For 15 years, Paul Getz was a tile installer. On one of his projects, Getz subbed out the fabrication work for a countertop and installed it himself. This trend of installing countertops continued for a while before Getz decided to open up his own countertop fabrication business. “I was hand fabricating some small pieces,” said Getz. “It is hard to find people who have the ability to do it well by hand. Then if we were down a guy, we all had to work full board to get the work done.” This was how Getz’s shop, Superior Granite, in Mankato, MN, got its start.
At the time, Getz was working 18 hours a day and couldn’t find workers to do everything he needed. “There was a guy in Iowa that was selling a router, a Park [Industries] Destiny,” he said. “To be honest, I didn’t know the first thing about a router. As I was watching it run, I realized that I had been doing it so hard for the past few years. After purchasing that router, I started to do research on lasers. I wanted to learn everything I could about going digital and how I could make it work for my shop. At the time, I didn’t know if I really needed a laser because the system we were doing was fine. I eventually called Laser Products and they showed me how to digitize on the machine. I knew that wouldn’t speed me up enough. So I went out of my comfort zone and got a laser and a plotter. I use that plotter to this day to double check all our work.”