He Can Only Get It For You Wholesale
A CHANGE OF DIRECTION
As successful as Qualey Granite and Quartz became as a retail operation, Matt Qualey says there were problems he could see with the retail model he and his competitors were following.
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One was simply supporting his investment in equipment and inventory. While Maine has a landmass as big as the rest of New England, its low population density still limits its market. And, despite being able to do what Qualey describes as “cherry-pick” the Bangor market during the last housing boom, much of his work – and his wealthiest customers – centered along Maine’s coast.
“We were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing and TV advertising, trying to bring people to us, and it got to the point where it wasn’t working,” he says.
However, the company also had an ace-in-the-hole in its relationship to Cambria®. The Minnesota-based quartz manufacturer prefers to maintain exclusive relationships with selected wholesalers, and Qualey has been a Cambria dealer for years.
Ultimately, Qualey hired his first sales representative and made the switch to a wholesale-only operation at the start of 2013.
It wasn’t what he expected.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he says. “The move almost sunk us. We were no longer getting deposits, we were no longer working with the end-users. And, we also got so busy so fast we weren’t prepared for the work.”
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The latter can be attributed to the company’s great reputation and inventory, and what Qualey says has grown to be a diverse customer base that extends pretty much from Boston north into Canada’s Maritime Provinces.
Certainly, some of his old customers don’t understand the shift from retail. His simple explanation: “If you want to buy a Mercedes, you can’t just call the company and buy one; they will tell you where the dealer is so you can buy the product.”
The same is true with Qualey Granite. If someone visits the shop today, the staff will find out where they live, and who they’re working with. If they need a dealer, a referral is made.
“I don’t like working directly with contractors, so a lot of our work is sold through kitchen-and-bath shops,” he says. “Maine is also still heavily lumberyard-driven. There are a lot of private, multi-location lumberyards and they represent the bulk of our repeat work.”
Qualey is also careful that one thing didn’t change when the company went wholesale: customer service.
“We still treat the job as though we are retail,” he says. “We do a lot of our dealers’ work because we’re far better at it than they are. They take care of the account, they take care of the mark-up. and they do everything else. However, we want to do all the hard work and make their lives as easy as possible.”
Then, there’s the new showroom and design center in Portland, which Qualey says has allowed the company to go after more of the designer market.
“We built it for them,” Qualey says. “It’s not open to the public. In fact, the public can’t go into the facility unless they have an appointment made through one of our accounts.”
COMMITMENT TO QUARTZ
Of all his moves, Qualey says the addition of the Portland facility may be the best. The reason behind expanding to Portland is simply because that’s his market’s money and population center. However, it has made life easier on several levels.
“For one thing, it had gotten to the point where we were sending a crew down there every day, and Portland is a two-hour drive from Bangor, one way,” he explains. “We’re used to dealing with a big geographical area, but it got to be an issue with service calls and punch-list items. It also impacted our ability to get to a jobsite quickly.”
