[Jon Olson]

Hello Tom. I ‘am just a lazy speller . I try to do to many things at one time. I might have a bad attitude with regards posting. For me it’s close enough. But this morning I was really embarrassed with my approach

[Darren DeSilva]

Posted By Kowboy on 21 Oct 2008 09:48 AM

Posted By Jon Olson on 21 Oct 2008 06:15 AM

I didn’t know there was so much division. Is there really?  Maybe 5 years ago.  I will say for some reason it seems easier for a SS shop to except Granite. Than a Granite shop to except SS into there line.

 

 

 

Jon:

I must agree. There is no question that the granite guys have a superiority complex about granite compared to other surfaces. They are convinced that granite is the be-all and end-all of countertops and completely deny any shortcomings of the product.

If you need proof, visit stone websites and hear the contempt and disgust with which most regard other surfaces. They hold their noses to do estone and brag about how much Corian they’ve torn out.

Solid surface guys are just a cheaper bunch of whores. We’ll do anything (that’s a quality product) that makes us money unapologetically.

Joe

I AM NOT A WHORE !!!!!        I  just like doing high quality work.

Darren

[Gordon Doull]

We too work on all surfaces, but WHORE is such an ugly word…..

I prefer “professional affection application engineer”.    

[Tom M]

That sounds expensive. I’ll take whore (for twenty, Alex).

[Gene McDonald]

Well whose da PIMP of us all that offer Full Service

[Kevin Cole]

I agree with you, polite, when I first entered the “solid surface industry” I began researching what shops were doing and I found more and more were opening their doors to other materials. This has been attributed a lot to the increasing popularity of engineered stone, which “stone fabricators” were reluctant to work with. In the past 5 years, we have seen about 80 percent of “solid surface shops” bring on other materials. Nowadays, I honestly believe the solid surface only shops are very much in the minority. Likewise, more and more of what were traditionally “stone” shops are fabricating the quartz surfaces also. I think it all boils down to providing your customers with what they want, not what you want. I hope you got a chance to read my editorial in the Sept. issue of SF titled “Us vs. Us.” It digs into this issue (as much as possible in a page), and I have received a lot of response about it.

Kevin

[Un-Authorized]

Posted By Kevin Cole on 27 Oct 2008 09:23 AM
I agree with you, polite, when I first entered the “solid surface industry” I began researching what shops were doing and I found more and more were opening their doors to other materials. This has been attributed a lot to the increasing popularity of engineered stone, which “stone fabricators” were reluctant to work with. In the past 5 years, we have seen about 80 percent of “solid surface shops” bring on other materials. Nowadays, I honestly believe the solid surface only shops are very much in the minority. Likewise, more and more of what were traditionally “stone” shops are fabricating the quartz surfaces also. I think it all boils down to providing your customers with what they want, not what you want. I hope you got a chance to read my editorial in the Sept. issue of SF titled “Us vs. Us.” It digs into this issue (as much as possible in a page), and I have received a lot of response about it.

Kevin

Kevin:

In your editorial you say:

“While fair competition is generally necessary, it’s not ethical to steal another starving man’s harvest because you are hungry. In my opinion, too much of that has been going on.”

I very much disagree with this passage, and before I forget, I have to ask if you have ever owned a business? It seems easier for those who have never had any skin in the game to talk about fairness and ethics.

I am not advocating for unfair competition, like bribing the bookeeper of your competitor to give you inside information. However, like a lioness killing a baby gazell, capitalism can be brutal.

Years ago, a competitor of mine had a shop for sale. Word leaked out that the owner was dying of cancer. His potential deals fell through and instead making offers, we competitors circled like vultures waiting to feed off the carcass of clients availiable when the inevitable happened. 

If a man is starving, it is because he has run his countertop business inefficiently and/or made poor decisions. We have an obligation to help him die, so that his last gasps of discount pricing don’t hurt us.

Do I apologize? Like the lioness, absolutely not. My obligation to myself, my family and customers demands that I aquire new customers ethically at the lowest possible cost.

