“One of our biggest selling points is we set a date when we will be there with the cabinets, and we always hit that date,” says TJ Lake, whose father, Tommy, founded Twin Oaks in 1986.

Tommy got his start while working for a local construction company. “He was transferred to a different department within the company and didn’t care for that type of work,” says TJ. “So he decided to start building some cabinets on the side, thinking it would give him something to do until things got better at work. Turns out he never went back to his original job.”

With 50 employees, Twin Oaks Custom Cabinets builds and installs cabinets for a mostly residential market (split fairly evenly between builder/contractor and direct retail customers). The shop, which is supported by a 3,000 sq ft showroom, is fully automated. The market area includes parts of Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.

“We were using a modified Excel spreadsheet to manage scheduling,” TJ explains, “but it was too complicated trying to coordinate so many details over such large distances. That is the reason we turned to Moraware.”

Countertops To Cabinets

TJ’s was initially introduced to JobTracker by his brother, Shane, who uses the program in his granite fabrication company, Signature Granite. It didn’t take TJ long to see the benefits of using it in his operation as well.

“Basically, JobTracker was designed for a countertop company,” he explains. “We have modified it to match all the different activities in our business. We customized it to follow up on a sales call or collections on a finished job; all the different activities on the shop floor, from cutout to assembly and to finishing. We have production goals the guys work off of, and they can see where they are at any given point. At the end of the day, they can measure if they are on-track, running behind or ahead of schedule.”

And that kind of feedback is what makes it possible for Twin Oaks to always hit their deadlines. “We can predict installation dates three, four and five weeks ahead of time and know for sure when we will be there,” TJ says. “That gives customers a good sense of confidence they are buying from someone who stands behind what they say.”

Tools For Growth

Now that the company has incorporated JobTracker into its operations, it is expanding the market area into Arkansas and Texas. “We have two salesmen that are about 75-80 miles from here and they never come to our showroom,” TJ explains. “They are primarily selling to builders. Anytime you can show a customer the tools you are using to guarantee the product on time it is a big advantage.”

“I currently have 68 different jobs that I’m personally taking care of – measuring and getting the customers’ preferences,” he continues. “A couple of our guys here in the office have over 100 jobs apiece. When you have that many jobs going it is easy to lose track of details – but we manage it in JobTracker. Each day you look at your calendar, and it tells you the 10-20 things you need to accomplish. If you can’t do it that day, you can carry it over to the next day or a week out, whatever. But the best part is that all the information is right at your fingertips.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

But first, find out where you rank!

Do you:

1. Have a desktop shortcut?
2. Log into Moraware JobTracker every day?
3. Enter every new job as it comes in?
4. Mark every activity as complete when it’s done?
5. Have views that show exactly what you need?
6. Not use an additional calendar, whiteboard, or spreadsheet?
7. Have a JobTracker user for each person in the office?
8. Have an assignee for each templater or install crew?
9. Have a single place for all job information?
10. Use reports to analyze your business?

Scoring

add one point for every YES answer.

Score below 3 = Novice: You’ve just started using Moraware JobTracker, and although you’re excited… you’re near the beginning.

Score 3-4 = Apprentice: You’ve scratched the surface, but there’s a ton to learn.

Score 5-6 = Journeyman: The secret of your success has been incorporating JobTracker into some of your business.

Score 7-8 = Expert: As an expert, you’ve gotten the biggest gains already. Your business is a smoothly-running ship.

Score 9+ = Master: Some say there’s a shrine in your honor at Moraware headquarters.

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

Established in 1996, Rocky Mountain Custom Countertops was acquired two years ago by Chris & Dick’s a large retailer of cabinets, countertops and flooring in Salt Lake City.

Even though Rocky Mountain relocated its fabrication shop to the Chris & Dick’s campus last summer, the company continues to do business under the Rocky Mountain Custom Countertops name so as to take advantage of its existing customer base. RMCC fabricates and installs stone and quartz surfacing for the retail residential, dealer and homebuilder markets, as well as some commercial. Chris & Dick’s also sells solid surface and laminate countertops.

The Old System:

Curt Harrison, manager of RMCC, says he would draw the countertop layout by hand and enter the data into a spreadsheet, which would then calculate the square footage for the project. Although time-consuming, the method was somewhat satisfactory before the company merged with Chris & Dick’s.

After the acquisition, the time spent compiling a quote and then keeping track of job and customer information for seven inside and six outside salespeople quickly overwhelmed the spreadsheet method.
“It took way too much time,” he says.

