Interiors : Russell Stone Fixing

Tin hat time

Life isn’t easy for kitchen worktop manufacturers. It’s what Danny Curbishley at Russell Stone Fixing calls ‘tin hat time’ to survive the recession and emerge from it stronger.

The sector of the stone industry hardest hit by the credit crunch and the recession are those involved in kitchen worktops. It had been boom time for them for a decade as first granite and more recently engineered quartz became must-have finishes for modern kitchens. But a good part of that market came from the new build sector and when house prices started falling last year few people wanted to add to the housing stock.

All over the country kitchen showrooms have closed and so have some of the stone companies that were supplying them. And the industry is awash with rumours of others about to follow suit.

“I heard a rumour the other day that we were going out business,” says Danny Curbishley, Business Manager with Russell Stone Fixing in Essex. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Russell Stone Fixing were incorporated in 2004 by Tony Russell, who had trained in carpentry but had worked for several granite worktop companies as a fitter before branching out on his own.

The business grew rapidly and Tony asked Danny Curbishley to “do a little bit of paperwork” for him, which rapidly turned into a full time job managing and growing the business. There are now eight of them working for the company that templates and fixes as well as manufactures worktops, covering an area from East Anglia to the South Coast.

In 2007 they moved to their current workshop at Marks Hall Farm and expanded their production capacity by becoming the first company to invest in the Spanish Gisbert machinery that D Zambelis introduced at the Natural Stone Show at ExCeL London in March last year.

They bought a Gisbert CP-35 bridge saw to work alongside their Tecco Italian bridge saw, as well as a BC2000 edge polisher and later the FG150 CNC workcentre with manual tool change.

The workcentre has enabled them to introduce what they call their ‘credit crunch special’ of free drainage grooves on worktops for new customers, because it can efficiently perform work such as that which takes a long time by hand.

Being the first customers of the Gisbert machinery and being near to the Zambelis warehouse and offices, they have become the unofficial showroom for the machines where Stella Zambelis brings other customers to see the machinery at work.

Further expansion was on the cards until the autumn last year when the recession really started to become apparent and it became clear it was not the time to expand. “It was tin hat time,” says Danny. “Batten down the hatches.”

It had not all be plain sailing before that, though, especially the shock last summer of their largest customer, Inca Interiors, going into administration. Inca accounted for at least half of Russell Stone Fixing’s turnover. “It was bleak,” says Danny.

But not for long. “The telephones started ringing and there was Mr Banner Homes saying: We still need those kitchens.” Berkeley, Millwood Designer Homes and others followed.

“These people know who the good fitters are. They want the person, not the company who employs them, so when Inca went, they still wanted us,” says Danny.

People who buy Banner and Millwood houses and Berkeley conversions are in the sort of income brackets that are not likely to be the first casualties of recession, and in the first half of the year, at least, Russell Stone Fixing have not suffered too badly.

They did learn lessons from the failure of Inca, though. And they learnt them the hard way because they lost a lot of money. But as a result they now factor their debts through their bank, HSBC. As customers have become slower at paying this has helped their cash flow by making 70% of the money owed to them immediately available, which means they can use it to buy stock for the next job.

However, it has its drawbacks. The banks put limits on how much credit can be extended to customers and they are pushy about getting paid. As Danny says: “You don’t really want them telephoning your big clients.”

Russell Stone have not been entirely immune from the recession and Danny has been searching out people who might be having kitchen extensions built to replace work lost through for the downturn in new build. “In a good climate you don’t have to find them – they find you,” he says.

While half Russell Stone’s business comes from the developers, the other half has always come from individuals and one offs and they believe that treating those people properly is now paying dividends.

Tony says: “My business has been built on customer satisfaction and quality workmanship. Nothing is better advertising than the recommendation of your customers. This is the key factor in the growth of my company.”

It is, they say, why they buy their stone from wholesalers (they favour B-Stone) and are not tempted to import directly – they want to see the quality of the stone before they buy it. And it is why they like engineered quartz (again, they prefer B-Stone’s Diresco and Technistone) because a small sample of it really will be representative of the finished worktop.

Danny reinforces the point: “Customer care is the key. That includes the right quality at the right price. So many people are used to people fobbing them off, especially in the building industry. Customers can be hard work, but if they recommend you to their friends it’s worth it. It’s why we spend time telling them how to look after their worktops and why we offer them cutting boards in the same material. We offer care kits and have a Stonelux repair man if a worktop does get damaged. And we will template, make and fix a worktop in a week.”

It was a recommendation from one of the kitchen studios Russell Stone work for that led to some of their worktops appearing on television last month (May) during the coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show. The ‘Freshley Prepped’ country kitchen garden of Pat Fox’s company, Aralia Garden Design, included a kitchen in the garden with Russell Stone’s worktops in Sensa impregnated natural granite worktops from Cosentino. The garden was complete with celebrity chef Andrew Nutter cooking the food from an ‘edible wall’ of growing plants.