Benattar Marble and Granite, San Francisco

January 3, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO – The motto of Benattar Marble and Granite does more than just set the tone for a business with one foot in historic stone work … and the other firmly planted in the 21st century.
“Benattar…elevating natural stone fabrication to the level of artwork,” not only encompasses owner Moshe Benattar’s own background growing up in an Israeli family where stone fabrication is truly viewed as an art, but the word, “elevating” stresses the higher level at which the company seeks to work.
Although he may not be a native of this country, Benattar also isn’t averse to embracing the best of American capitalism. While he appreciates the artistic traditions of his family and homeland, he’s quite willing to serve his customers’ needs, whether they’re the professional builders he prefers or individual homeowners looking to upgrade their real estate.
Thanks to family connections, he’s also begun importing his own stone, both from Israel and Brazil, and he believes it’s his ability to deliver unique products to his customers that sets Benattar Marble apart from his competitors.

ONLY NATURAL
To hear Moshe Benattar talk about his past, it’s only natural he should be working in the stone industry. The fact that he’s doing it in San Francisco is what’s out of the ordinary.
“My family is basically doing the same business in Israel,” he says. “My parents are the second generation in the business. There are a lot of strong economic ties to the family in Israel; that’s just the nature of the business.”
The extended family actually has three stone factories, which Benattar describes as “small.” Their specialty is carving pieces of Jerusalem Gold limestone into items such as sinks and mosaic basins.
“They do some etching, and they’re very concerned with textures,” he adds. “They’re really more artists. They don’t look as much for the demands of the market as they do what their skills allow. They’re competing on what they can produce and what they produce is very beautiful.”
Growing up, it’s also something the young Benattar learned. Regardless of the country, it’s not unusual for youngsters to work for their parents; while he found the work interesting, he also saw it as a way to pick up a little extra money while still a student.
“Even when I was in Israel, a lot of the work I did was working independently,” he explains. “The family would give me a project and I’d work on it as I could, because as a student I didn’t have a lot of specific times when I could be working.”
When the young man moved to Los Angeles 19 years ago to continue his studies, he continued the work he already knew by doing piecework for a stone fabricator. However, the situation lasted only a few months.
“I fell in love with a woman from San Francisco,” Benattar says. “I moved here from Los Angeles and decided to try going into business.”
Once in the Bay Area, Benattar found another stone contractor who would vouch for him and allow him to continuing doing piecework while he gained experience, went to school, and studied for his contractor’s license.
“I wanted to be able to work legally,” he says. “After about six months I got my license and opened up here.”
“Here” is a location on Burke Avenue from which Benattar Marble and Granite has operated for the past 18 years. Benattar says the southern downtown area – called South of Market by locals – was mainly heavy industrial when he moved in. He chose the location because the site gave him space for an uncovered storage yard.
However, due to changes in the city, he anticipates one day having to relocate.
“This area has been very interesting,” he says. “It’s very close to downtown, and while it’s still a working class area, in the last few years it’s become more semi-commercial due to the lofts. Companies are opening up their businesses around here, and we’re getting a lot of different things here now.”
Of course, the company has changed and matured right along with the neighborhood. Although Benattar says he’s built the operation mainly on reputation and the growth of some of the professional builders with whom he does business, he employed as many as 34 people before the dot.com bubble burst in the Bay Area. He’s since cut his workforce by 40 percent.
“When you do good work, people come back,” he contends. “Other people have grown and we’ve kept working for them. We really don’t do much to sell ourselves and market our products. I did start to get more business as I began to import stone, though.”

FAMILY TIES
Given his heritage and his family’s involvement with the business in Israel, it’s probably not surprising that a portion of the stone Benattar imports is from the Middle East. However, thanks to different types of family ties, he’s also begun importing stone from Brazil.
“My wife is Brazilian, and I travel there at least twice a year, sometimes three times,” he says. “There are a lot of building materials coming here from Brazil right now, and because of her connections that’s been good for us.”
Not only do his ties with that country give him access to some very special – sometimes unique – materials, but Benattar says by importing them himself, he’s guaranteed that they’re both of good quality and sufficient quantity.
“For instance, if we have a customer who needs a certain type of stone in a larger quantity, we’ll have it on hand,” he says. “We’re the only ones in this area who are importing a whole container of a specific material, and many of the commercial people in this area don’t want to have to do five kitchens with one material and 10 with another. They want the whole building to be done with one stone.”
Benattar adds that he didn’t find it difficult to begin bringing in stone from South America. Because of his wife, he’s learned to speak Portuguese, and between knowing the language and his wife’s nationality, he says he’s actually enjoyed becoming an importer.
He also takes satisfaction in seeing where the material is coming from as it’s cut from the earth.
“Personally, it’s very interesting to see how they take these big blocks and cut them into smaller ones and sell them,” he says. “It’s also exciting to go from place to place and see the differences. I’ve seen a lot of different places, met a lot of different people and learned a lot from them.”
Benattar has also been importing stone from the Middle East for several years. However, three years ago he began importing the material in heavier quantities and selling it to other fabricators in the area. While those imports have included limestone from Jordan and Egypt, as well as Israel, he says the greatest demand as been for the Israeli-produced Jerusalem Gold.
“We’re doing very well with it,” Benattar says. “It’s got a creamy, healthy-looking color, it’s easy to work with and very forgiving, and the fabricators love it. Because of its soft color, it also works well with a lot of other stone.”
Despite what he calls, “very, very high demand,” Benattar admits that the simmering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has impacted the market. For one thing, some of the smaller Israeli exporters have tried to get importers to sign exclusive agreements with them to protect their own bottom lines.
And, while Benattar tries to visit his native country at least once a year, many importers in this country are turning to middlemen to handle their transactions, rather than buying direct.
“A lot of buyers feel they need the safety factor of buying from a middleman,” he says. “It costs a little more, but you’re getting much more for it. It’s difficult to go to Israel every time you want to inspect something. It’s a bit farther to travel to Brazil, but there aren’t the fears of getting shot, either. In Israel, you want someone else doing your work for you.”
As an importer, Benattar says he’s particular grateful for his yard space, which gives him plenty of outdoor storage and the room to construct what he calls, “a fantastic loading dock.”
“The yard provides a service for customers who want to come and go through the different colors and different textures of materials we have,” he says. “Of course, we have an indoor showroom of about 1,100 ft². Actually, we have more space than that, because we incorporate stone into some of our other rooms. There, we can give them a start on colors and materials, as well as some finishes and different edges. If the end user comes here, we think we give them the tools they need in order to make a good decision.”

