Selling Granite the Second Time Around
By K. Schipper
In granite fabrication, there’s a question often left unasked: What happens to the stone on the other side of the cut?
Large-enough pieces are handy for a bit of extra work (or repair) on a project, but pound-after-pound of bones end up in the dumpster and the landfill.
Fortunately, those remnants — and even old countertops being replaced in remodels – are finding new life with others in the stone trade. Thanks to a new breed of granite recyclers, what once might have gone to the landfill is now being converted into pavers, tiles and thin veneer that’s dressing up interior walls and exterior patios in ways that no man-made product, or even a lesser stone, can do.
OPTIONS, OPTIONS
People in the trade have been concerned with granite waste; for years, options ranged from selling larger remnants to do small jobs to crushing for decorative paving to, well, the dumpter.
Others are reworking remnants into other usable forms. John Tesh and Ronnie McClain, for example, originally hoped to develop a way to punch, not cut, faucet holes in finished countertops. Instead they developed the Diarex® Stone Cycler, which Tesh markets through his website and sells through GranQuartz.
While the equipment may be the thing with Tesh and McClain, for Julie Rizzo, recycling granite has generated a complete business model. Not only is she selling the product herself from her Recycled Granite in Valparaiso, Ind., but she’s licensed her business model to 25 other locations in 18 states.
Today, the Valparaiso outlet sells a mix of thin-stone veneers, in both panels and individual pieces for interior and exterior features – “They’re a little more popular,” she says – as well as granite pavers in a variety of shapes.
“We also make a concrete paver with recycled granite inside it,” Rizzo says.
All of Rizzo’s raw materials come from post-production waste from granite fabricators.
“We have a pallet program, so that instead of the fabricator throwing the material away, it’s either put on a pallet or into a different type of dumpster for us,” she explains. “We bring it back to our facility and repurpose it.”
She estimates her facility processes about 50,000 lbs of stone each month. And, she figures she saves each of her fabricator-suppliers on average approximately $5,000 in landfill fees annually.
“I equate it to being a homeowner where you’re putting out your plastics and your metals for recycling,” Rizzo says. “You know they can be recycled, but you don’t know how to recycle them so you give them to people who know how to get the job done.”
For the person willing to do the work, granite pavers – just like granite countertops – are seen as a premium product, and can sell for a premium price.
“Because it’s solid stone, it’s comparable to flagstone or bluestone,” she says. “Our concrete-and-recycled-granite pavers are a little on the higher end of the concrete paver market, too.”
It’s also a product that’s currently benefitting from the popularity of home improvement shows on cable television. Rizzo says she sells her products to both contractors and homeowners who have become aware of recycled granite through shows on both HGTV (Home & Garden Television) and the DIY Network.
“We just helped install a 300 ft2 bathroom for “Bath Crashers” (on the DIY Network), and it’s amazing the interest that drew,” she says.
Rizzo and her network members also market through sustainability and ecology shows around the country and are active with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
“Particularly with corporations, they’re looking for green products for their construction projects and to get LEED™ (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) points,” she says. “They also want to make a difference in their local environments.”
SEEKING GREEN-NESS
The same could probably be said for Rizzo’s licensees; Debbie Johnson and her husband Jerry own Colorado Recycled Granite in Colorado Springs, Colo., and she says it was the green-ness of the product that first caught their attention.
Debbie Johnson explains that the couple was in the process of doing some remodeling – mainly replacing tile – in the kitchen when they happened to see Rizzo and her thin-veneer product on an episode of DIY’s I Want That.
“We had looked at just about every manmade tile known to man, but we were looking for something green,” she says. “We went to Julie’s website and saw there was a chance of getting into the business, so we did our homework and decided to take a chance on it.”
The Johnsons opened for business in March 2013, and they’re currently getting waste materials from a fabricator in Colorado Springs, and a couple more in Denver. However, they’ve also been able to tap heavily into the remodeling market.
“We’ve had whole vanities and countertops picked up,” she says. “There are companies that just renovate hotels and they’ve called us to come and get the countertops they’re pulling out. They’re a great asset for us to have, and we save them a lot of money by getting them out of the way.”
So far, Debbie Johnson says her best product has been veneer tile for outdoor kitchens and fireplaces, and the best customers have come primarily from the DIY crowd, although, “we have to or three contractors who have come by and bought product for client projects.”
Johnson says she’s also learned a few things in the time she’s been open. One key thing is that homeowners often need help arranging installation of their recycled products.
“So, we do a little installation,” she says. “We have a couple contractors who are familiar with the product and do an excellent job of installing it. The contractors are coming on board a little bit more.”
Installation isn’t necessarily an issue with Shane Petersen, co-owner of Stone Tek Products in Belgrade, Mont. Petersen and his brother, Shawn, have been installing stone and tile flooring through Petersen Flooring since the late 1990s.
“We were already kind of in the industry and looking for something new and something different,” Petersen says. “As a tile company, we just do installations; we don’t have a showroom. We didn’t want to be in competition with the people we work for, so this is something new we were able to do, and we also saw all the waste that was being made with granite countertops.”
Two years after starting with recycled granite, Stone Tek has its own little showroom to sell direct to homeowners, but the company also sells through a couple retailers who serve the landscape/hardscape market.
