StoneTrends LLC, Chesterfield, Mo.

By K. Schipper

CHESTERFIELD, Mo. — Ted Liebig Sr. may be a man without a title at StoneTrends LLC, but he’s certainly not without a plan.
The CEO of Trend Manufacturing Co. has come a long way in the almost 30 years since he rejoined civilian life after a six-year stint as a United States Air Force pilot. Along with earning a master of business administration (MBA) degree in finance from Arizona State University, he’s grown Trend, a manufacturer and fabricator of laminate and solid-surface countertops, based in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Mo.
And, based on that experience, he’s also launched or acquired three similar companies, all involved in the manufacture of laminate and/or solid-surface countertops in Denver, Gridley, Kan., and Blue Springs, Mo.
With that background, it’s probably not surprising that the growing market for higher-end countertops – both with natural stone and quartz surfaces – would catch Liebig’s eye.
To launch his newest venture, Liebig opted to partner with Brad Yarbrough, a sales veteran of Formica, who serves as StoneTrends’ president. The two men began developing their ideas for a stone fabrication company in April 2000, and within a year were operating out of a state-of-the-art plant adjacent to Liebig’s existing Chesterfield facility.
By the end of next year, they expect to be fabricating 300 ft² per day using two CNC machines, with new companies and new locations on the horizon beyond that.

SERENDIPITY AND SYNERGY
Liebig may say that he’s, “just involved,” with StoneTrends, but there’s little doubt the company is a logical next step in a career that’s firmly anchored in countertops.
“Trend Manufacturing was my first exposure to manufacturing after the Air Force,” he says. “That’s what I learned first. However, I believe that opportunities tend to be created around you.”
Liebig believes it was mainly serendipity that led to the development and growth of his other companies, but he’s not afraid to stay with what works, which at least partly explains his entry into the stone industry.
“We felt it was best to continue to focus on what we knew, because we’ve developed some degree of expertise in the industry,” he says. “It’s allowed us to leverage some of what we already had. Our computer system functions in all our locations because it’s a frame relay system. We have technical expertise, purchasing practices and marketing strategies that all touch each other. There are a lot of synergies to be enjoyed.”
For instance, he says StoneTrends isn’t just marketing through Trend Manufacturing. The stone products are also being offered through Double C Industries, which is his Blue Springs company; Countertop Trends, the Gridley company, will offer them in the near future.
However, Yarbrough – who had been selling to Liebig through much of his 16-year career at Formica and had developed a good business relationship with him – says the two men also appreciate the demand within their market for higher-end products.
“We saw this as an opportunity,” says Yarbrough. “We saw how the market was looking for higher end products, not just with the stone but in some of the new quartz products. We thought it was going to be an important product in the future, and we started discussing a marketing plan that would put us together to form a company that would fill those needs.”
At the same time, the two men recognized that the natural stone industry was different from what they had been doing in laminate and solid surface, which encouraged them to form a company distinct from Liebig’s other operations.
“It’s different in the sense that you can’t use the same equipment,” says Yarbrough. “You have wet saws and bowl machines and edge machines that are different. In our case it made sense to start a separate company, but still use some of the resources we had with Ted’s company.”
The partners also recognized that, other than having a desire to get into the stone business, they were pretty much novices in terms of what it involved. To educate themselves and explore the industry, they started in Europe in the fall of 2000, talking with suppliers and equipment manufacturers, as well as studying techniques.
From there, the two continued their research in the United States, ultimately settling on equipment and on offering a line of quartz surfaces from Cambria Quality Quartz Surfaces in Le Sueur, Minn. In fact, Yarbrough says a great selling point of Cambria is that it’s a U.S. product.
“They have a great product with tremendous marketing support and sales tools,” he says.
“Their colors are excellent and they take a craftsman’s approach to polishing,” says Liebig. “There’s no doubt Cambria is making its mark in color innovation and service delivery.
“These people like to do things differently. Difference can be good.”

