By Jake Rishavy
NEENAH, Wis. – When the owners of Marble and Granite Specialists met in 2001, they found common ground: a sense of delivering better, more-consistent work than some area customers received at the time.
By K. Schipper
HOUSTON – Put an artisan who worked on a cathedral in 1008 in a time machine and bring him to the present, and there’d be a lot to surprise him – starting with the ability to complete the job in a couple years rather than decades, or even longer.
In the past few months, it’s not hard to think … no, worry … no, reach for the bottle, whether it’s aspirin or a tastier painkiller, when it comes to the state of the stone trade today. There’s the economy, the deadly last lunges of collapsing cut-rate competitors, foreign exchange rates that spin as fast as the price register at the gas pump and, well, The New York Times.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency, after taking more than a month-and-a-half to revise its initial statement on radon and granite countertops, took less than a week to change it again.
ST. LOUIS – Less than one month after acquiring stone-industry supplier GranQuartz L.P., the Harbour Group made another move in the trade with the purchase of the the stone division of Sommer & Maca Industries Inc. from C.R. Laurence Co.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a lengthened and strengthened consumer statement late on July 25 concerning radon and granite countertops.
ST. LOUIS – GranQuartz Holdings LLC is now part of Harbour Group.
Jeff Fox, Harbour Group’s chief executive officer, announced the deal on July 7.Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.
It couldn’t last forever.
CLEVELAND – The Marble Institute of America (MIA) is asking U.S. wholesale natural-stone-slab distributor to participate in a groundbreaking distributor-only benchmarking survey.