Stone Industry Education Recap: Orange, CA

Mar 17, 2020 | Business

Last Thursday, we had the great honor of sponsoring and attending the California Stone Summit event held by Natural Stone Institute & Stone World, hosted at MSI’s Corporate Headquarters in Orange, CA.  Despite a slight attendance hit due to concerns around COVID-19, the event attracted fabricators from all around California, brought together with the unified goal of improving their businesses and learning about the issues their fellow fabricators and the industry are facing.

For myself, this was another valued opportunity to learn more about the stone industry, and to have the opportunity to speak directly with the fabricators who have been driving our mission here at Moraware for the last 18 years.

The benefits of going digital

Through an informative and engaging presentation by G.K. Naquin of Stone Interiors in Alabama, G.K. made a point of discussing the many benefits of bringing his entire process digital — whether it’s to solve issues with people losing pages or packets from job folders, to effectively keep information consistent and updated across the team, to have faster and more professional quotes, or to make sure that each team member effectively knows where they should be and what they should be working on (a point which was met with groans of agreement from the entire group).  

It’s worth noting that while most fabricators generally understand that there are significant benefits to a digital workflow, they may feel like it would be too daunting or overwhelming to implement and adapt their existing processes.

This is why our team prioritizes guiding you with onboarding and ongoing support to help make the transition as easy, painless, and successful as possible.  Your success is what drives our success, and we strive to keep that understanding central to our mission of helping fabricators successfully run their businesses and overcome business challenges.

Positive connections

As has been the case with each event I’ve attended since joining Moraware, a major personal highlight was having the honor of meeting some of our great customers, and learning just how much our products have helped them grow their countertop businesses.  It’s tremendously fun for me to personally meet people with whom I’ve previously only known by phone, and to hear firsthand just how much positive growth they have found since they first started with our software.

To hear a longtime customer tell me that they “live by our software” for managing their team’s schedule — or how they have finally been able to hire and train sales reps since developing the necessary simplicity and consistency of quoting with CounterGo — really drives home just how rewarding it is to help our customers solve business problems each day.

Education = better business

If you have never attended a NSI/Stone World event, I’d strongly encourage you to make the trip — or find a similar event locally — since each fabricator seemed to find tremendous value in learning from their industry peers, and there was a sense that everyone attending genuinely wanted to help each other grow and solve problems. 

Similarly, if you would like to learn more about bringing your quoting and scheduling into an organized digital format, we would love to give you a demo of our estimating (CounterGo) and scheduling (Systemize) software, to help see if our products might be the solution that can help you grow your countertop business. I’ll be looking forward to talking with you, and hope to see you at the next event!