The Solution:

“The CounterGo system is light years ahead of building a quote in Excel,” says Harrison. He indicates there are three main benefits to migrating to the new quoting system:

• Having the sales staff draw up their projects in CounterGo takes any guess work out of calculating square footage and simplifies the whole process.
• Knowing how much material we will need for the job.
• Having everyone using the same system allows us to control the cost and how projects are being sold.

Now that RMCC is part of a much larger and more diverse company, Harrison appreciates the fact that CounterGo is versatile enough to be used for more than just one product category. “We currently use it for stone and solid surface,” he explains. “Eventually, we would like to use it for the laminate division, but that is priced a little bit differently. In the meantime, it is working great for stone and the solid surface.”

The countertop segment of Chris & Dick’s is poised for significant growth in 2013 after experiencing slight growth the past two years. With that kind of expansion on the horizon he is confident CounterGo will be able to handle the increased demand. “We just need to get more licenses…”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

“I found a shop here in Boston,” says John Howard of National Stone Marble & Granite in Shrewsbury, MA, “that was kind of going under and I said to the owner, ‘What if I put a few of my own guys in here? I will bring in my own stone and we will use your business front as my fabrication facility.’ We negotiated a financial deal and I was able to do it that way for a good year and a half. During that time I was able to build my customer base and we were doing close to 25 kitchens a week out of this guy’s shop.”

Turns out, John Howard has made a bit of a career out of thinking outside the box. A native of Boston, he and his wife, Simara, traded the cold New England weather for balmy Central Florida when he accepted a position as project manager for a stone fabrication company that had just landed a contract to furnish countertops for a large condo project. There were three phases, and each phase had up to 480 units. The first time John visited the jobsite he was aghast.

“The quality, the installation, everything was poor,” he recalls. “I told the company that what these guys could do in a week my guys could do in a day. So they got rid of their guys and sub-contracted installation to me.”

It’s Who You Know

John’s “guys” were fabricators he knew from his earlier life in New England, who were now working for a Boston company that had opened two shops in Florida.

“Once we got the installation squared away, I got back on the phone to the company and told them, ‘Now the problem is the fabrication. You can’t get it to us on time, and what you send is not very good quality.’ They asked if I had somebody that could fabricate these jobs for them, and I said I did. So they sub-contracted to me for all the fabrication and installation.”

Things were cruising along until the recession that pummeled Florida hit right at the end of the first phase of the condo project, effectively stopping the work in its tracks. John and Samara knew it was time to return to Boston. “We decided this time we would open our own business instead of working for someone else,” he says.

Putting It All Together

Immediately upon his arrival in Boston, John began calling on kitchen dealers, contractors, designers and other contacts he had made while working for other fabricators in the area. “I went in and re-introduced myself to everyone and told them, ‘This is what I am doing now,’” he says.

National Stone’s strategy is pretty straightforward. “We are strictly wholesale – we don’t entertain any aspect of the retail business whatsoever. We deal mainly with cabinet dealers. We don’t do any home center business. We are focused on quality.”

Oh, and there is one more thing: John puts a lot of effort into hiring well. “Everybody that works here is top quality,” he says. “I try to find the best people and pay them top dollar. And I hire only through referral – unless a fabricator is recommended by someone I trust, they don’t get a shot.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

Thanks again for reading our monthly newsletter! If you have any comments, or if there’s an article you want us to highlight next time, please let us know.

FABRICATOR PROFILES

Werthan, LLC of Nashville, TN comes from a long line of family entrepreneurs.
Here’s their story.

Rock Tops in Plainview, TX is incredibly foresighted about incorporating software:
More details, here.

If you’d like to read about how other fabricators are excelling at business, check out our weekly blog posts.

JOBTRACKER

JobTracker is scheduling software that replaces your whiteboard, file folders, and spreadsheets.

Double the attached files: We’ve increased the limits on attached file space for all of our subscription JobTracker users.

For Basic Edition, the new limit is 10GB, and for Standard and Inventory Editions, the limit is 20GB.

To find out more, call us any time. 866-312-9273

COUNTERGO

CounterGo lets you draw, layout, and quote countertops in 3 minutes. Here are a few tips & tricks.

Drawing vanities: Here’s how to draw a basic vanity .
Batwings and other 45′ angles: One of our top questions: how to draw a batwing.

For more help articles and videos, go to our help pages . Or, call us for an online demo. 866-312-9273

REMNANTSWAP

RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell countertop remnants . Take a minute and see what materials are near you. Search for any color, material and by default we’ll show you the results that are closest to you.

Here’s more info, including a 2-minute video.

