Even after 40+ years in the dimensional-stone industry, Jeffrey Matthews freely admits he doesn’t everything about natural stone. Finding someone who know more, however, would be tough duty.
Heading up his own consultancy — Atlanta-based Trade International Inc. — he’s trod through countless quarries, factories and other far-flung sites worldwide to find the right stone for clients. Along the way, he’s seen the the selection and the trends change … and change … and change.
He’s also contributed to the industry; his work with the Marble Institute of American includes being its youngest (at age 37) president in 1986, as well with working with a number of its boards and committees. In 2014, he earned the group’s Migliore Award for Lifetime Achievement.
And he’s seen enough to write a book — more than one, actually, with work through the years on the Dimensional Stone Design Manual and the MIA Stone Color Book. He’s the primary author of the Natural Stone Supplier-to Buyer Manual, a guide to dealing with international stone trade.
Q: In the past five years, are you seeing more, less or about the same demand for natural stone?
Matthews: Yes, each year has seen an increase in demand for natural stone.
Q: What kind of stone do you think is becoming more-favored and less-favored based on what you’ve been seeing going through? Not only with the market in general, with your own clients.
Matthews: I’m seeing, in general, because again I travel many, many areas of the market. an increase for quartzites, which some people are calling quartzitic marbles, others are calling quartzitic granites, but they’re somewhat translucent materials and they’re very hard. I’m seeing a lot of increase in demand for that and a lot of producers now, in India, China and Brazil especially, are producing more of those, as well as basalts and limestones. I’ve especially seen white marbles and in general gray colors in last five years really come into play in the marketplace. Less favored has been the pinks, the blacks, and the greens.
Back in the ‘80s we could sell a lot of the granite called Rosa Porrino out of Spain. Hundreds of thousands of square feet were being sold and people switching people to that stone because it was very well priced. Now you can’t give away Rosa Porrino or salmon-colored stone in this market. However, it’s still very popular in other markets; for example, we sell a lot of pink granite in the United States like Salisbury Pink to China. China is very big on salmon and pinks. The black granites have gone way down, and black marbles, black absolute granites and so forth, and green granites and green marbles, or serpentines were very, very much in demand in the ‘80s and early ‘90s; they’ve really fallen out of favor in the last 20-15 years. I’m not seeing much demand for those.
The gray colors and the white marbles, your Calacattas, your Carraras, even your Vietnamese White is becoming more popular even though every time there’s a problem everybody is running over there to see what they can do to select it better. There are selection issues in Vietnam with the white, but they’re selling more of the yellow granites now out of Vietnam, the black basalt out of Vietnam. So are other countries. We still are lacking in our overall education and knowledge of all of these other countries, of all the stones that are available.
Q: From what you see, what’s the perception of the US market by foreign stone producers?
Matthews: From a strictly business point of view, in the stone industry, as well as the other imitation industries — I.e., ceramic, engineered quartz, and so forth — this is still the most dynamic market in the world, and it’s still growing and has so much potential, and it has been consistently growing for some years. I had predicted years ago when I did my percentages that the market would grow on an average of 7% a year in size and demand and it has been doing that for the last 15 years.
I see nothing but potential. If you look at the statistics, we are still one of the lowest countries in the world for per-capita use of stone, which amazes me always. You take any other country, Italy, France, even England has more per-capita use of stone than we do. That means the potential for growth in the United States is phenomenal. The things that are, of course, eating that up is the alternative, imitation products. It’s not natural stone.
You look at what has happened and you’ll see that even in the last five years there’s been a big downturn in the market, for example, in Russia, that was a big market for a lot of people. They were getting more dollars-per-square-foot value for stone than any country in the world, even the United States. Now that’s down turned. Even China has declined. Yet, the Middle East, or Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi are still good markets. The market is steady, but it hasn’t grown. The Japanese market is steady but it hasn’t grown to the numbers and values of what North America has done.
