Stone People: Finding the Direct Route
“They will meet with homeowners and design kitchens for them and get the components – including the cabinets – ordered,” says Halabi. “We really try to be full-service on their projects.”
WISE INVESTMENTS
Along with a new marketplace, Duracite had to find new ways to reach today’s customers. One key component of the company’s marketing strategy is today’s online media.
Click photo to enlarge“We’re doing a bit more with social media,” says Halabi. “Everyone’s getting into social media. The new generation coming up relies on social media for everything, and the last couple years we’ve started hiring younger people who understand Facebook and Twitter. We’re also rebuilding our website to take advantage of the technology that’s available.”
Of course, customer referrals are huge for the company, and Duracite does road shows in the shops of some of its partners, and at home shows.
However, Halabi is also finding a different type of mobile advertising is also paying off. It’s not really what he was aiming at when Duracite began replacing some of its fleet as a way to cut its fuel bill – which ran upwards of $1 million annually.
“Back in the old days, when every job was done with a hot template, people had to have trucks to put their tools in when they’d go do a measure,” he says. “Now, we primarily use PhotoTop® to do our digital templates, so their equipment is little more than a camera bag, and people didn’t need big trucks to do that.
“We looked at ways to reduce costs and be more- efficient, and we decided to explore the idea of taking all our measure vehicles and changing them from trucks that get 15 mpg to cars that get 50 mpg.”
These days, the company is in the process of switching out its measure vehicles to Toyota Prius hybrids – a red-orange color and distinctively marked – but Halabi says they’ve also become popular with some of his salespeople and even some of the service crews. Ultimately, Duracite expects the energy-efficient cars to make up a third of its fleet.
“We’re also getting name recognition in the marketplace from the cars,” he says. “We’re getting calls from people who have seen them, and they fit into our growing emphasis as a retail-oriented company.”
It’s also helping put a green spin on the business; Duracite has struggled to find green products that appeal to its customer base. Halabi says neither Vetrazzo® nor PaperStone® took off in any big way. However, there’s some success offering the acrylic-based GEOS Recycled Glass Product.
“It’s recycled glass in an acrylic form,” he explains. “The performance has been a little better because it performs like a quartz product, and we’ve been happy with it.”
As a member of the Artisan Group of stone fabricators, Duracite also benefits from offering the network’s Artisan Stone Collection and its Heritage Wood surfaces.
However, Halabi reiterates that its people are Duracite’s most-important product. It’s certainly the reason why the company has earned its Marble Institute of America accreditation and been recognized by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, along with other accolades.
“I want to make sure my employees are equipped with the best resources in the marketplace,” he says. “It’s part of what we do to care about our customers, but these investments continue to pay off because we get new ideas and it helps the business run more efficiently.”
Besides, as he adds, “Any time you hire an employee and they stay with you for awhile, you put a lot of investment in bringing them to where they are. Why not protect it?”
One obvious example is maintaining a culture where employees aren’t afraid to tell a customer something can’t be done or it has to be done differently to protect both the install crew and the homeowner.
Halabi takes it beyond that, though. Recently, he’s brought in outside trainers to work with the salespeople do to a better job with in-home customers. And, he says he’s not giving up on the commercial side of the business, so that as it recovers, “we’re there to help them.”
However, in the future, he says he’d like to see Duracite become even more of a total remodel solution for its customers – even to moving walls and doing minor additions.
“We’re expanding the cabinet business to be bigger, and we may introduce flooring and designer tile for bathrooms,” Halabi says. “I see us expanding into those markets and becoming more of a full-service company that can come to a person’s home and take on any sort of light remodeling for the kitchen and bath.”
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