EDUCATION

It’s always great to learn new things about running your business. Come see us:

* Digital Stoneworking Expo – June 7, St. Cloud, MN
* Stone Industry Education – June 11, Boston, MA

CONTACT US

You can reach us at support@moraware.com or call toll-free 866-312-9273.

“I was in awe when I saw it,” explains Waddell. “When I got back home to Tupelo I started doing research on stone countertops. I looked at the competition in the area, and decided there was an opportunity there. It took about two years to get everything lined up, then I jumped into stone fabrication with both feet.”

“Send Me A Truckload!”

So enthusiastic, in fact, was Waddell’s foray into hard surface fabrication that he had a truckload of Cambria delivered to his facility before the machinery to process the material had even been installed. “Cambria controlled fabrication very closely at that time – and still does – but there was a hole in the market in this part of Mississippi that we were willing to fill,” Waddell recalls. “Nobody else was willing to put that kind of investment into the market – so Cambria gave us the opportunity.”

Turns out, Cambria’s trust in Waddell and his new company, Premier Countertops, was well founded. That first year (2006) Premier Countertops purchased three truckloads of material from Cambria. Last year they brought in 27. “It’s gotten bigger every year,” Waddell says.

Then, three years ago, Cambria’s fabricator in Memphis went out of business and Premier moved in to fill the void. “We were able to take over that market” Waddell says, “so we now have part of Arkansas, part of Tennessee and part of Mississippi. This year we became a Lexus partner with Cambria. That’s a pretty big deal. There are only 16 Lexus Partners and we are the 16th partner.”

Building Relationships

Today, Premier Countertops fabricates all types of quartz surfacing and natural stone countertops for a mostly residential market – although the company has set its sights on bringing in more commercial work in the future. The company has two showrooms, one in Tupelo and the other in Olive Branch, which is just outside of Memphis. And, as a fabricating partner for Cambria, Premier sells fabricated product to other fabricators in its market area.

“We regularly cut around 1,000-plus sq ft of material per week,” Waddell explains. “We do 70% quartz and 30% natural stone. I’ve got 16,000 square feet in the manufacturing shop and I have 5,000 more that is a warehouse area. We have 15,000 sq ft of concreted slab storage for granite. We fabricate everything here in Tupelo and we have partners from Little Rock to the Tennessee River. We deliver four to five days per week, not including the 12-15 jobs per week that we do for ourselves.”

With customers all along the value chain, Waddell understands the importance of creating and maintaining relationships with everyone in the industry. “A lot of people look at other fabricators as competition,” he says. “I look at them as competition, too, but I also look at them as friendly competition and I build relationships with them. If they have a fabrication question, I do what I can to help.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

This is useful if you’ve got lots of countertops and backsplashes in your drawing, and you’re adding them to multiple Areas or if you’re choosing multiple Edges.

Rather than squinting to find the tiny pieces of counter on the small drawing, you can click the Expand button and see a much larger version.

Then, when you’ve made your selections, just click the Collapse button to make it a thumbnail again. We also made a few tweaks that should help selecting which tops and backsplashes belong to which areas.

If you want to find out about how to add areas or edge profiles, check out our help.

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

1. You must be willing to change in order to survive and,
2. Quality always wins out.

“When I opened Dream Stone in 2000 I would have told you point blank that I would never work for the prices I am getting now,” Murphy says.

“Ten years ago Uba Tuba was going for $65 per sq ft in our area. Now there are guys doing it in Denver for $25 per sq ft installed. They have driven prices so far down, how do you ever get them back up?”

Well, maybe you don’t.

If They Pay, We’ll Go Anywhere

But, that hasn’t stopped Murphy. His company, Dream Stone Marble & Granite in Longmont, Colorado, has responded to the downward pressure on prices by diversifying its product offering, expanding its market area and focusing on high-end clients who appreciate the kind of quality Dream Stone is able to deliver.

“We work everywhere in the state of Colorado and we ship some of our jobs all over the country,” Murphy says. “We do a lot of work for Sears Home Improvement. We do work for flooring companies. We do some big millwork companies. We work for stainless steel companies, as well as custom home builders and even Harry the Homeowner, who walks in off of the street. All of our business is pretty much word of mouth.”

And there’s more. Dream Stone has also partnered with a company in Arkansas to manufacture custom shower systems under the brand name Salita Shower Systems And, Dream Stone utilizes its two, five-axis and one, four-axis CNCs to do custom stone carving, as well as one-off prototypes for millwork houses. “Bring me some wood and I’ll make anything you want,” quips Murphy.

