Stone People: Blume’s Solid Surface Products
“We rented half of that out when we first moved here, but now we use the full facility,” says Dottie Blume.
Adding natural and engineered stone products wasn’t easy for the Blumes. Although the company operates with a full complement of Löffler equipment (currently a bridge saw, single- and dual-table CNC machines and two edge profilers), none of it had been delivered when the big-box stores started ordering stone jobs.
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“We had ordered the equipment, but the box stores wanted the orders right away,” Dottie Blume says. “We ended up buying them out-of-state. We worked with a fabricator in Michigan that’s no longer in business. I’d send the templates to them, they’d fabricate them, and then send them back to us.”
The equipment delay became an advanage, since it gave the Blumes the opportunity to refine their installation techniques and train their installers before they had to focus on stone fabrication.
Once the equipment arrived, “That was a beast in itself,” Dottie Blume says. “It was easier to learn the differences between laminates and solid surface than it was between sold surface and granite. It’s a totally different industry, and it was a huge learning curve.”
CHECKS AND BALANCES
Things might have been easier, of course, if the Blumes weren’t such sticklers for turning out quality products – for every job, every time.
“We’re real proud of our quality control and making sure that each job is the best we can send out,” says Dottie Blume. “If a customer isn’t satisfied or if we have a problem, we’ll remake the piece at our expense or do whatever else they might want us to do.”
Of course, the company has multiple checks built into every stage of the fabrication and installation process so problems don’t occur.
“For instance, the installers have a check list, and those are reviewed by me and by the production manager,” she says. “When we see a reoccurrence of a problem on the jobsite – say the backsplashes are coming up short all the time – we can go into the shop and make sure there isn’t a programming error, or the equipment isn’t properly calibrated.”
Customer satisfaction surveys let her know if an installation crew is consistently late arriving at jobsites or there’s an issue with the installation of a particular type of sink.
“We correct those problems as quickly as we can,” she says. “And we also make sure each customer gets a care kit and is properly informed on how to maintain their countertop, no matter what the material is.”
Ultimately, Blume says the company gets and keeps its customers due to its quality and service, as well as its innovation. Coming from the solid-surface industry, she says they were initially appalled at the seams that were deemed acceptable in granite installations, and found ways to do better.
“We do an offset seam and a hard seam,” she says. “We use hard glue – solid-surface glues that bond the seams together. We’re very proud of our seams because they’re almost invisible most of the time.”
A new program from Löffler also helps better-match the grain on granite projects.
