The Name Game
The stone industry has grown immensely over the last 10 years, creating more demand for granite countertops, more competition, and more color choices. It has evolved and in general has a positive reputation among builders, remodelers, architects, designers, fabricators, etc. Most slab suppliers are very knowledgeable and well versed in the stones that they supply. There is however, a game which they all seem to play, “The Name Game.” Suppliers often buy stone from a quarry under a certain name, but they may end up changing it when it comes time to selling it to a fabricator. Quarriers also may sell blocks of stone to a variety of block buyers, who also change the name. To make matters worse, distributors, architects, designers and even some fabricators sometimes get in the game and change the names of certain stones.
You might be wondering, why is all this name changing going on? Well there are a number of reasons, but the main theme is someone is always trying to keep some “exclusivity” for their business to get the sale. This re-naming however, is confusing to the consumer and can also be a real headache for the fabricator who has to play stone detective. Over the years we have developed an AKA log, (Also Known As), to keep track of the various names we’ve come across for the same stone. Some colors have as many as 4 different names that they are sold under.
I don’t know about fabricators, but I’m tired of playing this game. I’d like to say, “I quit,” but that just isn’t an option if we want to compete. For now we need to stay in the game and continue being stone detectives and hope that the industry will eventually evolve to color standardization.
Thanks for reading!
Barb
Posted in Granite, Industry News on August 28th, 2007 by Barb | |
