Fabricator Focus
TorontoGranite.com Mississaugua, Ont.
"We want to give people a perfect product because it’s our name."
All photos courtesy TorontoGranite.com
By K. Schipper
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Take two brothers with university educations in information technology (IT) and economics, and mix in a father with a waterjet in his machine shop, and what do you get? If you’re Bob and Mirko Petrov, the answer is TorontoGranite.com, a stone fabrication and installation operation that’s always put a premium on technology, from cutting up to six kitchens a day in their shop, exclusively marketing online, and making sure their installers have the best lifting equipment in the field. Despite the emphasis on technology, Mirko Petrov says there’s a strong personal component to the company, as well. Not only has it kept the brothers working together, but many of its employees have been with them a decade or longer. Even the customers are a joy, he adds, as the brothers love meeting good people and learning from them. Mirko Petrov says the idea behind TorontoGranite.com dates to the days when he and Bob were helping their father Krasmir in his machine shop. “He was supplying the food industry, and in that industry there’s a big need for waterjet cutters,” he explains. “We collectively bought a waterjet cutter from Flow (International Corp.), and in the beginning we were cutting stuff with the waterjet for the food industry.” However, when word of the waterjet got out, the shop soon began getting requests from stone fabricators needing sink cutouts, radius cuts, and the odd angle for a countertop. Approximately 20 years ago, the brothers asked themselves why they didn’t start selling countertops themselves. Since they already knew the capabilities of their waterjet, they began researching the industry by attending tradeshows all over the world, just to see what other technology was out there. One of their first purchases was a Prodim Proliner® for templating.
Bob, Krasimir and Mirko Petrov
"All our sales are from our online presence and from word-of-mouth from our past customers’"
Mirko Petrov
Initially the company shared space with the machine shop, but not for long. About 15 years ago, TorontoGranite.com moved into its own 10,000 ft² space in the same light industrial area of this Toronto suburb. Not only had the shop outgrown its initial space, but the Petrovs found they needed to customize their production area. “We had to outfit it with trenches and pits,” says Mirko Petrov. “It takes a lot of customizing, and then once you set up a shop, you’re there. It takes so much investment just for the water for the dust collection.” Selling was less of a problem. As Mirko Petrov says, in the early 2000s, websites were still new, and the Internet was relatively undeveloped. Fortunately, Bob Petrov’s university degree is in information technology. “All our sales are from our online presence and from word-of-mouth from our past customers,” Mirko Petrov brags. “We don’t spend a penny on marketing our products.” Of course, websites are old hat at this point, and today TorontoGranite.com relies on Google reviews as well as a Canadian site called HomeStars.com, which helps homeowners find repairmen, contractors, renovators, and retailers and then allows them to review the work. “We encourage our customers to rate us,” says Mirko Petrov. “We’re the type of people who would rather lose money to make a customer happy – within reason – than to have a bad review or go back-and-forth online with somebody.” The other marketing star for TorontoGranite.com is Instagram. The company’s installers take photos of every job, and Mirko Petrov posts what he calls “the more interesting ones.”
“Once the guys have the file, what’s the point of sitting on it?”
Mirko Petrov
A customer might find TorontoGranite.com online, but they’re the ones who personally keep spreading their name, helped along by the company’s commitment to service. “Really, our sales are all from word-of-mouth from our past customers,” Mirko Petrov says. “We’re our best sales reps because we do good work, and we do honest work. I could spend millions on marketing, but if you don’t show up between 10 and 12 like you’ve promised or don’t pick up the phone at 1:30, what good are you?” Nor do the brothers hand that important work off to others. Mirko Petrov is the first face many customers see, as he’s the man behind the Proliner out measuring jobs. At the same time, Bob Petrov is at the shop, where he and an assistant handle online requests for quotes and man the company’s 5,000 ft² showroom. A quick response to both requests for quotes and for measuring is one of the Petrovs’ sales secrets. “People don’t have time to think about what they’re doing,” says Mirko Petrov. “They’ll request a quote and get it within 12-24 hours. At that point they’re still hot thinking about it. They order, and I’m in their house before they know it measuring.” Quick turnaround is certainly a selling point for the company. How quickly? Well, Mirko Petrov says if it’s a customer who’s paid a deposit and is just waiting for the countertops to go in, it can happen in a day. “I’m usually in touch with my customer, and once they’ll tell me the cabinets are ready, I’ll go and measure it at once,” he says. “And, once the guys have the file, what’s the point of sitting on it; it’s not extremely hard to make a countertop. We try to average four-to-six a day.” They may come from online, but the company serves a wide range of customers. While Mirko Petrov estimates with residential jobs the work divides almost 50-50 between remodels and new homes TorontoGranite.com also does a fair amount of commercial work – often high-end commercial work. “We’ve done many, many jobs for restaurants,” he says. “We’ve done work on the CN Tower here in Toronto and we did every countertop on all seven floors. We did the GE Appliance Monograph Design Center & Cooking Studio, and the studio for [the television show] MasterChef Canada.”
