Granite and Marble by Malave, Greensboro, N.C.

June 6, 2006

The president of Granite and Marble by Malave is the third generation of his family to follow the stone trade, and he started at a young age as a helper for his grandfather and his friends.
Even before CNC manufacturers had successfully adapted their machines from glass production to stone, however, Malave saw a vision of the future; and when he opened the doors of his own business in 1996, the shop had one of the first Z. Bavelloni S.p.A.machines in the United States.
Today, Malave runs three CNCs and two Zonato S.p.A. bridge saws, but the company is about much more than speedy output. Malave enjoys educating people about all aspects of his trade, whether it’s through seminars for his customers, the creation of a stone library or consulting with people much newer to the industry.
“It’s important, with the growth of people interested in the industry, that they go to someone who’s had the experience,” he says. “We’ve been there and done that.”

CRYSTAL BALL
Malave jokes about having stone in his veins; his father owns a restoration business, and his brother is a fabricator.
“I really got into the business as a kid helping my grandfather and people like my grandfather,” he says. “He died when I was very young, but I ended up working with a lot of his friends and other people in the industry; they kind of took me under their wing.”
However, Malave didn’t build his career strictly on those youthful experiences. A native of Cherry Hill, N.J., he joined the union at 18 and worked for a couple different locals, eventually signing on with D’Ambrosio Ecclesiastical Art Studios in New York.
“I’ve had incredible role models,” he says. “Some of the people that Mr. D’Ambrosio brought from overseas were master craftsmen – really artists he imported to do paintings on ceilings and the marble and everything else. I had the opportunity to work with some of the finest craftsmen in the world.”
Malave might have stayed in New York, except that he enjoys traveling; a friend asked if he’d like to take a weekend trip to North Carolina. He immediately saw opportunity in the furniture industry, and with a new way of stone production.
“Right at the same time was when the CNC machines were first being shown,” he says. “I was looking through a crystal ball at the future, and I saw that was the way to go, so I rubbed nickels together, borrowed from everybody I could, and bought one.”
Actually, the process wasn’t nearly that simple. Malave began by looking for a CNC that was operating in a stone shop. Instead, he found glass machines in the process of being converted to stone work, with spindles that wouldn’t hold up to the rigors of stone.
Ultimately, he researched the topic and made a trip to Italy.
“I spent quite a bit of time finding out the differences between the machines and what a CNC would and wouldn’t do,” Malave explains. “Then, I was fortunate. I made a deal with Z. Bavelloni to provide me with a technician.”
Even then, the path wasn’t a smooth one. By the time Malave and the technician had figured out the machine’s capabilities, he’d oversold his production.
“They told me the machine could do X lineal feet in a day, but once we got it installed and running, we found it could only do Y lineal feet,” he says. “I immediately started running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I also ordered a second one. We ran that one 24 hours a day for a couple years and then got the third one.”
Then, right about the time he had caught up on his furniture orders, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, started a mass exodus of the furniture industry to China.
“That was an immediate situation that had to be addressed,” he says. “After days of trying to figure out what to do next, I realized all I needed to do was go back to my roots. I started focusing on the residential and commercial end of the business and successfully changed everything over.”

TEACHING AND LEARNING
If there’s one thing that starting heavily in the furniture market taught the Malave staff, it’s the demands of creating a high-end product. Even today, some 20 percent of the shop’s production is for furniture, and the company president says it’s a long process.
“The designers come in and look at the new stone,” he explains. “They bring samples of their furnishings, colors and such, and they try to marry a piece of stone to a top, based on its availability and pricing. There’s a lot that goes into it before the actual pieces are made.”
In some ways, the move to doing more residential and commercial work has been almost as arduous. When Maleve opened his doors in March 1996, very few builders in North Carolina used granite.
“A lot of them thought that Corian® was the next-best thing to sliced bread,” he says. “It was a hurdle for us because they didn’t know anything about granite and didn’t believe in granite. We had to explain the benefits of stone versus the manmade products. Fortunately, as more people moved here from other parts of the United States, the demand became more customer-driven.”
Not that Malave is averse to spreading the word about natural stone. Much earlier in his career he taught apprenticeship classes, and today he sees a big part of his job as sharing his knowledge and experience, whether it’s talking with people newer to the business about how they can expand their production or giving free seminars for his customers as part of the company’s 10th anniversary celebration.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the creation of a stone library in Charlotte, N.C. Malave explains it began when Viking Appliance Corp. hired him to help build a showroom in a new design center.
Malave liked the center so much he ended up doing the showroom as a joint venture with Viking. However, in looking at the building, he walked into what was the boiler room and had a vision of a stone library in its big, square space.
“I went home and sketched it out on a piece of paper, then went to the landlord and told him what I wanted to do,” says Malave. “He loved the idea and gave me the space, even though it wasn’t for rent. We remodeled it, and today the stone library is an accredited AIA (American Institute of Architects) continuing-education learning center.”
Not only does the library give architects the opportunity to see a wide range of natural stones, but Malave does seminars on the entire process of stone production from blocks into slabs or tiles, including his company’s automated production facility.
“We talk about stone, from the mountain to the care and maintenance at the end,” he says.