My Corian distributor’s salesman once expressed amazement at the vitriol between my shop and a very large competitor. While we were civil to each other, he failed to grasp that we are fighting for our lives every day. This is the essence of capitalism, a theme that needs repeating especially this close to an election.

No one can make a case that I’m in this industry for myself or that I haven’t contributed more than my share to fellow fabricators, my record speaks for itself. However, if the lioness of inefficiency or bad decisions clamps onto your haunch, I’m going to lead my fellow gazells away from the kill as fast as possible without looking back. We’ll miss you and thanks for taking the hunting pressure off the rest of us for a bit, but you deserve to die.

Joe

[Tom M]

I have never, and will never:
Take an employee away from another reputable shop. If the guy is in a lousy joint and will leave anyway, I’m all ears.

Take away a customer on any pretense other than they want to move on to a different fabricator. It has resulted in me doing a fair amount of work for other shops, because they know I won’t troll for new customers.

[David Gerard]

Good analogy Joe.  One thing though,   lionesses hunt in prides,  they know how create ambushes.  They are hiding behind every pricker bush and each has her own distinct personality, 

one may be called “economy”, another ” monapoly” ,  “allways hungry” and so on.  Be careful at the water hole also,  there are crocodilles there (fussy customers) when you get into the water with them they will eat you alive too,  but  after spinning you under water in he mud and dissmembering you .  They become even more ravenous when the water level goes down during the dry season,  they are natural opportunist.
  

Happy dodging

[Kevin Cole]

Hey Joe:

The point of that line in my editorial you quoted was that there is a difference between “stealing” and “earning” a customer.

By the way, I have owned a small marketing/PR business, although the business I now run is a much larger operation that demands quality but also maintaining a solid bottom line.

That said, my point, which I went on to elaborate, was that if your philosophy of driving sales is to bad mouth your competition and/or their product, then I feel you are basing your sales philosophy on a poor foundation. A customer that is even somewhat sophisticated is likely to be turned off by that kind of talk. I would say a sales strategy based on bad mouthing the competition isn’t really selling, it’s more along the lines of attack-dog politics. That kind of talk, in my opinion, just makes people dislike salesmen. If someone is going to bad mouth the competition, shouldn’t it be the customer? When you attack your competition rather than defining your own strengths independently, it hints that you don’t have anything worthy about your own operations or product to talk about. Building your sales based on your own merits seems like a much better way to do business than simply talking bad about the competition.

Also, you say that if a man is starving it is because he ran his business poorly, and I disagree, especially in light of the current economic situation. For instance, many fabricators leveraged themselves heavily into the builder market during the housing boom and sort of found their niche there, and when it collapsed, virtually overnight, they were stuck with 1) a huge amount of customers that were MIA and 2) a lot of money owed them that they would never be able to collect. I wouldn’t necessarily fault the owner and say he ran his business into the ground. Even in your own example, could you say getting cancer was a “poor business decision”? 

I personally would have a very tough time of purposely taking advantage of a dying man. But that is a matter of personal beliefs and what we can each morally live with. My point, overall, though is that there is a difference between fair competition and ruthlessness, deceit and bringing others down rather than elevating your own business.

I would opt for the former over the latter.

Kevin

[Eli Polite]

i dont agree with you cow boy ! i worked for some one who once went and visited a shop in another state while we were still trying to get our stone shop off of the ground. at the time we were 6 people and working hard. this other shop owner was nice enough to let him come and look at his operation and look at the cnc’s he was operating because ours was on on order and we wanted to see it in action. well the next day when the owner came back he told me he was a little nervous because he offered the guys cnc operator a job and basically stole his employee. this was a shop that was 20 times the size of ours. when the other owner found out what happened. he was pissed and threatened to open shop in our area and put us out of business.

needless to say i was pissed as well this guy threatened my lively hood as well as every one that worked for him. i should have taken that as a warning sign as to the true character of the person i was working for. most every one in this form knows this person so i am trying to be desecrate. i gave that person 7 years of service just to be lied to. now i am one of his competitors. i still to this day wish that it did not go the way that it did but what can you do.

we do business honestly and if you dont think that that has no impact on our relationship we have with our vendors your wrong. we have got business simply because vendors are tired of feuding companies coming through there doors bad mouthing each other. so they came to the one company that was not raising hell and stirring the pot.

there is few things in this life that you need to protect with your life the main thing is your reputation

[Un-Authorized]

Posted By Kevin Cole on 30 Oct 2008 11:33 AM
Hey Joe:

The point of that line in my editorial you quoted was that there is a difference between “stealing” and “earning” a customer.

