Adventures in the Trade
"Be Caution"
This time: On the road in China in the heady days of the early quartz boom.
Editor's Note:
It's been quite an industry journey for Jason Nottestad in the past two decades -- countertop installer, large-scale shop management, vendor, importer and other stops.
He has plenty of stories and a great knack for telling them. Settle in and enjoy his first column for Stone Update.
By Jason Nottestad
In the summer of 2013, I wasted most of a week by inadvertently visiting the same Chinese factory three times. I’d gotten invitations to visit the ‘factories’ at U.S. trade shows earlier in the year. I’d wandered through the Chinese Pavilion looking with wide eyes for anything interesting. The industry was still in the ‘holy grail’ phase of finding that perfect breakout quartz pattern. With the rebound from the 2008 housing crash complete, quartz was such a hot commodity that almost any effort seemed worth it. Bringing back a unique color your company could brand as their own was the quest. The salespeople had samples at the trade show booths – at one a 12”x 12” tile that featured a white background and the teasing hint of a marble type vein. Another had a sample with a warm brown base tone that was sure to be popular in the region we were selling. The exterior pictures of factories they showed me were Photoshopped on the edges with clean sidewalks and green grass and flowering shrubs. But the pictures of the quartz lines insides looked real enough, and they me promised their companies owned and ran these places. I wasn’t naïve about how quartz factories looked in China. I’d visited the country twice the previous year in the company of an American guide who worked as a manufacturer’s rep. We’d visited plants in several parts of the country, from quartz ‘shops’ with a single press to large facilities with eight production lines, a resin factory, and ‘more on the way’. The common denominators were always broken machinery pushed to the side and abandoned in the shadows, tan colored stray dogs roaming just outside the plant gates, and random piles of broken marble and granite where the pretty sidewalks were supposed to be. The well-lit factories with the monstrous Breton line clones were still in the future. In the meantime, a dressed-up picture wasn’t going to fool me. Regardless, I made plans to visit.
The driver who picked me up from the 1950s blue-colored airport terminal was dressed like Elvis and drove a beat-up Buick minivan.
My company had a very ‘buy direct’ mentality and from the beginning encouraged me to shed the cost of someone in the middle. After my first two trips, I was confident I could navigate on my own well enough inside China. The country had quirks, but it wasn’t the ‘Mysterious Orient’ of legend. Starbucks and KFC and McDonalds were everywhere, and that food tasted just like it did in Cleveland. I only spoke a few words of Mandarin, but the salespeople spoke good English, most having graduated university with a Business English degree.
(I did have a saleswoman tell me her school was useless and she learned English by watching Desperate Housewives on repeat. She confessed to being madly in love with Eva Longoria and begged me not to tell her what happened in the final season of the show; it wasn’t available yet in China. Having never seen a single episode, I promised her I wouldn’t spoil the ending.) So I traveled alone. The first leg of my trip was quite interesting. I’d visited the Shandong region of China and toured a large factory that made both quartz and laminate. The driver who picked me up from the 1950s blue-colored airport terminal was dressed like Elvis and drove a beat-up Buick minivan. The historic apple orchards in the area were all being converted to vineyards, and I could see (but regrettably not visit) concrete chateaus being constructed at the foot of distant mountains. The company manufactured plain white quartz in abundance for a Chinese kitchen-and-bath chain. 2cm slabs filled truck after truck as they hauled it to a fabrication facility nearby to be made into modular kitchens. It was an impressive factory, but the samples they’d shown me at the trade show booth couldn’t transition to slabs. The patterns were inconsistent and smudged. I was disappointed, but the dinner of dumplings, local fish, and baijiu lifted my spirits. The owner apologized and as he dropped me off at the hotel encouraged me to visit again the following year. They would improve.
The woman who learned her English watching Desparate Housewives. A true fan of Eva Longoria.
In China, I’d even had a bartender run out to a parking lot after me holding my wallet, and he seemed incredibly relieved when it was in my hands.
No matter the presentation, it's still good advice.
