Steven Pardoe likes stone and believes granite will grow in popularity again next year, but he is not steeped in the traditions of the stone industry and is happy to supply whatever the customer wants.
Before Steven Pardoe started selling stone he was selling surgical instruments, so although he now has a well equipped workshop in Slough sporting a new Gisbert CNC workcentre and edge polisher and a Denver Slot bridge saw, he is not steeped in the traditions of the stone industry.
A background in sales rather than stone has made it easy for him to see his role as a supplier of what the customer wants rather than a particular material.
Quartz was already growing in popularity by the time Domostone UK was formed in 1999 and when customers wanted it, Domostone were happy to supply it. Now they are also happy to supply other materials. Painted glass splashbacks and surfaces are growing rapidly as wall linings since Rob Mayer set up the glass division under the name of DomoGlass. Domostone sell what they describe as ‘stone porcelain’ (porcelain tiles designed to look like stone) and other tiles (including natural stone tiles selling for £25-£35/m2). They sell Corian, Hacker kitchen cabinets and even appliances.
Until last year, engineered quartz accounted for less than 30% of the worktops Domostone sold, but they have concentrated on the product, becoming approved fabricators for Caesarstone and Silestone as well as being main dealers for Compac.
Steven says more than half the worktops Domostone now make are quartz. “We like selling it. It’s easy to work with. The worktop is the same colour as the sample people have seen and there’s never any variance of quality. When we put a display in a shop – and we have displays in 25 showrooms now – we use 70% quartz, usually Caesarstone because their quality is superb, the service excellent, it carries a warranty and they only choose one fabricator in each area. Caesarstone is our top brand. We take at least 30 slabs a month… minimum.”
He praises the quartz suppliers for having promoted the products and created such a strong demand for them but feels the product has been oversold. “The first thing we always say to customers is that it’s not a wonder stone. You have to treat it with some respect, the same as granite.” In fact, he is anticipating a return to granite. “The cut-and-fit on site people have disappeared, so the image of granite will improve again.”
Domostone are also approved fabricators for Corian and Staron, they are Hacker, Omega and Sheraton Kitchen cabinet dealers, and Blanco main dealers.
Interestingly, the only ethical sourcing / environmental questions Domostone say they are asked relate to the wood products they sell (they all carry the Forest Stewardship Council mark). When it comes to the stone, customers tend to have other priorities.
Domostone do take their environmental responsibilities seriously, asking questions when they source the stone, recycling their stone waste as hardcore (which costs them £1,000 a month) and recirculating water so that in spite of the thirsty machinery their water bill is only £100 a quarter.
Steven also has reason to take note of health & safety. When he first started a slab fell on him and it took him two years to recover. He still bears the scars. Anyone who does not wear protective footwear or masks when they are cutting stone in the factory or on site now gets a fine.
Customers can see the range of products from Domostone in the newly extended showroom that Domostone opened this month (November). It is in front of the company’s workshop in the 850m2 premises they moved into in 2007 – the third move to larger premises since the company was formed and they are already outgrowing them. “We’ve had to put our tile stock into an overflow depot in Coventry. The company next door are moving out and we’re thinking about taking over their unit. We thought we could open a trade counter but I don’t know. I’m not sure the time is right.
“We did contemplate opening a high street showroom, but I don’t think so. I think we’re better off having our products in showrooms that are out there already and trying to make the showroom here good enough to make it worth while people coming out to visit us.”
The new showroom includes Domostone’s first displays of bathrooms and, says Steven: “We might include something exotic – back-lit onyx. You need to show it to be able to sell it because it’s expensive.”
The move into interiors was a response to an opportunity. Steven came into the stone industry with a friend he had gone to school with whose family came from India. They started by selling sandstone paving into the UK.
Steven says: “Everyone we saw was talking about granite all the time more than sandstone, so we took a bit of a punt and bought four containers of black granite and Star Galaxy and I just started cold calling everyone in the Natural Stone Directory.”
With the move into the current premises Domostone started to fabricate the stone themselves, and although they do still supply other processors, half of their business now comes from end users, both domestic and commercial.
They do quite a lot of work for developers, but don’t much care for the payment terms, the hold ups and the frequency with which they liquidate, making it difficult to get trade accounts insured. “We use Bibby Finance, but out of the last 30 trade accounts we have presented to them, eight have been refused.”
Steven praises the people he works with for the success of the business. There are 19 of them in the company, including two teams installing full time. He says many of them are family with a vested interest in the success of the enterprise. “We’re hungry,” he says, which motivates them to go out and get the work. But, he adds, “we’re not greedy”, which, along with buying much of their stone directly from India, enables them to be competitive on pricing. And when they have won an order, whether from the end user or the trade, they aim to live up to the promises they give about when they will supply it – and doing so, they say, has won them business from companies who didn’t.
Steven accepts that the location of Domostone contributes to its continued success because the areas around Slough are wealthy and London is only a half-hour drive away, with all that offers. They can count among their customers Dragons Den millionaire Peter Jones, TV Chef John Burton Race, retailers Marks & Spencers and Banana Republic, the Otarian restaurant in Wardour Street, London, Mark Wilkinson Furniture, and the Marriott and Aurora hotel groups.
And, in spite of the economy, Steven is feeling fairly buoyant about the year ahead. “I think we will tick over quite nicely,” he says, forecasting 10-15% growth. It sounds impressive in the current economic climate, but for Domostone it is slower growth than they have been used to since moving into their new premises.