By the way, I have owned a small marketing/PR business, although the business I now run is a much larger operation that demands quality but also maintaining a solid bottom line.

That said, my point, which I went on to elaborate, was that if your philosophy of driving sales is to bad mouth your competition and/or their product, then I feel you are basing your sales philosophy on a poor foundation. A customer that is even somewhat sophisticated is likely to be turned off by that kind of talk. I would say a sales strategy based on bad mouthing the competition isn’t really selling, it’s more along the lines of attack-dog politics. That kind of talk, in my opinion, just makes people dislike salesmen. If someone is going to bad mouth the competition, shouldn’t it be the customer? When you attack your competition rather than defining your own strengths independently, it hints that you don’t have anything worthy about your own operations or product to talk about. Building your sales based on your own merits seems like a much better way to do business than simply talking bad about the competition.

Also, you say that if a man is starving it is because he ran his business poorly, and I disagree, especially in light of the current economic situation. For instance, many fabricators leveraged themselves heavily into the builder market during the housing boom and sort of found their niche there, and when it collapsed, virtually overnight, they were stuck with 1) a huge amount of customers that were MIA and 2) a lot of money owed them that they would never be able to collect. I wouldn’t necessarily fault the owner and say he ran his business into the ground. Even in your own example, could you say getting cancer was a “poor business decision”? 

I personally would have a very tough time of purposely taking advantage of a dying man. But that is a matter of personal beliefs and what we can each morally live with. My point, overall, though is that there is a difference between fair competition and ruthlessness, deceit and bringing others down rather than elevating your own business.

I would opt for the former over the latter.

Kevin

Kevin:

We can play semantical games all day as to the difference between “stealing” and “earning” a customer, but the bottom line is if I can ethically take your customer from you, I deserve him. Why is this good for you? Because it makes you realize that you must change whatever reasons you gave that customer to leave you for me. Should you ignore the cruelties of the marketplace, I will continue to help myself to your customers until you are dead.

I have never engaged in bad-mouthing my competition. Not entirely because of any great moral constraint, but because I’ve never found a way to do it that doesn’t make myself look worse than the guy I’m bad-mouthing. As Harvey Mackay says in  his book “Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten”, “Take care of the customers and they will take care of the competition.” Appaarently we agree about this.

Kevin, leveraging yourself into the builder market has proven to be a bad business decision. That same fabricator had the opportunity to keep a toe in the remodeling pool but he decided against it. He must pay the price. He gets absolutely no sympathy from me whatsoever. Get comfortable with your position on the food chain or get out.

The American car companies made most of their profits from truck sales. Now gasoline prices have caused truck sales to plummet. Somehow, I’m supposed to risk my tax dollars in an automotive bailout because American car companies’ executives couldn’t or wouldn’t make the efficient small cars demanded by consumers? No thank you. The executives made the wrong call and if bankruptcy of Ford, GM and Chrysler is the price to be paid, so be it.

What, profits when you make the right call and no penalty when you make the wrong one? Not only is this attitude a denigration of all the efforts and acomplishments of hard-working entrapreneurs, the ecomomic backbone of this great country, it is a slide to socialism.

You can’t just be a capable manager, that’s not enough. You must have enough vision to see into the future accurately.

Getting cancer is obviously not a poor business decision. However, not buying business and life insurance when times are good is a very bad business decision. Yes, the image of a sobbbing widow and unfunded college educations is sad, but I’m only able to be charitable if I’m making money from the customers the  short-sighted owner brought me.

Deciet and bringing others down? Not for me.