GREAT RELATIONSHIPS
The partners also opted to develop a relationship with Park Industries for their company’s equipment, launching production with a Cougar, Wizard and Pro-Edge III.
Liebig says the relationship with Park has done more than bring the company high-quality equipment capable of running 16 hours a day. For instance, because the technology is user-friendly, he says it’s been easy to train new employees to be very efficient.
However, the relationship goes beyond that. Yarbrough says not only was Park very helpful in advising the partners not to buy a CNC machine right away, but one of Park’s salesmen helped lay out the footprint for StoneTrends’ 17,000-ft² shop, including the placement of the air, electric service and drainage.
“Since then, even adding different things and making changes, we’ve always gone back to that original layout,” says Yarbrough.
Liebig says Park’s projections on when it would be necessary to add a CNC were also accurate. The partners are currently awaiting delivery of a Park Destiny.
“They really were more interested in our company than in getting an order from us,” says Liebig. “One thing I think is true about both Park and Cambria is that they listen to determine what we need. That’s not to say other companies don’t, but they’re very, very focused on understanding what we need to build our business.”
The combination of Park and Cambria has enabled StoneTrends to get off to a fast start. The company began silent manufacturing in April 2001, and by September of that year had hired a manufacturing manager and began adding employees.
“When we actually started fabrication, we didn’t tell people we were in business,” says Liebig. “People have a way of hearing about it, and you do work for someone and they tell someone else, and it didn’t take long to emerge from silent manufacturing into normal operations.”
Today, that normal operation consists of 10 employees turning out more than 100 ft² of finished product per day. Once the CNC is in place and integrated into the operation – probably at the end of the summer – StoneTrends expects to double that output.
Aside from its somewhat untraditional launch, Liebig and Yarbrough say the operation is much like other stone-fabrication shops in that it turns out a mix of countertops, vanities and tub and fireplace surrounds. Nearly two-thirds of that is quartz-surface countertops.
“Our customers are interested in Cambria given it’s a new product in the marketplace,” Yarbrough says. “They’re coming from laminate or solid-surface, and then they see what a great product it is, and want their colors.”
Liebig also believes that natural quartz has been in the marketplace long enough that many consumers are beginning to recognize it.
“By the time we see them, a lot of our customers are pretty well educated and they’ve done their homework,” Yarbrough says. “We get people who like the natural stone, but we also get those who see the advantages of quartz when it comes to color consistency, strength and no maintenance.”
With contracts such as one to do 58 units of housing at a nearby military base with natural-quartz surface, it’s easy to understand the men’s enthusiasm for the product. However, Yarbrough says even in higher-end projects where buyers can do side-by-side comparisons with natural stone, the quartz surface often comes out ahead.
For instance, the company is involved in a high-profile loft project in downtown St. Louis.
“It’s a downtown project, and the units are kind of rustic looking, with exposed pipes,” Yarbrough says. “The developers are selling these, and as part of their process they have both Cambria and natural stone on display in a number of colors. The customers are choosing the Cambria by about 5-1.”

STONE BUSINESS
Both Liebig and Yarbrough are focusing on the stone industry as a business, rather than a craft. And, admittedly, Liebig’s existing business structure has made getting StoneTrends up and running considerably easier than if the two men had been starting from scratch.
Having the developers handle the sales for that loft project, for example, is fairly typical for all of Liebig’s companies.
“As far as having a showroom on-site, the answer is, ‘No,’” he says. “We are manufacturers and none of the five companies has a showroom. We sell through people who have showrooms.”
In much the same way, StoneTrends doesn’t focus on doing installations. With a market focus on kitchen dealers, designers and decorators, homebuilders, condominiums and lofts and commercial projects, installation isn’t key to the sale. In some cases – such as the military project – the general contractor does the work. In other instances, the end user does the installation.
Even when the company is responsible for the install, Liebig says StoneTrends leverages its proximity to Trend Manufacturing.
“That’s why it’s difficult to quantify how many employees we have,” he says. “StoneTrends has 10 employees, but there are personnel resources available from Trend Manufacturing on an as-needed basis. Those specifically include areas like installation and accounting.”
To Liebig, the approach is only good business sense, especially given the partner’ focus on customer service.
“The countertop business in generally is a very transaction-intensive one,” he explains. “It’s not just a matter of receiving an order and filling it. There are always multiple contacts with the customer — or even the customer’s customers — until the process is finished. You need to be able to call on other resources on an as-needed basis. You don’t need them all the time, but when you need them, you need them.”
It’s a formula that’s paid off for Liebig in the past, and both he and Yarbrough are confident both StoneTrends and the market for stone – especially quartz – will continue to grow.
Along with the quality of the product, he says he’s extremely impressed with the people in that end of the industry. Unlike with many new products where the communication is hit-and-miss, he says he’s seeing tooling manufacturers and materials suppliers talking to machine manufacturers and vice versa, sharing the kind of information that builds market demand.
At the same time, he believes that growth will help the market for natural stone, since they’re complementary products.
“Granite benefits because once people understand natural quartz, stone will get specified for projects that now use solid-surface material,” Liebig says. “People will look at the two, and there will always be those who say, ‘I want to go down and select my own slab, because I want granite.’ And, then there will be others that will opt for quartz.”
As for StoneTrends itself, the partners are already in the process of hiring to expand their second shift. Along with the CNC, the company is adding a Park Sierra saw, and they’ve advised the equipment manufacturer they expect to add a second Destiny in the near future.
“In the layout for our plant, we already have the second CNC drawn in with the air and water already designated for it,” Liebig says. “This isn’t pie in the sky; the footprint is already draw on the factory floor for this equipment.”
And, once StoneTrends reaches the goal of 300 ft² per day, probably later next year, Liebig says he expects to clone the operation somewhere else.
“We have experience duplicating a manufacturing environment in other locations,” he says. “It’s not in the stone business, but we know how to lift out the technology, the staffing structure and other key elements and put it in place in another geographical location.”

This article first appeared in the June 2003 print edition of Stone Business. ©2003 Western Business Media Inc.