CHANGING FACES
There’s no doubt that Moshe Benattar has come a long way since his days doing piece work for other fabricators in Los Angeles and then San Francisco. It’s perhaps that ability to stay abreast of – if not one step ahead of – the changes in his market that have made him so successful.
For instance, when it comes to buying equipment, he says his philosophy is, “If we find we have the need for something, that’s what we get.”
The company currently cuts with two 30 hp laser-guided bridge saws, with each saw cutting from two to five projects a day.
“They’re the best bridge saws on the market now,” Benattar says. “We have one machine for doing sink cut-outs, and we have a polish line. Actually, we have three of them. One is only for slab polishing; it’s where we do our splashes. We also have a new polish machine, and an older one that we’re going to move out of the shop right now because we don’t use it.”
He adds that he hasn’t yet seen the need to get into something such as waterjet, mainly because his business is currently more than 90-percent custom work.
“It’s really market-driven,” he says. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe a kitchen can consume that much, but there’s very little slab cutting for flooring right now, and fireplaces consume very little. Kitchens and vanities is where there’s a very strong demand.”
And, Benattar says in his market, that demand is now coming from individual homeowners rather than contractors looking to put up large projects. Much of that he attributes to the economy. He says while the Bay Area was booming a few years ago as investors pumped money into dot.com companies, that isn’t happening today. Instead, his best customers are people who have refinanced their homes and cashed out some of their equity.
“People have money in their pockets and they don’t want to invest it in the stock market or other investments; they’re investing in their homes,” he explains. “We see a lot of people who come down here and they don’t have any designer or architect. They’re willing to do a lot of stuff on their own.”
Benattar doesn’t see that market staying strong too long, but then he’s willing to change. Over the last five or six years, a lot of his work was cut-to-size, with other companies doing the installation. Now, that’s not happening, but the slack is being taken up in full-service jobs and importing stone.
Benattar also offers restoration services, although he certainly doesn’t stress it.
“It’s not our first priority; we try not to do it, but it’s a service,” he says. “If I have a client who has such a need, instead of having him look at other companies, we’ll do the job, but it’s not my cup of tea.”
However, the biggest complaint he has with doing restoration work, Benattar says, is that it can cause him to be stretched too thin, to a point where he loses control and quality suffers.
“It’s not that we like to set limits,” he says. “I like to be able to do all kinds of work, but I find we sometimes lose some of the edge on quality. I don’t have enough management control, and I like to find ways to be in control.”
Besides being good business sense, in his opinion, that’s also what’s behind his move into importing, Benattar says. While many people like to see the various aspects of a job come together, for him that means starting with the best raw materials.
“It’s like with cooking,” he states. “You want to start from the beginning and see that the ingredients you use are the best. I don’t believe you just put this in and wait to see what comes out; it’s too expensive and it’s unfair to the client.”
Those good ingredients also include the people he employs, Benattar says. Probably because business is more family-centered in Israel, he says he has personal relationships with many of his long-term employees, knows their families and pats them on the back when a mistake does happen.
However, it’s also important that they share his desire to succeed.
“A lot of our end results are the direct result of the techniques they use and the drive they have,” he says. “I like to be able to work with people who have the ability to deliver the best. That’s the kind of control I seek over the people working with us. Whether it’s the guys who carry the stone or the guys who cutting the stone or the ones who install the stone, everybody has to be willing to deliver the very best.”
Because he is so pragmatic about the direction of his business, Benattar doesn’t have concrete goals for the future. For instance, he estimates his current location may continue to serve him for as long as 15 years, but if it grows, Benattar Marble may be moving well before that. And, as with other good American capitalists, he expects to grow and succeed – and he’s grateful for that opportunity.
“Before I came here, I didn’t know much about the whole culture,” he concludes. “Now, I have way more appreciation for the way they do things here. I appreciate the openness of business and the flow of information, which is fantastic. It makes it very easy to grow and do more and I appreciate being here.”