For Front Range Stone of Englewood, CO, the past few years have been a period of evolution. Although the number of employees at the company has been reduced from more than 130 employees in 2006 (when Stone World wrote its first article on Front Range Stone) to a current total of 70, its operations have dramatically increased in terms of technology, and these investments can be found at virtually all stages of the production process.
“There has been a lot of changes, both in economic climate and in the builder climate,” explained Brad Pearce, co-owner of Front Range Stone. “Looking at what people went through from 2008 to 2010, we refined our fabrication process. Fabricators tend to go one of two ways. They either stop spending, or they continue investing in the business and see the value in mechanization and process improvement to ultimately reduce overhead. It may seem counter-intuitive to spend over $1 million or more to save money, but that’s what we did. We had been running our CNCs since 2003, but we didn’t have a fully digital process.”