"We love it when they have something good to say about our family and our team.”
Mirko Petrov
The Petrovs remain committed to technology. Along with their old Flow waterjet, the shop operates both a Breton bridge saw and a Breton sawjet. Soon to be added: a new five-axis waterjet from Flow. “We want to get a little bit more into porcelain and by getting the new five-axis machine, that will definitely help us provide a better quality with the porcelain,” says Mirko Petrov. “To cut porcelain so it looks perfect you need top-of-the-line equipment.” And, yes, perfection is the goal of TorontoGranite.com. “We want to give people a perfect product because it’s our name,” he says. “Our reputation is important to us, and if we don’t feel we can do something properly, we’re not going to do it until we’ve learned to do it right.” That includes things like checking to make sure their tables are level and evaluating both the speeds and blades of their saws. Or, as Mirko Petrov says, “If you’re not doing R&D, you’re not learning.” Nor does it hurt, he adds, that their father is still running the machine shop. “There’s so much tooling that it does for us,” he says. “A lot of people would have to go and outsource those kinds of things.” However, just as with sales, technology can only take work in the shop so far. But, just as the Petrovs work hard to keep their customers happy, they try to do the same for their employees, 80% of whom have been with them for a decade or more. A good example is their installation crews. TorontoGranite.com runs two crews of three installers each. The reason: “I find with three guys the job goes much faster, so you can do more work in a day,” says Mirko Petrov. “It’s also much lighter and easier on the installers when it’s three guys because stone is very heavy.” Additionally, the brothers have invested in the best lifting equipment as part of a commitment to make things easier for the installers. The same thing holds in the shop, where the number of full and part-time employees ranges from 15-20. And if there’s a stretch where orders are particularly high, “There are always people coming in and out of the shop saying, ‘If you need a hand, call me,’” Mirko Petrov says. “I know 20 guys I can call if we need a hand for fabricating or installing. The bottom line of their management philosophy: Money talks and fairness talks. Mirko Petrov says that means everything from making the shop employees feel heard if there’s a problem or concern, to granting requests when possible, staying clear of micro-managing, and letting everyone know they’re part of a chain – and the next guy is waiting to move the job along. While they’ve benefitted from their father’s ownership of the machine shop, both the brothers and their employees have also been helped by their mother, who’s a Realtor® and helped many of them find homes and get mortgages. “Once they’re in a home and in a mortgage, they’re grateful and they want to stay and work,” he says. “That’s success in my mind. I love to see that they’re successful.” The Petrovs are also homebuilders, and the combination of their mother’s help in finding real-estate opportunities, and the chance to see what their residential customers are putting in their homes has allowed them to build homes that are to their own tastes. “We’ve used our favorite designs of some of our clients and they’ve become our showrooms for jobs where you can see the different things you can do,” Mirko Petrov says. “They’re your typical stone-shop jobs, but they’re beautiful.” Despite its reliance on technology, he says his greatest pleasure with TorontoGranite.com is meeting people and helping them by going into their homes and doing their jobs, while learning how they live. “And we love it when they have something good to say about our family and our team,” he adds. That family – the Petrovs and the team in the shop – is to Mirko Petrov the company’s greatest success. “It has kept our family together,” he concludes. “We realized we can grow together as a family. And we’ve got the whole city with as many countertops as people want to order. Now, we just want to keep growing with the industry, keep getting more ideas and get the best equipment out there.”