Fair competiton to the point of ruthlessness? Absolutely and unapologetically. Consumers deserve no less and they demand it.

I love you man,

Joe

[Un-Authorized]

Posted By politefab on 30 Oct 2008 04:22 PM
i dont agree with you cow boy ! i worked for some one who once went and visited a shop in another state while we were still trying to get our stone shop off of the ground. at the time we were 6 people and working hard. this other shop owner was nice enough to let him come and look at his operation and look at the cnc’s he was operating because ours was on on order and we wanted to see it in action. well the next day when the owner came back he told me he was a little nervous because he offered the guys cnc operator a job and basically stole his employee. this was a shop that was 20 times the size of ours. when the other owner found out what happened. he was pissed and threatened to open shop in our area and put us out of business.

needless to say i was pissed as well this guy threatened my lively hood as well as every one that worked for him. i should have taken that as a warning sign as to the true character of the person i was working for. most every one in this form knows this person so i am trying to be desecrate. i gave that person 7 years of service just to be lied to. now i am one of his competitors. i still to this day wish that it did not go the way that it did but what can you do.

we do business honestly and if you dont think that that has no impact on our relationship we have with our vendors your wrong. we have got business simply because vendors are tired of feuding companies coming through there doors bad mouthing each other. so they came to the one company that was not raising hell and stirring the pot.

there is few things in this life that you need to protect with your life the main thing is your reputation

Eli:

I have never had a post as completely misunderstood as you have apparently misunderstood mine.

I have never advocated and do not advocate visiting a shop under false pretenses in order to “steal” employees. That is unethical. However, contacting a competitor’s employees on their free time to discuss employment opportunities is perfectly ethical and benifits the employees greatly, come wage negotiation time.

If your boss engaged in unethical behavior, you are correct, you should have used that information to assess his character.

I have never advocated doing business dishonestly and I agree that could and  would  eventually have a negative effect on vendors.

Reputation is everything; we agree again.

The point of my response to Kevin’s editorial is to demonstrate that as capiatlists, we have an obligation to kill competitors, ethically of course. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends or that we can’t offer each other advice that benifits the industry that feeds us all.

Joe

[Kevin Cole]

Your point is well taken Joe, however each person must decide what is “ethically” getting a customer and what crosses that boundary.

I did not mean to imply that you personally were engaged in bad mouthing your competition, just that a move away from that tactic is needed was one of the main ideas of my editorial. I hope I didn’t come across sounding accusatory. Another point in my editorial was that every material has its place based on its qualities and the particular application/situation being considered.

I agree that a bad decisions should come with consequences, but I have a hard time believing that the plunge in builder business to the level it is was forseeable, and I like to think the consequences of choices are relative to just how bad the decision was, although I know that is not always the case. I also think that not everyone is in the position to afford business and/or life insurance (or perhaps not to the necessary levels), although I dont know the specifics of the situation you were in. Just think about some of the people you know that don’t have the means to cover every potential catastrophe. Do they deserve to be driven from business should one of them arise? I have a hard time with that one, and I don’t see it in such black & white terms as you, I guess.

Believe me, I am very competitive and work hard to do better than my competition when I am able, but I guess I’m not one to be ruthless. Ultimately, I think it is possible to be compassionate and still be successful (I don’t see those as being in opposition to each other) and that basing your business on positives will yield a better business (both in terms of respect and success) and an better industry all-around.

I know I can always count on a well put debate with you, Joe, and I enjoy that. I certainly don’t take any of this personal and I think one of the best things about having a place to voice my opinions is that they may make someone stop and think about things, even if they disagree.

My 2 cents,

Kevin

[Un-Authorized]

 

Kevin:

I did not ever think that you were accusing me of “bad mouthing” as I’m sure you knew that I didn’t think “you deserve to die.” We are entitled to some verbal liberties.

Just because someone is “driven from the business” doesn’t mean the industry loses that person. Experienced but failed business owners can make excellent employees. And who knows? Maybe they’ll save thier money, take another shot and make it big the second time around. That’s the beauty of capitalism in this country.

Joe

[Author]

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