As far as most people in the world as they look at these ups and downs, all they see is the increases yearly of the North America. Yes, this is still a positive market, and most countries in the world, as they study it, even though they may not prefer to sell the US market because it’s a pain in the neck for many reasons, and some of them are correct. Americans in their stone business are more demanding than many other countries. Many of them want a higher quality of stone in the United States, a better selection. More and more what’s happening is that they’re finding a market, which they could not before many years ago for the commercial grades of stone, like Florida is buying a tremendous amount of commercial grades of stone. That’s why prices are so low in Florida.
They sell commercial grades of travertine and marbles and so forth. Before, the market here was much more in higher selection controls – not necessarily quality, as selection and quality are two different terminologies the market doesn’t seem to understand. Just because you have a selection, so a select material or extra, or whatever, it’s just a grading issue. The quality is still the same. The quality is the cutting, the finishing, packing, luster all the same. The difference is the grading of the stone and the variation in the stone.
It used to be the markets for South America and other countries were taking all the commercial and all the select stone came to the United States, but more and more the US is picking up on making and appreciating that even the commercial selections are more natural looking. Not consistent, used to be that Crema Marfil had to look like ceramic, and now it’s just the opposite. Ceramic has to look like Crema Marfil. From that I mean that everybody wanted the Crema Marfil just like many architects still have that image that they want all the stone to repeat and be natural looking, but yet they don’t want it to look natural.
I have this argument with architects and designers and buyers all over North America. It amazes me and I say to them, “But, this is natural stone. It’s going to have, more or less veiny or markings or this and that, the color variations and backgrounds. That’s why it’s natural stone. If you don’t want that and you want something consistent, then buy ceramic.” “No, we want natural stone.” Then I have to say, “Well, why? You’re not willing to accept it, but yet you want it. You can’t have it both ways. You’ve got to learn to accept it.”
More and more architects are now accepting natural stone, and accepting that there’s more variation, which is a good thing. I think it comes down to education and knowledge, and they’ve got to appreciate that there are different prices for different natural stones and different grades of natural stones.
Q: How aware, as far as product selection, are clients aware of natural-stone variety and availability?
Matthews: It depends on who you mean by clients. The consumer is not aware of all varieties of stones available. Architects and designers, if they are stone specifiers, are more-aware, but their knowledge is lacking. Those that are not stone specifiers need a lot of work. They don’t know how to specify, clearly, stone, and are misled by showrooms and distributors. People are selecting stone by color when first it should be decided what is the best type of stone to use for the intended area or function, then find out the dos and don’ts of each type of stone, and, then, the color. Then, select the price.
People don’t always work in the same direction. Some people are working, “Let’s look at the price first. What can I buy for $5?” Or, “What do you have available in gray?” Most buyers are not educating their sales staff on stone types, and the dos and don’ts of each type. I’m seeing, too, that many projects are using the wrong stone. This could have been avoided.
Further, don’t just listen to the manufacturer, producer, or quarrier, but rather investigate the stone itself, the history, where it’s been used, and show me some examples of where it’s been used, and similar applications. We call those exemplars in the industry, as well as the ASTM testing of the stone. Most people aren’t doing any of this. Most people are not aware of all the stone available in the world to them, let alone are they aware of all the stones from North America. If you look at the possibility, there are over 25,000 different stones in the world, and over 125 different countries selling them, who can know it all? How can you prepare?
Every few years those stones change. They change because the quarry changes, as they get wider and deeper in the quarry. They change because more quarries are opened in the same area. You take a Crema Marfil for example; there’s a stone that was so popular for 20 years that it was the standard in the industry because everybody wanted this beige stone. Then, Crema Marfil went downhill. The production and the waste factors increased tremendously. Some became more fragile, some then had to be glued, and had to be fixed, and had to be epoxied, it had to be backed. Then, they opened up, and there were five or six or seven quarries of this on one mountain.
