A Role of Different Parts

“At this point we’re pretty well known in the industry,” Rhodes says. “There are very few people who do what we do, and within the circle of top architects and designers who are looking to push the envelope and really looking for expressive stonework, we’re pretty well known.”

Perhaps the most unusual part of the business is that RAS is involved with projects literally from the beginning.

Click Photo to Enlarge“We’re invited to the design team as peers and we cast ourselves as sort of interpreters or translators of the design intent into the medium of stone,” he explains. “We’re at the table, speaking the language of the designers and helping convey their architectural ideas into this medium where we have developed mastery. That can make us a powerful resource.”

That presence, Rhodes believes, helps the designer achieve a project’s full potential in a way that doesn’t happen if a consultant is brought in after the design is already conceptualized.

It also requires the company to have a much closer relationship with the end client than most people in the industry ever experience. Part of that is because of the people with whom the company works.

“These clients are exceptional people, and there’s a reason they’ve been so successful in their lives,” he says. “I found it a gift to be able to work with them and learn from them and find out how they think about things and what’s important to them.”

Some projects, he adds, may take half-a-dozen years to come to fruition. And, because these people aren’t building for simple shelter, their projects become important statements about their lives and what they’ve achieved.

“It’s a very personal experience for them,” Rhodes says. “For many of our clients, this is the most-creative and –expressive thing they’ve done. They’re tremendously charged to be working with creative people, and they love finding somebody who can help them take their ideas and give them expression.”

While that part of the process may sound a bit esoteric for someone who started as an apprentice stone mason, Rhodes Architectural Stone is also strongly anchored in the nuts-and-bolts of the business.

On a typical project, his crew will write the specifications for the job, consult on hiring the masonry crew, and make sure that the work is done correctly.

“There’s a tremendous amount of work in the engineering and specifications and shop-drawing process,” Rhodes explains. “Design-and-specification is one of our largest groups.”

However, the hands-on part of the operation stops with fabrication; the company stopped doing its own installations in 2003.

A MATTER OF CENTURIES

The other employee-intensive part of the operation, Rhodes says, is the fabrication. He may have started his career as a mason in Italy, but today a large part of the business is based in China.

Again, it goes back to his desire for expressive stonework.

“We found that the part of stone that’s most expressive is really hand finishes,” he says. “And, it’s just not possible to do hand finishes in the United States anymore. We did hand finishes for 10 years in Seattle, and we were certainly among the last people to produce them in the United States, but it’s just not possible now with labor costs.”

Initially Rhodes went to China because of a large project he was working on for a software billionaire outside San Francisco. The client had what he called, “a personal trade imbalance,” with China, meaning he had currency he needed to spend in that country.

The plan was to have Rhodes buy the stone in China and ship it to Seattle for fabrication. Once onsite, however, Rhodes says he was struck by the arrogance of the plan.

“These people in China know more about stone than I’ll know in my lifetime,” he says. “They’re enormously skilled and they’ve been processing and working with stone for 3,500 years.”

Rhodes went back to his client and proposed setting up a factory in China, then shipping the finished stone directly to the site, with the stipulation that at the end Rhodes would own the factory.

“I said, ‘In the end, it will cost you less,’” he says. “The client agreed and that’s the start of how I came to work in China. Ultimately, I moved my entire manufacturing operation there because I could do so much more.”