Taking The High Road

Of course, the company also pursues more traditional countertop business, getting down and dirty with competitors who think the only way to land a job is to lower their prices. Murphy says that almost always results in lower quality and bad service, a game which Dream Stone refuses to play. “We recently brought on a big builder that was told by his fabrication company they didn’t pay enough to get a good job,” he says. “I don’t get that.”

Nor, does he understand why some stone importers in his market have decided to sell slabs directly to homeowners. “The homeowner builds himself an A-frame and buys the slab at an inflated price from the importer,” Murphy explains. “If the homeowner has a fabricator, the importer gives the fabricator a kickback. So, now the fabricator is not paying for any material, he is just getting paid for labor, and he is fabricating the slab in the customer’s garage. So what happens if the slab gets broken? Who is responsible – the homeowner or the fabricator?”

In some ways, it’s like the Wild West all over again. But Murphy, who is an experienced fabricator with a reputation for delivering quality product, is quick on the draw. “We still do a lot of the high-end work,” he says. “I am known for the high-end. That will always be there. At any given time we could have a high-end job going as well as 20 tract homes. I don’t even know how you could survive as a granite fabrication company today without some kind of diversification.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

What that means is that we’ve gone from 5GB to 10GB for Basic Edition, and from 10GB to 20GB for Standard and Inventory Editions.

It’s been a bit of work, but we’re happy to increase the limit.

Why?

Over the last few months, we’ve been improving how we store and backup the attached files. Because of that investment in our own infrastructure, we can take advantage of lower cost hardware and cloud storage.

We’ve been able to lower our cost for attached files and at the same time, make do more frequent backups that are stored more reliably.

The new limit (and the old limit) doesn’t apply if you’re on the the downloadable version (…if you bought JobTracker before 2008, with a few exceptions)

If you want to find out how much attached file storage you’re using, go to the Help menu in Moraware and click on About Moraware JobTracker… There’s a section about the attached file usage, including the number of files, size, and the percentage of space you’re using.

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

Custom fabricators of natural stone, marble and quartz surfacing, Schneider Stone of Asheboro, NC has been in business since 2001. In 2007 brothers Paul and Ryan Boger, both employees of Schneider Stone at the time, purchased the company.

“When my brother started working here there 6-8 employees,” says Paull Boger. “At our peak there were about 48 people and, today, there are about 40.”

Boger says his company’s bread and butter market is residential and remodeling, with about 15% coming from commercial customers. The company is considering expanding into solid surface as a vehicle for the company to become a one-stop source for the commercial market. Schneider Stone currently has four locations: Asheboro, Greensboro, Chapel Hill and Wilmington, North Carolina.

The Old System:

“We inherited quoting software designed for the glass industry,” Boger explains. “With us having four locations it just couldn’t keep up. It got to where I was calling our IT company everyday saying the quoting system was down.”

Even more frustrating, there was no way to forecast where the next problem would crop up. “We would have issues at one place and not the other, and then suddenly we were having issues everywhere,” he recalls. “Two IT companies later we determined that the software really wasn’t up to the task.”

The Solution:

“I had heard about Moraware for what seems like forever,” Boger says. “When we called the company we told them that we had an interest in JobTracker but what we really needed was a quoting system that worked in multiple locations – and we needed it right away. CounterGo sounded like the solution we were looking for.”

Having already dealt with the vagaries of an unruly software program, with no apparent way to address critical issues other than trial and error, the Bogers set a high priority on finding a company with a good track record for providing customer support.

Boger likes the way CounterGo gets “smarter” the more it is used. “It builds on itself as we add things in, which is nice. We have three or four people using it. One person might quote a laminated edge with a half bull ogee and then enters that into the system. From that point on that edge profile is part of the quoting system for the next person who comes along. You just use what’s been done for you.”

Next to its reliability, the folks at Schneider Stone like how much time CounterGo saves the company. “It cuts the time to generate a quote in half, if not more. A standard quote in the system might have taken 10-15 minutes before. Now, we get it done in five minutes.”

Since CounterGo generates a drawing with every quote, Boger says communication between the company and its customers is greatly enhanced. “People would come in with their kitchen drawn out on a napkin,” he says. “That left a lot of room for misinterpretation. Now that a dimensioned drawing is attached to the quote, there is total clarity of what we have quoted.”

“Just like with any change, we were skeptical at the beginning if CounterGo was really the solution,” remembers Boger. “That is why we were asking how available Moraware would be for support. Come to find out we’ve only called them four or five times, and that’s really all we’ve needed.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.