Solid With Soapstone
The Franks continue to offer other products, from solid-surface to quartz to Vermont slate, and they’re looking at adding one of the green recycled-materials products. First and foremost, however, they’d rather be selling and fabricating soapstone.
“When we started with soapstone, we checked it out as much as possible, and we went to Brazil to see how our sources work it,” Noreen Frank says. “It we like something, we sell it, but I want to let my customers know – if they ask if I’d put it in my own home – that I’m able to say, ‘Yes, I would.’”
Click photo to enlargeIt’s that sort of personal touch that – along with Noreen Frank’s marketing skills – has enabled the business to grow, she believes. For instance, the couple’s photo is on their Website, and she says when people come in for the first time, they feel like they know the Franks.
Although they haven’t been selling soapstone countertops all that long, repeat business is important to them, too.
“I think people find us easy and friendly to deal with,” she says. “They’ll come back years later and give us hugs and tell us we’re just like family. They’ll tell us they love the product and they love working with us.”
However, Noreen Frank adds that the couple puts a lot of heart and soul into the business, and so do their employees.
“Gaetan does our templating, and he has a real eye for detail; he’s a perfectionist with the countertops and we make them art pieces,” she says. “It’s the same with the guys in the back. They all work well together, and I have no fear about sending any of them out on an install.
“I often get calls from customers saying not that not only is the installation beautiful, but they’ve left the house cleaner than when they went in.”
N & G currently boasts a staff of four in the shop, plus a sales assistant and an accountant, along with the Franks and their new east-coast team. Among them is one of their grandsons, who’s an apprentice sawyer.
Noreen Frank says full retirement isn’t in the cards for the couple, who have been accused by some clients of carrying on a three-way affair with the two of them and their soapstone.
“I think we’ll be in the business right up to when we fall asleep and don’t wake up again,” she says. “People tell us we radiate love for each other, for our business and for the people who work for us.”
Still, when the Franks take a less active day-to-day role in the business, it will be the employees who take it to the next level.
“We have a great staff, and without them, we wouldn’t be able to do this,” Noreen Frank concludes. “I suspect our employees will take it on further.”
Original publication ©2007 Western Business Media Inc. Use licensed to the author.
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