BIG GOALS
When Malave talks about bringing stone from the mountain, he’s done that, too. He imports his own slabs from both Brazil and Italy, and visits to the quarries and factories of those countries help feed his love of travel.
It also guarantees the qualith of every stone offered by Granite and Marble by Malave.
“I’ve been at this so long, and know so many great companies in both countries, that I’m able to get a selection of stone that’s just unbelievable,” he says. “We stock about 2,000 slabs, and I don’t just go for exotic stuff. There are a lot of types of Uba Tuba, for instance, and I find the best of the best, or something that’s a bit unusual. It might be a basic stone, but it’s just a really good quality.”
That quest for top-quality stones fits well with the company’s customer mix, since Malave definitely isn’t interested in turning out a cookie-cutter product. He says the company does work with some homebuilders – even those building tract homes – but only those building higher-end homes with custom kitchens.
It’s an approach that’s also taken Malave’s reputation well beyond his North Carolina market. He says many of his customers have multiple homes that have taken his crews to places as far away as Colorado and the Caribbean.
“We’ll go anywhere and do just about anything,” he says. “We’ve done yachts, airplanes and buses. One of the things I grew up doing is exterior panel systems and wall-hung panels. We also do exterior staircases, pool coping and decking.”
Selling his products has never been a problem for Malave. He believes the quality speaks for itself – he estimates 80 percent of his jobs are either repeat customers or referrals –and he relies a great deal on his showrooms. (The one at the Greensboro facility includes two full kitchens, and a slab bathroom with an illuminated shower lined with translucent stone).
Granite and Marble by Malave also takes its show on the road. The company does a number of home shows around North Carolina, and shows off its capabilities through a booth with a puzzle floor, backlit onyx walls and waterjet inlays.
Just as he was an early adapter of CNC technology, Malave also recognizes the power of the Internet, although he says initially he saw the company’s Website as nothing more than a necessary evil.
“Now, I don’t know how people do without it,” he says. “It’s a marketing tool and a great reference for somebody to go in and learn more about the business. We’ve had quite a few people who were just surfing the Internet, found us and ended up calling us.”
And, just as the company has on-staff technicians for its production equipment, Malave also has a Web designer on his payroll.
Today, Malave employs about 50 people, although only 10 of them are actively involved in fabrication, working two shifts.
“Our standard turnaround is seven-to-10 days,” he says. “When you have the CNC machines and some of the best shop personnel, it’s easy to do.”
If anything, Malave would like to be doing more work. The company is in the process of adding a showroom in Roanoke, Va., and he’s looking at other locations along the Eastern Seaboard.
“My goal is to get the company back to working 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he says. “I want to be able to produce a minimum of 20 kitchens a day.”
Not surprisingly, Malave has raised some of his own workforce with his three sons. Shawn is a templater, while Jason and Justin do installations. And, his five-year-old daughter, Anica, is – for now – helping in “customer service” and even has cards to that effect.
“I had to put a desk in my office for her,” says her proud father. “She tells me her job is to make sure everything’s okay.”
Talking with Len Malave, it’s hard to believe that life would be anything but good, or that he doesn’t have an eye out for making the future even better. While he says he started his own business partly because he had a hard time working for someone else, he has always subscribed to his grandfather’s advice to do what you enjoy doing and do the best you can at it.
It’s a philosophy obviously shared by his employees, many of whom have been with him since he opened his doors 10 years ago. They all believe quality is their number-one job; because he can count of them to deliver it, they really make Granite and Marble by Malave what it is today.
And, he returns the favor.
“One of the biggest benefits of owning my own business is the sense of pride and accomplishment that I felt when I was younger and I’d finish a job of some magnitude,” he says. “You have that feeling of, ‘Look what we did.’ When you build a business to the level we have, there’s an even biggest sense of pride and accomplishment because now it’s everybody else’s livelihood, too.”