Last month, I made my annual trip to the
StonExpo trade show in Las Vegas,
NV. And while I don’t think that
trade shows provide a tell-all barometer on the state of a particular industry,
I was curious to gauge the feelings and concerns of those in attendance.
The FusionTM 4000 CNC saw/waterjet from Park
Industries is designed and manufactured with a smaller footprint. The
revolutionary design allows table access from the front or the sides.
Technical
details provide a frame of reference only. Because stone is a product of
nature, testing to determine specific physical qualities should be repeated for
each project.
The LCR from Marmo Meccanica is a specialized
linear polishing machine for flat edges that can process a pencil round profile
in sizes up to 4 cm and chamfers up to 6 cm.
Like
many stone industry professionals today, I find myself facing difficult
financial times for the first time in my career. Over the past 15-plus years,
my professional day-to-day life has grown in unison with the growth of the
stone industry, and this has been particularly evident in my robust travel
schedule.
The Fab Master from Edgemarc Tools can be used as an edge profiler as well as to cut out any shape sink, polish, drill faucet holes, create drain boards, surface polish or hone and more, according to the manufacturer.
When I opened up my paper of choice, The New York Times, two weeks ago, I saw a headline in the Home Section entitled, “What’s Lurking in Your Countertop?” By now, we all probably know much of what happened as a result of this article. Subsequently, other major news outlets - including radio and network television - have picked up the story. On YouTube, videos appeared showing people holding a Geiger counter against a granite slab - dramatic scenes with jumping needles and lots of noise indicating that something is seriously awry. Stone distributors and fabricators started receiving way too many calls from concerned homeowners - some hysterical; some reasonable but worried.
With American stone industry companies fighting harder than ever before to turn a profit, we are seeing a number of approaches to offsetting the decline in sales these days. Some firms are lowering prices in an attempt to draw more business - although this seems rare among established stone fabricators. Other have changed their target client base, and they are aggressively going after new markets in an attempt to regain some lost business (i.e. remodeling work rather than new construction). Unfortunately, though, no matter what sales and marketing strategy is in place, the majority of U.S. stone fabrication shops will not do the same volume of business that they did a year ago (or even two years ago).
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