Barden Stone Co, Memphis, Tenn.

   The company is still at the same Cherry Road location over the past five decades, but it looks considerably different than in the Nifty Fifties, when cast stone was the main product and the family also represented some major stone quarriers and suppliers in the area.
   The evolution of technology certainly had its impacts on the company. When those stone suppliers started putting their own people on the road, the Bardens got into fabrication as an economic necessity.
   That strategy had a strong role in encouraging Barden Stone to automate much of that fabrication, done at a 30,000 ft² plant some 30 minutes from the company’s headquarters.
   Still, for Bob and Brenda Barden, stone is the thing. Today, they’re importing more of their own materials and utilizing technology to help sell it both to retail customers and to other fabricators around their region.
  
CASTING STONE
   Despite his company’s success in the industry, Bob Barden won’t claim any long family connection to stone. When his father, Erlewood Barden, first became involved with what was then White Stone Co., his goal was to find something to do on weekends to make a little extra money.
   The son explains that his father worked as the safety officer for the Memphis Works of International Harvester Co. In that capacity, he often spoke with a doctor who mentioned he had an ill patient looking to sell his business.
   “It went from there,” says Bob Barden. “My dad went to work for Mr. White, and in 1951 he bought the company. He wanted to sell, and my dad went into the stone business full-time.”
   In those days, the company’s main product line – which it produced at another location – was architectural cast stone.
   “They’d make concrete that looked like stone,” Bob Barden explains. “As part of that, we’d buy natural stone and include it in the molding of the product.”
   He remembers first hanging around the pattern shop at the age of 10 and, by the time he finished high school, he was a trained mold-builder.
   Following a four-year enlistment in the Marine Corps, Bob Barden returned to the family business in 1970 – just about the same time the company was getting out of making cast stone. He explains that the process required a lot of employees and infrastructure, and the emphasis on glass-and-steel construction and the economic slowdown at the time made it prudent to sell off the manufacturing facilities.
   All along the, company had been representing quarriers such as Georgia Marble and Cold Spring Granite Co., and the emphasis changed to selling cut stone, as well as natural architectural-stone veneers for the landscape and housing markets.
   Major changes in the way natural stone was bought and sold in the 1980s put yet another face on the company. Bob Barden notes that, even in the late 1970s, stone began to enjoy a resurgence, fueled by lower-priced imports. At the same time, telecommunications improved, and suppliers began to rely less on local stone companies to promote their products, putting their own sales people on the road instead.
   “We weren’t needed any longer,” he says.
  
EATING…WELL
   In 1986, the company underwent a major upheaval. Bob Barden took over the business – which until that time had been White Stone Co. –renamed it, brought in wife Brenda as his partner, and moved into stone fabrication.
   Brenda Barden, who was initially a stay-at-home-mom and then in real estate, says the decision to get into fabrication was quite simple: “We wanted to eat.”
   At that time, the idea of putting granite countertops in kitchens and baths wasn’t common. The Bardens bought a rail saw – which they still have – and started developing a new clientele which, in turn, let them to develop yet another aspect to their business.
   “As we did more fabrication, we needed the raw material,” Bob Barden says. “We got involved in buying imported material. That didn’t go on too long before Brenda came to me and said, ‘We’re buying enough of this material from brokers that we could import it ourselves.’”
   Today, the company is strong in both aspects of the stone business, all with a staff of 15-20 people that includes five Bardens. Bob Barden notes that as the company moved in these new directions, the couple’s three children were finishing high school and, like their father, getting involved in the family business at an early age.
   “We really couldn’t do what we’re doing today without our two sons and our daughter,” says their proud father.
   The couple’s older son, Darren, handles outside installations, while their second son, Billy, supervises the fabrication part of the operation based in a Byhalia, Miss., industrial park, Daughter Nancy is the interior designer and sales manager in Memphis.
   “We’re on the line of Mississippi and Arkansas, and we have customers in all three states,” says Brenda Barden to explain the plant’s location. “They gave us a tax incentive to buy a spec building in a new industrial park. No one had been in it, and we were able to fix it to our liking with the overhead cranes and room for all our equipment.”
   That was 10 years ago, and since then the company filled the building with high-end equipment – which the Bardens say offered a good option when finding skilled employees wasn’t easy.
   “The people who manufacture equipment for the stone industry have done a great job of producing machines that are more-automated and help keep production costs down,” says Bob Barden. “It’s expensive, but it’s also cost-effective because you can turn out kitchens quickly.”
   “We have a CMS Brembana CNC, two Park Industries Pro-Edge machines and a Wizard,” says Brenda Barden. “We also have a Prodigy saw with two turntables and we have a Gmm profile saw.”
   “Of course, we have some other, smaller equipment,” adds her husband. “All these big machines don’t always work, and it’s fortunate that when we started it was really before diamonds. We know how to revert to doing it by hand if need be.”
   However, that’s an eventuality the Bardens don’t want to occur too often, not when Barden Stone averages 10-15 kitchens a week, plus assorted other projects.
   “We still offer cut stone,” says Bob Barden. “We do limestone doorway embellishments, pool copings, windowsills and fireplace facings from both cut stone and marble.”
   “We’re really a full-service stone company,” adds Brenda Barden. “When somebody brings in a set of plans for a home they’re building, we look at the limestone in front of the home, at the flooring, at the patio and at the fireplaces, as well as the kitchen countertops and the bathroom vanities.”
  