Then, they found other areas of Spain and quarries like Zafra and Sierra Puerta, which are completely different stones all together. They don’t look like Crema Marfil, but because the demand of the name being number one in the world, I.e., Crema Marfil, they decided to call them Crema Marfil. If you look at those two other types of Crema Marfil, Sierra Puerta and the Zafra and you’ll see that they are completely different and identical in their natures and what they are. Everybody jumped on the bandwagon because that’s what everybody wanted was the beige stone.
Now you have the alternates coming in from China and Turkey, and many other countries, so Crema Marfil isn’t the number-one stone in the world anymore. Things change like that. The quarries change. A quarry may turn out eight or 10 different stones, or selections, or even different names of stones, and/or there may be eight quarries all producing like Jerusalem Bone. There’s 8 or 10 or more quarries of that stone. Each quarry has several different selections. Like white, how many quarries do you think there are of white Carrara? If you look at there’s over 70 quarries of white Carrara, and that each quarry churns out selections, what do you have now? And each selection is qualified because they’re allowed to do it by quarry, by producer.
In other words, I consider coming out of my quarry there’s a select white Carrara; but, you compare that to select white Carrara from another quarry, it’s not the same. Another quarry might consider that, in their quarry, commercial grade. You might have, typically, in marble, as in limestone, even in granite, three, four, five different selections. People are not aware of those selections or how to treat those selections, yet there is different pricing on those selections. The pricing can be as much as 25% cheaper as you go to the more commercial grades, if you’re willing to accept those grades.
Q: Is there any demand for sourcing of U.S.-quarried stone?
Matthews: Yes, there is. I’m working on this personally to make more people aware of this. In the Building Stone Institute or with or outdoor types of stones for landscapes, for example, most companies in that arena know the domestic availability in their local area, but they’re not national in scope. They’re trying to promote nationally, but are not too good at it, in general, at producing and selling nationally. They’re not good at promoting locally even in their immediate area, but that’s where they’re strongest; is in their immediate, local area. For example, you take Indiana limestones, and the strongest area, obviously, is Indiana and/or the surrounding states all the way to D.C. New York, and, to Tennessee. That’s it.
They’ve done a very bad job at promoting it, marketing it, and not only that, they’ve made, as I’ve told them for 30 years and warned most of the producers there, they need to diversify, and they won’t do it. They still want to sell the three selections that come out of their quarries, which is the gray, and the buff, and then the mixture of the two. It’s the same way with most of the big stone companies. They don’t want to diversify in what they make, or in the types of stones that they can fabricate, even though they have the capability to cut other limestones from all across the United States, they won’t do it. They just cut Indiana, which makes no sense.
If I had a factory I’d say, “Let’s produce a palette of colors, so that I can sell anybody a complete job.” I want to give them a white, a green, a yellow, a brown, a blue, you know? Let’s give them all the colors of the rainbow here so that they select something. We have the machinery to produce it; my machine doesn’t care which stone it’s cutting, in general, as long as it’s a limestone.
There’s a mentality, and a fear of familiarity of what they know. They’re afraid sometimes to try new things. But then you look at the strengths of other companies and the limestone industries, like Texas limestones, and they’ve expanded to go into Indiana limestones and put up a factory there.
Then, you’re seeing more and more of the BSI-type companies who are strictly outdoor landscape stacked-stone companies who are now trying to diversify to get into the market, like Delaware and Delaware Quarries has put in machines to cut and make windowsills and make columns in limestone. It’s a good first step, but more of that needs to be done. More and more I’m getting requests and promoting domestic limestone and granite, but in some degrees the domestic producers are still pricing their products very high, even though they have all the modern machinery necessary and could compete with any Italian or European firms. They can’t compete with the Chinese or Far East factories in general; the labor there is just cheap.
Even now, some shifts are occurring to bring in South American travertine versus Italian or Turkish. Mexico is still strong for their travertine, but are raising the prices, which allows the imports from other countries into the North American market. There are some changes going on in the market and the way it’s going. Some of the best stones in the world are all American. Even the Chinese wish to import more from the USA; They recognize that the USA quarried stones as superior to theirs and have the recognition of being the best. I’ve met with many of the big influential people in China and government oriented people in China, and they told me that. “We want to buy more and use more because we consider products made in the USA the best.”
