Stone People: Finding the Direct Route
FAIRFIELD, Calif. – Almost all fabricators made some business alterations to survive the recent recession, but Duracite® Custom Countertops went in for the extreme makeover.
Pre-2006, when company president Fadi Halabi says the economic decline first raised its ugly head, Duracite sold almost 90 percent of its countertops on the wholesale market. Today, after engineering a turnaround of mammoth proportions, some 70 percent of its business comes from direct sales to homeowners.
Click image to enlargeIt hasn’t been an easy journey. Not only has Duracite shed locations but Halabi – who believes his employees are really his most-important product – ended up cutting almost two-thirds of his workforce.
Along the way, though, Halabi built what he considers to be a better business model by expanding Duracite’s product line into more general construction. As the economy improves he’s confident the company will once again return to its pre-recession numbers.
BIG BUMP
For a company turning 40 next year, the recession could be considered a mid-life crisis – a prolonged bump in the road for a business that generally keeps ahead of the crowd.
Initially launched to make cultured marble for hotels and commercial applications, Duracite was one of the first companies in Northern California to take on DuPont™ Corian®.
“Over time, we grew to be one of the largest client fabricators of Corian in the country,” says Halabi. “Then, in 1990, we added the stone business. That gave us kind of a head start on it, and helped us be in position to benefit from the initial growth of the business in the 1990s.”
Halabi himself joined Duracite only a couple years before the addition of stone to the operation. A native of Jordan, he came to the United States to study civil engineering at the University of California-Berkeley.
“I had a friend who wanted some help doing some computer work,” he explains. “I came to help him out, and I never left.”
The timing couldn’t have been better. Halabi says he learned the operation “from the back office forward,” and there was a lot to learn, considering Duracite launched its stone venture with a saw custom-made by the firm’s woodworking shop.
“At first, we were doing fireplaces and a few vanity tops for some builders,” he says. “Later, we found out there were machines designed to cut stone, and we started expanding by buying the right equipment. We’ve always been on the leading edge of getting the best equipment for the business.”
By 1995, Duracite had added its first edging machine, and the first CNC came through the door in 1998.
However, what really helped Duracite’s growth in the stone industry came in 2000, when the operation moved into a 60,000 ft2 plant located on seven acres in this community of slightly more than 100,000 people midway between San Francisco and Sacramento on Interstate 80.
“We added roller lines and made the whole operation into more of a manufacturing process,” Halabi says. “We also broke the production into different stations, such as slab layout, cutting, bonding, edging and finishing. At that time we also added two more CNCs.”
However, Fairfield isn’t Duracite’s only location. At its height, the company operated out of 14 locations and several showrooms. Today, besides the corporate headquarters, Duracite facilities are found in California in Arroyo Grande, Fresno, Pittsburg, Stockton, Sacramento, Santa Clara and Santa Rosa, along with a Sparks, Nev., location to serve the greater Reno area.
Some solid-surface fabrication takes place at all of the locations, with showrooms in Arroyo Grande, Santa Rosa and Sparks/Reno, as well as Fairfield. Stone fabrication is done in Fairfield and Fresno.