The walk-in shower of my hotel room had a fantastic sign, the graphic of which showed a man seemingly being blown off his feet by two waves of an enormous fart. Below him it said: “Be Caution”. I loved it and wanted to pry it off the wall and throw it in my bag as a kind of ‘safety-first’ souvenir. But that would have been rude. The factory owner had paid for the hotel room and with his excellent hospitality I’d hate for him to be on the hook for my vandalism. In my mind I pictured a stack of ‘Be Caution’ placards stored somewhere in the hotel maintenance room, just waiting to be given to a someone with enough Mandarin to ask for one. That wasn’t me. I was still feeling confident as I flew down to Guangzhou the next morning to tour factories in the Foshan area that I’d seen pictures of at the trade shows. After a series of delays and a missed connection, my well-scheduled mid-morning flight ended up landing just after midnight. I’d booked a room at a brand-new Hilton hotel near the airport and needed to catch a cab. I had a screen shot of the hotel on a Trip Advisor map- translated into Mandarin. Showing that to the cab driver, he’d know where to take me. No need for ‘Be Caution’. I was ‘Be Prepared’ like a Boy Scout. I stood in the line at taxi station and when it was my turn, jumped into the back of the cab and showed the driver the map on my iPad. He took a look at it and then said something to me, motioning for me to get out. I protested and pointed to the map again, showing him where we were at the airport and where the hotel was. He waved me off and pointed once again for me to leave the cab, motioning for the next person in line to come his way. Just then, a man appeared at the passenger door and spoke to the driver. They exchanged a few sentences and then, in perfect English, he asked me to see the map. I showed him and he hopped in the front seat. “It’s too new,” he said. “He just doesn’t know it. I’ll guide him.” We headed out of the airport and the guy began quizzing me on what I did. He was from Guangzhou originally but said he now lived in Vancouver and imported slate for pool tables. He directed the driver off the main airport road and we headed down a small connector. He motioned for the driver to turn again, and on that street the lights began to get further apart. Soon only every fifth or sixth streetlight was lit. The random nature of the encounter suddenly seemed much less random. So much for ‘Be Caution’ - these guys were going to mug me and dump me. The whole situation became a bit hilarious. I’d never felt unsafe in China on the previous trips. I’d even had a bartender run out to a parking lot after me holding my wallet, and he seemed incredibly relieved when it was in my hands. And yet here I was, cruising down a dark alley. I was sure the next move was going to be a turn off the road into a dirt track where I’d be the one blown off my feet. I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. I knew I was going to lose my suitcase, but I thought I might be able to make a break for it with my backpack and computer. I began looking ahead to see if there was someplace in front of us where I could head toward- running back the way we came was just heading into no man’s land. In the distance, I could see a glow of lights and determined that was where I’d head. Wherever we parked, I’d head for that glow. The car kept rolling forward and the lights became a little brighter. We kept rolling. I was growing confident I could make it to that place with a decent head start. The car kept rolling. Soon, I could make out the building below the glow. It was a hotel. The Canadian said something to the driver and we pulled into the parking lot of the Hilton. As advertised, it was brand-new.
The first ‘owner’ had a white BMW and was so immaculately dressed I couldn’t imagine he’d ever seen dust.
