F W Bull & Son, based in Corby, Northamptonshire, have pulled out of the memorial masonry business in which they have been major players for practically three-quarters of a century.

Instead, the family business run by brothers Frank and James Bull, will concentrate on the construction side of the market that has been of growing importance to them since James joined the business in 1983 to run a company, Taurostone, they set up at that time especially to supply the construction industry with products like worktops and fireplaces.

Since then they have enjoyed the benefits of the enormous growth in the construction sector generally, especially work tops, and seen that side of their business grow at the same time as the memorial side has faced increasing low cost competition from Indian and Chinese imports, more of which are circumventing the traditional supply route all the time.

F W Bull & Son built their reputation on the quality of their carved marble and stone memorials, but the market has increasingly turned towards simple polished black granite stones that are now being sold to retail memorial masons for less than £100.

James Bull says: "We tried to swim against the tide of imports for too long. In hindsight you could say we should have got more involved in imports earlier and equipped our factory accordingly. But even with hindsight it\'s probably best we didn\'t because I really do wonder where the memorial industry is going to end up."

Having decided to stop wholesaling memorials, they also looked at their retail memorial masonry businesses and decided the fate of memorial retailing was no brighter.

At one time F W Bull had five retail outlets. They had disposed of two of them several years ago and are now negotiating to sell the other three - Cheadle Memorial Co in Cheshire; Ross Stonecraft in Slough, Berkshire; and a Memorial Firms shop Ilford, Essex.

With margins on the memorial side being squeezed all the time, it was decided to concentrate instead on the more profitable interiors side of their operation.

Taurostone already have a well-equipped factory on the same four-acre site that they share with F W Bull, but a further investment is now planned.

By early next year they plan to have split production so that the factory currently used by Taurostone will be used for sawing and polishing and the F W Bull factory will be used for shaping and finishing.

They already have two CNC machines and plan to buy two large Commanduli polishing lines. They also plan to buy completely computerised saws so that sawing and polishing will be fully automated. "That will enable us to increase capacity in the worktop market enormously," says James Bull.

Moya Harvey of Ross Stonecraft, the business she sold to F W Bull in 1996, says she has every intention of buying the business back. And Les Jones, who opened the Cheadle Memorial Co for Bull in 1992, says he does not know if he will buy the business, but says: "That\'s a possible option."