Earlier today, I visited a stone fabrication shop in my home state of New Jersey, and to me, the owner was the prototype of today’s progressive stone fabricator. He was a relatively young guy who started in the business as a laborer and worked his way up the ladder. Starting his own shop with hand tools, he gradually expanded over the years, and he now operates a 100% digital shop — from templating to slab layout to cutting and polishing. The shop was a model of efficiency, and perhaps even more important, it was busy, with job carts of high-end fabrication work neatly lined up and ready to go.

In speaking with this gentleman, one of the topics that came up was education, and he was eager to attend some of the sessions at the Coverings event later this month (a sampling of these sessions can be found on page 54 of this issue). In particular, he was looking forward to attending some of the sales and marketing sessions, which made a lot of sense to me. After seeing his level of expertise, this is not necessarily a guy who needs to learn how to do a sink cut-out, but he wants to know how to improve the “business” side of his operation. As he said to me, “It’s not raining jobs like it was in 2005,” which is why he is wisely looking for an edge.