Q: What’s the effect of the emphasis of green, sustainable materials, and natural stone use?
Matthews: I don’t like that question. It’s prejudiced. It upsets me to some degree. I think this has leveled off somewhat. I have not seen growth, recently, in this market area, and personally think it as overrated. The issue being that all natural stone is green.
The labs and the green consortium want to charge every seller for every stone analysis to get a green ID or label. That’s absurd. In other words, show everyone which natural stones are not green. Companies can’t supposedly promote their stones as green without the labels on them, why?
You’re selling Crema Marfil again, and it’s green. No one else can offer Crema Marfil as green unless they go get this Crema Marfil certified. How is that? Why is that? That’s stupid to me. If the stone has been certified green, anybody that sells this oughta be able to say it’s green, but you can’t. It’s not legal. To me, it’s a ripoff. It’s just a way of making money and stating that something is something. The labs told me one time, “Don’t ever mention this, Jeff, and don’t argue and advertise against it, this would not be good for us.” I said, “Yeah, it would damage your ability to sell and make money, and you’re trying to promote certification for something that is limited.”
By that, I mean that all natural stone is green, therefore why does anybody have to argue the point? How can you argue that point? Now if you say that stone should be manufactured and installed to fit your other code standard within a 500-mile radius of a project, yeah, I agree with that, but that’s a different thing than being green. I like that. There are ways around it, but it’s happening, and I like the idea.
Q: What’s the effect of more introduction of alternative materials, quartz surfaces, compact and sintered surfaces?
Matthews: That’s another bugaboo for me, of course. I have these feelings because I am, by trade, a natural-stone person. This market is growing, meaning the imitation products has been eating into the natural stone market for years, and it will keep growing. It almost marries the growth of the natural-stone industry. In other words, if the natural stone industry is growing by 7%, so is the imitation market. In some cases, the imitation market is growing even by larger volumes, by larger numbers.
I don’t care for it, because it’s not natural stone. The issue is that some of these companies are using the name ‘stone’ or ‘granite’ in their promotion, and that should be illegal. It’s confusing to the marketplace. I’ve been in some facilities who bought engineered-quartz-type products, and when I asked the owners or managers what they thought of this product they would reply, “We like stone. It’s durable.” When I say to them, “This is not real marble, or granite,” or “it is not natural,” they don’t recognize this or understand it.
I was in one of the biggest kitchen faucet sink manufacturers and showrooms in the Atlanta market last month, and they had nothing but quartz-type products. When I told them and asked them what they thought of this countertop, they thought it was great. I said, “Well, why?” They said, “Well, look how consistent and how hard and durable it is.” I said, “But it’s not natural stone.” “Oh it isn’t? I didn’t know that. I was told this was natural stone. We’re telling everybody this is stone.” I said, “So you’re telling every consumer that comes in here and they see these imitation tops, you’re telling them that these are stone tops?” “Yeah, that’s what the salesman told us.” I’m scratching my head, I said, “You do know that this is synthetic products in here? This is not natural stone.”
And I said, “Do you know what goes into making of these products?” “Well, no, we don’t.” I said, “That’s the problem in our industry, nobody does, and there are no standards.” I questioned them on that, and when I asked them what they paid for it per square foot, and in many cases it was more money than natural stone. The marketing campaigns of the lookalike have been really good, and surpasses that of natural stone, I think we all realize that. Nobody has competed with, and has the competition ,of a $600-700 million company like Cosentino, for example, who is worldwide and has the power to promote and the money to promote and put millions of dollars into marketing like they do.
Some of your companies in the world are these imitation, ceramic, the porcelain, engineered-quartz -type companies. Even DuPont, for example, is making it. I mean, you know, these people have deep pockets to promote the lookalikes, and what are they doing? They’re promoting new lookalikes finishes and colors and selections, which they’re expanding. Even recently at Cersaie in Italy, the ceramic industry is showing more porcelain stone lookalikes in larger formats and even slabs. We know and have studied the markets, in especially the USA, and know how demanding and increasing in this market is the potential growth for natural stone, and they want their fair percentage of it.
