A mixture of thoughtful marketing and attention to quality products and service has seen SSMG continue to grow throughout the downturn – and it has not finished yet.

Fireplaces, architectural stonemasonry, granite worktops, intricate inlaid floors, marble vanity units, memorials… if it’s stone, Sussex Stone Marble & Granite can provide it.

More than 60% of the company’s business comes from worktops, but the other areas play an important role in the business mix that reduces too much exposure to any particular sector.

The ability to set out and work stone, both on the banker and using the latest in CNC machinery, is a skill that Managing Director Simon Henry attributes to his broad stonemasonry background with Tom Napper (now retired) of masonry company Naplock and subsequent companies.

With Naplock, Simon worked on such high profile projects as the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, the Royal Courts of Justice in London and even the bullion room of the Bank of England after a fire there.

After Naplock he became a labour-only contractor and in 2005 he and his partner, Laura Robinson, decided to establish their own masonry business under the name of Sussex Stone Marble & Granite (SSMG). Not wanting to borrow from the banks they sold their houses to finance the venture – a decision that has subsequently proved eminently sensible.

They started with workshops in former farm buildings in Heathfield, not far from their present premises in Sussex.

Then came the Credit Crunch, although by then SSMG had reached a point where it needed its own CNC workcentre to make all the worktops being ordered. It entered an informal partnership with another local company so they could share a CNC, although such arrangements are hard to maintain and the two companies went their separate ways after a couple of years.

The Credit Crunch might have slowed SSMG’s growth, but if it did, Simon did not notice it. “We can only listen to other people telling us there’s a downturn. We have just grown and grown and grown.” He attributes that to having established a reputation for quality and service and spreading the message with advertisements in local and national magazines.

“We have always wanted to work to a standard that we would be happy to have in our own home,” he told NSS.

The company is also prepared to go that one step further. One Blue in the Night granite top, made and installed by SSMG for a large island site, was chipped by the customer. It was clearly not the fault of SSMG. Nevertheless, the company returned, took the top back to its workshop, cut 5mm off to get rid of the chipped edge, polished it and re-installed it in the customers’ kitchen – all at no charge. “It’s part of establishing a regular customer base,” says Laura.

They do not normally charge for samples or delivery, either. “If someone’s spending £5,000 with you, take the chance,” says Laura.

Another part of the ethos is being honest and explaining to customers that stone is a natural product, each piece unique, that it will need sealing and maintaining, and that fingerprints will show on a polished dark surface. Far from putting people off, Laura believes it gives customers confidence in SSMG because it means the company is perceived as the expert, knowing about issues that other companies have not mentioned – although she admits it is a fine line between bamboozling customers and informing them. “You have to avoid getting that glazed look in their eyes.”

After ending its previous collaboration with another company, SSMG moved into the workshops it currently occupies in Ninfield in 2010. “I had to get a CNC because that’s how busy we still were,” says Simon. The workcentre he chose was a second-hand Bavelloni. He already had an Achilli saw and he added a new MarmoMeccanica edge polisher.

SSMG has good relationships with the kitchen and bathroom showrooms in its area that it supplies. Even so, Simon and Laura also decided in 2010 that they should have their own showroom and found the premises they were looking for to house it at Diplocks Industrial Estate in Hailsham at the end of that year.

They already had a display in a local garden centre, but the 135m2 showroom gives them more than four times the display area and has enabled them to show some traditional architectural stonemasonry and fireplaces, as well as marble, granite and limestone for kitchens and bathrooms.

As you can see from the photographs, the showroom looks bright, modern and welcoming. The building they took over to create it was not. It was dilapidated with a leaking roof, “but we got a real good bargain price”, says Simon. He spent the next 12 months renovating it in whatever spare time he got before it opened as the showroom it now is in November 2011.

They visited kitchen showrooms for inspiration and went to the Italian tile exhibition, Cersaie, which is where they bought their display units. They were expensive, but they convey the right message and save a lot of space. On one carousel that takes up about 1m2 of floor space there are 180 stone tiles displayed.

Portraying the right image is important to SSMG, and not just in the showroom. The company vans (which sport a QR Code as well as the company details) are always kept clean and the eight people employed by the company are expected to do their bit towards the corporate image. The masons are provided with shirts bearing the company logo and have separate pairs of boots for the workshop and for going out to customers’ homes to template and fix.

In the showroom, SSMG displays its kitchen worktops on County units and will happily provide customers with information about County kitchens if they want it, “but we never push County if customers have been sent here by other kitchen studios”, says Laura.

The area served by SSMG is growing, too. It now regularly goes into Brighton and has worked in some impressive properties in London. It has even gone further afield to the Channel Islands and Scotland, thanks to the internet and its magazine advertisements. These customers tend to be less traditional than the typical customer in Sussex.

In Sussex, customers prefer granite. In Brighton and London they are a lot keener on engineered quartz and that part of SSMG’s business is expanding rapidly as a result.

SSMG likes quartz: A small sample represents what the finished worktop will look like and the material is available the next day, which Simon complains cannot always be said of the natural materials the company buys from whichever wholesaler can supply it – and it regularly buys from The Marble & Granite Centre, Pisani, Stone World, Ingemar, Beltrami and McMarmilloyd (the latter particularly when it wants a more unusual material).

In the past year the showroom has proved its worth. Kitchen studios are happy to send their customers along to it to select their stone and it has attracted architects and their clients as well as members of the public.

Now SSMG wants to expand it by building a second storey, for which there is already planning permission. When the showroom was first opened, its displays included memorials, which have since been replaced by fireplaces because memorials do not always sit comfortably in the company of home improvements.

Nevertheless, Simon believes there is greater potential for memorial sales. He has an Odlings MCR blast cabinet and already makes his own bespoke memorials from 75mm stock. He would use a second storey of the showroom to display memorials in their own section.

Looking a little further down the line, SSMG would like to open showrooms in Brighton and Haywards Heath and Simon says it will not be long before he needs a bigger workshop because he needs a second CNC workcentre to keep up with demand. Laura adds: “We never set out to be a huge company, as you can sometimes lose your quality control and the sense of a traditional family firm, but there is always room for a bit more growth.”