My first visit to The Factory the next day was the oddest of the three. Foshan, China, is a sprawling city- three times the size of Los Angeles with a population just smaller than New York City. The downtown has an enormous park and luxury hotels. But the quartz factories are mainly on the west side of the city and in the countryside west of Foshan. When you visit from Guangzhou, to the east, you’ve got a long drive. The first ‘owner’ had a white BMW and was so immaculately dressed I couldn’t imagine he’d ever seen dust. As we weaved our way through traffic he expounded on his business. He was killing it in the U.S. and Europe. He droned on and on about the projects he’d supplied material for, dropping the occasional luxury hotel brand. The saleswoman whom I’d met at the trade show sat in the front seat and fed him words when his English faltered. I zoned out after a while, but I don’t think he even noticed. When we got to The Factory, we parked near an administrative building and went inside. He was very anxious to show me the different offices that were there. One was titled ‘General Manager’, one ‘Sales Manager’ and the final one, where we went inside, was titled ‘Owner’. They were all empty of anything aside from a desk, couch, and a coffee table. He sat down behind the ‘Owner’ desk and spread his arms out as if to show me that this was his office. I’d seen the offices of owners before, and this was not how they looked. They were generally full, with a large and cluttered desk, a tea table surrounded by sofas, and lots of certificates on the walls from different government agencies. Some of them even had small bedrooms adjoining where the owner slept when the need arose. Mr. BMW got back up and we toured The Factory. It was large: 10 production lines in two buildings, but not particularly clean or modern. There was abandoned machinery tucked up against the wall, but I never saw a dog or a sidewalk. Mr. BMW pointed out the features of The Factory to me and was anxious to show me one of the jobs ‘they’ were working on for him. Most of the colors in The Factory were basic ones, unlike the samples I’d seen at the show. I asked the saleswoman about that fact and she said they weren’t producing the color from the sample right now. But soon. For now it was white and grey cut to size pieces as far as the eye could see. A million and one Fairfield Inn vanity tops. We went back to Foshan. I was staying at the Marco Polo, which is a nice hotel on the western side of the city. It overlooked an old village that had been turned into a shopping center with a huge selection of Western food restaurants. I stumbled upon this place after staying at the Marco Polo in Xiamen for the Xiamen Stone Fair. The village made my head spin. Surely the human drama in all its forms had been played out in these old buildings where they were now selling handbags and bratwurst. To tour a Chinese quartz factory during the day and then drink a Guinness and eat corned beef at an Irish pub was my contribution to this particular oddity. I toured another local factory the following day and learned to eat with chopsticks at lunch by picking up peanuts. The restaurant sat in the shadow of an enormous coal power plant cooling tower. The restaurant was by the river. The fish came from the river and the vegetables were grown above the river, below where they grew the chickens. That part of the menu was vertically integrated.
The Breton line clones came later in Chinese quartz production.
We headed out in the dreaded direction. After five minutes on the road, I knew exactly where we were going.
Perhaps the stray brown dog was the mascot of early production plants.
The following day, I was picked up at the Marco Polo by a saleswoman who I barely remembered from the trade show. Her English was not great, and colleagues had done most of the talking. Since my Mandarin was nearly non-existent, the ride was a bit uncomfortable. I got the feeling we would talk to each other if we could, but the words were not there. After a bit, I began to sense where we were going. I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps her factory was nearby the one I had visited with Mr. BMW. But as we grew closer, the turns became familiar, and I knew where we were going: The Factory. Maybe her company did own the factory, although it didn’t look like the pictures I remembered from her booth, even the inside. I was disappointed by the fact that I knew this was a wasted day. I wouldn’t be discovering anything interesting on this trip; no new colors to bring home today. Still, I wanted this to be her company’s manufacturing facility, if just to find some honesty in the situation. We toured The Factory, but she didn’t try to take me to the administrative area and play Owner. As we toured, I asked her questions about the factory I saw at her booth. She was honest. “We will be building that one. Soon.” “No new colors then?” “Not yet.” It was even more quiet on the way back to Foshan. She insisted we do dinner, so we had a subdued Italian meal, surrounded by boisterous young Chinese enjoying the day. And, I imagined, a few old ghosts that lingered in the buildings. As we parted, I thanked her for the day. Maybe next year for the new factory and the new colors. On my final day in Foshan, another team picked me up from the Marco Polo and we headed out in the dreaded direction. After five minutes on the road, I knew exactly where we were going. The two women who were guiding me were business partners and were helping out their friend, whom I’d met at the trade show. He was attending to customers in Europe. They both laughed when I told them he’d represented himself as owning this factory. “There are a lot of trading companies,” one of them said. “You’ll learn to spot them after a while.” We toured The Factory, but only because one of them had a project to check on. I was certain a few of the workers did double takes when I walked by. You again? Be Caution, buddy. We headed back to the old village for burgers and fries and Heinekens. I never did find out who owned The Factory.