VERY FULL-SERVICE
   The fact that Barden Stone stocks the materials to do all this work does give it a scope of services that many of its competitors can’t match. Add to that the high-end stones the company is importing, and it’s truly full-service.
   “We do have a niche for exotic materials,” says Bob Barden. “We’re not New York or Atlanta, but we do want to have the onyxes and the semi-precious slabs available for our customers to look at so they don’t have to go to another, bigger market.”
   He admits taking such an approach is costly but, “It helps get the customers to deal with us because we have these exotics.”
   Over the years, the company has expanded from its original 1,000 ft² showroom, and today has about five acres and 20,000 ft² of building on its Cherry Road site. A customer visiting the main offices might be looking for anything from a thin veneer – which Barden Stone sells but doesn’t manufacture – to architectural/rubble stone to marble or onyx.
   “The rubble stone is a real big part of our company for landscape stone,” says Bob Barden. “If you’d come to see us here, you’d see all the rubble stone, flooring and flagstones we offer. There again, we have domestic material as well as imported rubble-stone material.”
   The company does keep some slabs – mainly higher-end stones – at its Memphis site. With much of the company’s stock of granite being housed at the Byhalia facility, customers looking for a countertop or vanity have the opportunity to view 12” X 12” samples – and some of the latest technology.
   Among the prominent pieces in the showroom is a large plasma television screen.
   “We photograph our slabs, turn them into digital images, and then we can sit there and flip through the different colors with a client,” says Brenda Barden. “Or, if they’d like, we can e-mail them an image.”
   The screen also allows the Bardens the opportunity to show customers the technology at their fabrication facility, and to have them view materials from both the Building Stone Institute and the Marble Institute of America on stone production.
   Recently, the company began cutting out a step in the display process by having the stones directly scanned.
   “Looking at a 12” X 12” piece isn’t like looking at the whole slab, especially if it something that has a lot of movement and veining,” says Bob Barden. “The plasma TV screen gives a crisp image, and we can help them find a color and show them the movement. Then, if they’re really interested, they can go to the factory and select their slabs.”
   Despite the convenience, the Bardens says most of their customers generally want to make the trip to Byhalia. There are some customers who aren’t quite as interested in touching the stone, however. Brenda Barden has come up with the idea – utilizing the scanner and computer technology – to offer people a chance to bid on stones in inventory through something called Bidstone.
   “More and more people are asking if they can buy the stone themselves,” she says. “It’s also a good way to put our stone up for other fabricators who might be short a splash and might find something in our cut-offs.”
   The couple also sees Bidstone as a good way to offer their architectural/rubble stone online. Just as Barden Stone reinvented itself in the past, over the next five years they see themselves doing more importing and taking on more of the role of distributors for other fabricators within about a 150-mile radius of Memphis.
   “This is something that’s evolved,” says Brenda Barden. “We started importing mainly for ourselves, but other dealers and fabricators will call and ask if we’ll sell a slab or this or that. It’s hard to say no.”
   Bob Barden adds that he doesn’t expect it to be easy, given the level of competition. However, it will allow the company to continue serving both the retail and designer customers it’s always marketed to, while moving more product.
   Now in their late 50s, the couple also acknowledges there’s another generation of Bardens ready to make its mark on the stone business. While the idea of retiring sometimes looks attractive, they aren’t ready to head out to pasture just yet.
   “I think we’ll stay as long as our children let us stay,” says Bob Barden. “For one thing, we couldn’t travel so much if we weren’t working with the business. The importing gives us an opportunity to travel and that’s something Brenda and I both love.
   “There’s a definite mix here of pleasure and business.”

This article first appeared in the April 2006 print edition of Stone Business. ©2006 Western Business Media Inc.