In-Stone are making a major move into kitchens and bathrooms. By selling top quality products at fair prices they aim to establish a brand that will add its own value to stonework.
Having been in the construction industry for more than 40 years the vagueries of the economy don’t hold much fear for David Olley, the Chairman of In-Stone (Europe). “I don’t think it’s going to be a particularly bad year for us,” he says. “I did well in the last two recessions.”
He didn’t do so well in the one before that, in the 1970s. He puts that down to his exposure to the banks. He had an overdraft withdrawn overnight and it nearly bankrupted him. He vowed then never to let the banks have that much influence on him again. The fact that they now haven’t he believes will allow him to prosper again.
He survived the ’70s by concentrating on building extensions to existing properties because nobody was moving and new build had come to a halt. Instead, people were extending the houses they already had.
This time he is expanding in granite and engineered quartz kitchen worktops and carved stone. And he has gone right to the top end of automation by buying a Robostone robotic arm from Harbro.
It should be installed in a month or so at In-Stone’s workshops in London’s rapidly developing docklands near the O2 Dome and ExCeL (where the Natural Stone Show is held every other year). It is also surrounded by the development and refurbishment taking place for the 2012 Olympics.
In-Stone have already installed three saws supplied by Accurite, who have also supplied Ghines dust extraction units for the masons. There is an edge polisher on order.
As the year started they were producing around five worktops a week, not wanting to run before they could walk. But they aim to bump that up as the year progresses and expect to be making about 100 a month by the start of 2010.
They have employed two business development managers to push this side of the business. John Fellows joined them from having been selling Everest double glazing and John Morris from masons Ashby. As a result they already have some displays in kitchen showrooms in London.
The expansion was to have coincided with a move into a new workshop in Rainham in Essex with its own showroom, but the move has had to be shelved because searches on the premises identified access problems.
With the move cancelled, In-Stone are staying in the 2,000m2 units in E16 they moved into in 2007. They lease them from Ballymore Properties and have obtained assurances from Ballymore that they will be able to stay there for another five years, at least. With that assurance they feel confident about installing the new machinery there.
What moved In-Stone into processing stone themselves from previously concentrating on fixing was a debt. David had been fixing marble bathrooms for a stone company in north London and when they could not pay him he accepted 50% of the company in lieu of the debt.
He has since sold his share of that company, but it gave him the idea of moving into production. The units in E16 were made available to him by Ballymore Properties when he started working on one of their developments, installing 700 bathrooms at the exclusive
50-storey Canary Wharf property Pan Peninsula that is just now being completed.
Its Mivan-designed cocktail bar that opened last month (January) alone has £80,000 worth of stone in it. Most of it is Assoluto but there is 5m2 of feature flooring created from alternating 10mm strips of Metallico, Tiger stone, Tiger’s Eye, Tiger Yellow and Emperador. There are 13m of hand-made Italian mosaics from Sicis that cost £16,000.
David Olley previously traded as Hadensale Marble & Ceramics, but it was not a limited company. In 2001 he formed In-Stone as a limited company on the advice of his accountants because he was working on multi-million pound projects. He chose the name because it sounded modern and was memorable.
In-Stone have had as much as £7million worth of work underway at the same time and have several £1.5million-£2million projects lined up for this year.
One project due to start shortly involves £2million worth of stonework in bathrooms, a pool area and dining room in a house in Holland Park, London. In one bathroom, predominantly in pink Trani Bianconi marble that is also being used for the pool, there are two 2.8m x 2.3m free-standing screens of figured onyx sandwiched between sheets of toughened glass. They are fixed only at the bottom, going 200mm into the floor.
At £20,000 each, the client insisted they had to be guaranteed. No Italian company was prepared to guarantee them, so In-Stone are having them made in Havant by a company that would offer a guarantee.
At another project they have quoted for, although they have yet to see if it goes ahead, there is no cutting on site allowed, which will test the skills of all involved. In-Stone would not have felt confident quoting for it without their own workshops to produce it and their own draughtsmen to produce templates.
But major projects are tailing off – and in any case In-Stone do not want to be too heavily exposed to any one project. Hence the move into more domestic work with kitchens and bathrooms from their own workshops.
It was only with the move into the units in E16 that the In-Stone brand really started developing. And the profile of the brand was raised significantly by exhibiting at the Natural Stone Show at ExCeL London in March last year.
The stand featured a bathroom in New St Laurant marble from China, which was one of the stones being used for the bathrooms at Pan Peninsula (Billiemie and Jerusalem Grey were the others). The stone detail was designed on CAD by In-Stone and was then cut and worked in their workshops.
Not prepared to do anything by halves, there is about £1million worth of stone in stock there. David says they have so much because he has built his reputation on never finishing a project late – not through his fault, anyway. He does not intend to start letting people down now while he waits for supplies to arrive from abroad.
Of course price is important, but In-Stone accept they will not always be the cheapest even though they will always offer the best price they can. Nevertheless, people David Olley has worked with go back to him because he is prepared to go the extra mile to make sure he is not the cause of delays.
In-Stone buy blocks from all round the world and send them to Italy to be processed. It was easy for David to arrange as he has a house in Carrara, the port that gives its name to the white marble from the Apuan Alps behind it. He already had established contacts there who he could turn to when he wanted to have the blocks he had bought sawn and polished.
Making sure a project is never delayed by In-Stone is as much a question of employing the right people as it is of having the right stock. But employing the right people is not easy when the company are employing as many as 50 people at a time.
David reckons about one person in 10 lives up to his expectations and those who do are not necessarily British. Currently on their books are Romanians, Indians, Turks, Portuguese and Albanians. In-Stone have been granted a sponsorship licence to employ people from outside the EU who have the required documentation.
David may parody Beneton by describing his employees as “the united colours of In-Stone” but he agrees with Martin Rankoff, recruited as works manager a year ago, when he says: “These are crafts people. And whatever nationality they are, they are not cheap labour.”
But they do turn up every day and do not expect to go home at 3-o-clock in the afternoon or have Saturdays off when a job needs finishing.
The directors, who include David’s son Richard, the Managing Director, and Susan Jerry, do not, however, expect more of their workforce than they themselves give.
Martin Rankoff says: “I have never known directors work such long hours – all three of them. Last summer they were in until the early hours some days. That work ethic gives everyone else confidence and makes them want to work hard as well.”