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didnt look like a good time to get a business started. Do you think the small type of companies are having their day in the sun?
In my mind, Masco stood for “Massive Company.” The countertop business just doesn’t lend itself to massive industrialization, and it won’t until people start settling for standardized kitchen sizes and layouts. I don’t think that will be this year. ;^)
Yea, the business climate really doesn’t lend it self for big companies. I think shops that are 1-4 guys are in better shape. You know your cost ,Insurance companies aren’t always looking at you etc. Big companies have big cost . Unless you own everything thing it’s hard to stay afloat.
Small takes it all!
Too small to be seen by the big entities, (IRS, CIA, Immigration at Border Crossings etc) ,
Yet powerful, like a diminutive microbe that no one has any acquired immunity too.
Able to chainsaw a large organization off at the knees. 
And big enough to rake in decent bucks,
Yet Small and agile enough to adjust instantly to changing parameters and rapidly turn on a dime,
And magically expand into another country or market segment with a new and improved business plan.
Anyway guys, That’s my take on organizational size .
It’s all about momentum!I recall Dupont telling us back in the day that only the big guys would survive. Were they just lying or was that true at one time?
We always stayed consistent and by always staying one man short. It kept everyone working hard and we tried not to overpay for unnecessary salaries.
Andy, DuPont told us in the 90’s that the future company would either be high volume and large, or very small. We stayed medium sized and did well for a long time, but through attrition we are smaller now.
My take is that the larger guys that are fighting it ot between them is simply natural selection at work. After the recovery the survivors will rake it in.
I know..for about a brief moment..I wanted to be big until I talked to Grant at Sterling Surfaces( Jon, tell grant he saved my but and thanx for the thoughtful business talk) please tell him I said super thanx. he probaly doesnt even remember..but in any case..I remember saying,,WOW i hope someday I have a big shop like Sterling..he said you already are in the game!!
I could never handle the pressure of getting 200 countertops fabbed and installed in a month…Im gonna stcik to my little artsy type tops that I can charge ridiculous amounts of money for..its still hard though…I still get nervous..but if you hit the pavement there is work out there for all…Mike Gladstone helped me out too..it takes lotsa money and good tools to get out that much work…the desire to have 500 employees would seem like a nightmare as opposed to a dreamIt’s like they say….if you want to be a big fabricator and make a small fortune, start with a large one.
Being big may of made sense when home building was booming. The stone shop I worked for was fabbing/installing about 125 houses a week. At the end, they were doing maybe 10 – 15..made no sense to stay in business at that point, and with the tax changes made lots of sense to get out and carry current losses to past profits.
I doubt we will see days like that again in our lifetime, perhaps never. Fun while it lasted tho.
Gene,
I can guarantee Grant remembers your chat. He is a salt of the earth type when it comes to helping out his fellow fabricator. That whole dang company is staffed with good guys. I have spoken with many of them and never once did I feel like they wanted to be anywhere else.Gene, at one time I worked 14. I made about the same money when I started out working 3 (that was the beginning of Lowes/HomeDepot/84Lumber?handyDans) The bigger i got, the more $it$ took to pay for everything. That big sucking sound came along, as Ross perot described, 1998, everything went to Mexico (I took a couple years off 2000 , gave back my years of prosperity to church and communtiy projects, then got back into the game.
Now I am a speciality entity… I do with cabinets, what you do with countertops, if they can dream it, I can build it.
While most days in the shop it is just me, I do have a part-timer to call on if needed . Either way i stay one person short as Andy said.
Bigger is not always better.. too bad we don’t have pics of your tops on my woodworking…
I would love to have more employees that could get more work done, but it would force me to have more sales staff with higher insurance costs.
We are just resigned to the fact we are a small shop and live with it.
Love to make more money though.
Just for another perspective- We actually went the other way during the recession. We were forced to get bigger. We’ve doubled in size and in production, but that’s what we had to do to compete and make money in our market. We are doing about 50-60 kitchens a week now. We are importing most of our own stone. We have a second fab location, and we’re even doing solid surface now!
There are always going to be small shops. And there are always going to be big shops. I think the ones that will have a tough time are the ones in between.
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