and using wet practices, all the things we need to do to make a safe environment. The good actors are doing that, and doing their best to make sure their employees go home healthy after working in a safe environment.
Unfortunately, the government has lumped us all together as fabricators, and has claimed that all fabricators are killing their workers. It’s not true and it’s not fair, but that’s what’s happening in the government’s regulatory areas – in California, anyway. Today, the law is that you have to wear a full respirator to work in a California stone shop. That’s the law, they’re not enforcing it, but that is the law today. In our FloForm shops, we do a bunch of air monitoring, and if we’re below the action level, we just keep on with production! As soon as we get above the action level, we’ll put in more air scrubbers, change things and do more house cleaning. It’s not easy to get below the action level everywhere, every time, but you have to keep working at it. These are your employees. Quite often they are friends with your son, or your nephew or your own kid! You want those people to be safe, and not catch a disease that is not curable, but is preventable. So we need to do all we can do to operate a shop and prevent silicosis, because it is a terrible, incurable disease, and it only gets worse. The first day you find an employee with symptoms of silicosis and he or she tests positive, you’ve got to get them out of that environment, and get them a new job somewhere else, such as in sales or templating. It teaches you responsibility as a business owner. The bad actors, they don’t care. They know what’s going on, they might have M95 masks on their people, which are incredibly ineffective, and they just keep going. A lot of these owners and workers are undocumented, and where the problem is coming from in California. The rules were made, but aren’t being enforced, and this is the predicament that California is in. Additionally, so many people are buying engineered stone these days is why quartz is considered the problem. The success of this product category has dominated the countertop industry today, and if it was never invented and the same penetration happened with granite, the same problem would exist, and people would be still be dying today. But the fact that engineered stone came in and took a large market share from granite, is why it’s more of an engineered stone issue today.
What Can the Industry Do? There’s a bunch of answers to this problem. One answer is more inspections, and enforcement for the bad actors. We can identify them. It just needs the intestinal fortitude of OSHA to go deal with it. It’s enforcement for the bad actors who know they’re doing it wrong, but don’t care, and education for the ones who don’t know they are doing it wrong, so they can get better at it. It’s also partnerships with people like me, to help them to buy air scrubbers and the tools that use water. For the people who are doing it right, the answer is a pat on the back and recognition. We need to market to the fabricators who are doing it right, either through the NSI or whatever, and they should get more customers, because in the end, doing it right costs money. But if you really care about an industry and the people who work in the factories, you shouldn’t be buying from the cheapest guy out there, because they are more than likely doing it wrong. We know that OSHA can’t enforce the law to close down these shops, so what’s happening right now is that a bill was introduced into California’s legislature to require licensing of all fabricators. They have to prove they have wet shops, air monitoring, and they’ve trained their employees before they get a license to buy slabs from a distributor. This will take about three years before it is put into place and helping, but it’s not going to prevent more silicosis cases from happening while dry cutting and grinding is going on today. Moreover, the lawyers are out there handing out pamphlets in every shop. We had one lawyer visit our Kent, Wash., location and they are going out all across the nation to employees, saying join us on a lawsuit, because we are going to sue the manufacturers that sell quartz countertops, because they didn’t tell us it was a danger. So we need to regulate the suppliers, so the bad actors can’t get licenses, and sooner or later they won’t be able to buy materials, and they’ll have to get out of the business. So education, control the supply channel, and increased enforcement is what I think the answers are, and if we don’t take action as an industry and improve the situation for the workers, we won’t be able to sell engineered stone anymore in North America. They’ve already done this in New Zealand and Australia. The new stories on today’s news shows need to be about good stone companies, the ones doing it right that have no sick people. Silicosis is a horrible way to go. Your lungs just stop working and you die. If there’s any good news, It’s that it is preventable.
From the May 2024 issue of the Slippery Rock Gazette.
A Safe Alternative for Moving Slabs Around the Shop
Projects Designed and Built Inc. (PD&B) has been a custom designer and builder of mechanical and robotic manufacturing equipment for over 25 years. Located in Toledo, Ohio, the company is comfortably positioned to serve six major cities within five hours drive time: Detroit; Chicago; Pittsburgh; Indianapolis; Cincinnati; and Columbus, Ohio. Founded by Ken Martin and now operated by mechanical engineer and son Jack Martin and his wife Dana, PD&B has been the place to get manufacturing equipment into production and out the door to global customers throughout Europe, South America, and China. That said, even though PD&B is not a new kid on the block, the design and production of their very own Slab Caddy is. Designed in cooperation with Mike Langenderfer, the owner of The Countertop Shop located in Monclova, Ohio, the patent-pending Slab Caddy represents countless hours of rigorous testing in real-world conditions, and offers safe, movable slab storage, explained Product Manager Dana Martin.
“When Mike Langenderfer asked my husband Jack for a solution, he was really only asking for a solution to increase safety at the saw,” Martin said. “His guys would overstock the standing A-frame there, and he was very worried about it from a safety stand point. "Yes, slabs were being moved around the shop using push carts, but it was not very efficient.” Iteration after iteration, the prototype turned from a simple storage vehicle, to one that offered so much more, she continued.
“Jack was on a flight going somewhere, and he saw an airplane tug moving a plane around and thought, ‘Hmm, Why don’t we move carts around like that?’ So he started looking up tugs that were already on the market, so he wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. "Jack was also told to pare down the original cart, which was way overbuilt, to make it more cost-effective. He then developed a fixed-point-hitch on the tug that would ascend and descend into the cart, and we were in business!” At this point, you might be thinking that what you’ve just heard is someone else’s problems and not yours, right? But you’d be wrong. There are lots of potential problems moving material around with a forklift – too many to list.
From the May 2024 issue of the Slippery Rock Gazette.
Also featured in the May 2024 issue of the Slippery Rock Gazette
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