Discouraged with the direction of the company, I left and opened Granite Corp. in December of 2005. We picked a location about 45 miles west of Chicago, IL, to avoid intense competition and capture the growth of the western suburbs. Initially, we started with three employees to develop our sales strategies and organize the shop. I worked on the overall strategy and designed the layout of production. Flora Harrington, who had been in granite sales for over seven years, developed new accounts and sales strategies. My wife Beth helped with the tedious task of entering the price lists of numerous vendors. She also created the slogan that appears in our logo today: “For the things in life that are set in stone.”
Our target market has become everyone. We don’t focus just on one individual market in our area. We offer seven different price lists to fit the needs of every relationship we can build. Our markets include retail sales, builders, affiliates, designers and even contractors that want to install their own granite. We try to recognize the needs of any person or company that we work with. Finding a new creative way to produce granite and marble has become a mission of ours. We also had the opportunity of having strong relationships with vendors from our past experience in the stone industry. This was a tremendous help in starting Granite Corp., because creating a name in this industry is a tough uphill battle.