Petersen says a lot of his job is simply educating people about recycled granite.
“This is not a typical product, so we’re slowly educating people and doing a lot with our website,” he says. “We also are members of some builder and contractor groups, and that’s helped us get the word out. And, word-of-mouth has been really good.”
Most of the company’s materials come from countertop fabricators located in nearby Bozeman, Mont., although Petersen says he’s also worked with a fabrication shop in Helena, Montana’s state capital.
“That’s a little tough because it’s a 90-mile drive, and it puts a lot more cost to it,” Petersen says. “Transportation is a big part of the overhead for us, so it doesn’t work for us to go very far, although we’ve gotten calls from fabricators outside our area wanting us to do something with their waste.”
As with the Johnsons, Petersen says getting the product installed can be a hassle for some potential clients. He’s looking for a couple landscape/hardscape companies in his area to possibly take that on.
“It’s a little bit of a different installation from Home Depot pavers,” he observes. “There’s a little more art involved. We do work with homeowners a little bit and try to give them the basics on installation. And, it is something a homeowner can do if they’re handy at all.”
Petersen says he’s found the product to be a good one to install over exterior concrete, and his customers are also finding new uses for it.
“We had a guy come in and wonder if they could be used on a large scale to mimic the reflecting pools he’d seen in Italy,” Petersen says. “We sat down with him and figured it out, and he has a 5’ X 15’ pool entirely made out of stacked granite pavers.”
Another popular item he’s found is stepping stones – in several different sizes – for people to create inexpensive pathways.
“We’ve used some of our tumbled materials for that,” he says. “Those are our waste products. We want to get to zero waste.”
A DIFFERENT (BUSINESS) MODEL
Someone who’s already achieved zero waste is Sandy Brady, the new owner of Earth Stone Products in Greensboro, N.C.
The company dates back to the mid-2000s when John Tesh set it up as a manufacturing, installation and testing facility for his recycled products. Brady had used space at its facility while doing engraving for Lexington, N.C.-based artist and designer Bob Timberlake, and engraving granite pavers. He began managing Earth Stone Products earlier in 2013.
Although Brady says he’s a firm believer in recycled granite, he says the reality is that Earth Stone Products hasn’t been making a profit.
“That’s for the simple reason that the economy tanked back in 2007 and 2008, and the building boom went downhill,” he observes. “It’s been only in the last six-to-eight months that we’ve seen an increase in people spending money.”
However, he attributes part of that to the company’s business model.
“We had numerous distributors out there,” Brady says. “The problem with that is by the time it got to the end user, it was like buying a brick of gold. Our new game plan is to be a one-stop shop where people see what’s on our website, call us directly, and then we line up the shipping.”
Rather than paying as much as $7.50 ft2, he believes that should take the price down to the $3-$3.50 ft2 range.
His other move: offering installation through the company. So far that’s taken Brady and his crew as far west as Missouri, and he says besides being knowledgeable of the product, and often less expensive than local contractors, the company also offers a lifetime warranty.
Nor is Brady stopping there. He’s also working with Timberlake and Spruce Pine, N.C.-based Buck Stove® Corp. to design and build complete outdoor packages.
“I’m talking about furniture, grills and fire pits that are going to be made out of 100 percent recycled materials,” Brady says. “That includes recycled steel. The only thing that won’t be recycled are the burners.”
He says people are back to spending more money again, but also looking for value for their money.
“They want quality and they seem willing to pay a little bit more for that quality.”
In the meantime, Brady estimates Earth Stone Products is keeping as much as 225 tons of scrap granite out of landfills every month, saving some of its suppliers as much as $3,000 monthly in landfill fees. The company is currently collecting stone from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, and expects to be drawing waste from West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama shortly.
As for that claim of being zero waste, the North Carolina Highway Department is collecting the company’s waste and processing it for use as underlayment for its roads.
Brady says Earth Stone Products is making about nine different products from 3cm granite. As with Stone Tek, he says a new one that’s catching people’s eyes is larger granite stepping stones.
“They’re odd-shaped and about 16” X 20”,” he says. “They also have a tumbled look. We put it through our process and make it Old-World looking.”
For now, the biggest problem with recycled granite, all these recyclers say, is that it’s still getting its sea legs, although with continued interest from corporations and government entities looking for green products to meet LEED requirements, there’s a base on which to grow.
However, both Recycled Granite’s Rizzo and Stone Tek’s Petersen say for now, what’s really needed is simply to get it on people’s radar.
“It’s all about education,” says Rizzo, adding that as schools of design and architecture beginning training their students on these products demand is certain to grow.
Petersen agrees that education is the key to success with recycled granite.
“This just isn’t on people’s minds yet,” he says. “They’re not looking for it because they don’t know it exists. When we show it to people, there are so many questions. People are fascinated by it, they love stone, and they love the idea it’s green.”
As for getting into the business of supplying the recycled stone, for the right operation, Rizzo calls it a “no brainer.”
“Because it’s so expensive to ship these products, this is a local business,” she says. “Especially if you’re selling pavers, stone veneer or aggregates and you’re manufacturing products, this is perfect.”
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