Q: What would increase natural stone use overall in large-project markets?
Matthews: First, I’d say that all natural stone people should combine their marketing money to promote natural stone in the market. That means all stone associations and all stone producers, whether they be monumental landscape building stone, et cetera.
Number two, the MIA initiative to have a check off should be approved by the government and is very important.
Number three, more marketing and education to architects and designers, and more control around specifications. Marketing campaigns directed at the consumers and major specifiers, and users of hard surfaces through print, video, and TV advertising. Again, most architects and designers think they know how to specify stone and don’t specify it correctly and don’t get the stone they selected. In other words, they specify, “We want white Carrara.” That’s a dangerous specification. That’s like saying, “We want Crema Marfil.” Again, a dangerous specification. If you’re not educated in the stone and the dos and don’ts of that stone, if you’re not educated in the selections and grades of that stone, what do you think you’re getting priced? The best, number one, the most expensive stone and that stone you’ve selected? People are going to quote you the cheapest and most commercial grade you can buy. That’s then all the problems start.
That needs to be changed. More promotion to the trade shows, do-it-yourself shows, magazines, AIA, ASID, and publications dealing in hard surfaces needs to be done. Make the comparison on why natural stone is better than all the competition with life studies, cost, values, benefits, green products, et cetera, Show the failure of imitation products, and the lack of quality control, production techniques, contents that make up the product by weight or volume, do testing analysis on the products to show the actual percentages of the contents. One of the biggest failures in the imitation quartz and synthetic products is that the Chinese and many countries in the world are putting these products out there, but there are no standards. They’re sitting there saying, “Well, 93% is natural stone, or has chips, or has this or that.” Which is doesn’t, “And 7% has resins.” And you’re going, “7% of what? The weight or the volume?” And they don’t answer that question.
Number four, disallowing and illegalizing the names ‘natural stone’, ‘granite’, ‘marble’, ‘limestone’, et cetera, and not allow the imitation manufacturers to use these words unless they say something like ‘lookalike’ or ‘imitation’ or ‘synthetic’ in their promotion and marketing and naming of their product. We need to protect natural stone from unethical companies who wish to portray and sell their products in the same natural-stone arena. We need to educate all sales people in natural stone and make them take a course in natural stone, identifying all the varieties or types of stones, and knowing the dos and don’ts of each stone type, of each type of stone. Even within types of stone there are issues with stones fading in color, warping, de-laminating, pitting, wearability of stones, et cetera. Make these salespeople become certified and licensed to sell stone. Perhaps then, with less failures and mistakes in the selling of stone, we can clean up the market and get reductions of those that would have damaged it. The more customers that are happy and like natural stones, the more they will tell everybody else to use it.
Q: Over the span of your involvement with industry, what’s changed the market for natural stone in the United States?
Matthews: The MIA and other stone associations and stone promotions have made great stride in the last 20 years to start working together to improve, educate through CEUs (continuing education credits) and through publications. It’s amazing how many publications, over 250 publications are now available for download through the MIA.
We need to have more stringent controls on what we do and how we do it, like an ISO9000 type situation where companies go through better certification and better education because you have people out there selling stone that yesterday were selling clothes or selling furniture. Today they come in and somebody says, “Look,” to them, “we have 18 blacks, we’ve got 14 browns, we’ve got 13 beiges, we’ve got 10 greens. We got all these colors here, go out and sell them.” They go out to their customers and lay it down, “What are you looking for?” “I need a black.” “Okay, I got 18 blacks. Pick one.” And that’s not the way you sell stone. That’s not the way you do it. I used to get so upset with people, and I said, “Those aren’t salesmen, those are order takers.”
Salespeople are supposed to be educated. If I go to buy a car, I want to know everything about that damned car. I want to know the engine. I want to know how fast it can go. What’s the pick up speed? What’s the life of it? How’s the break system? What’s the gas like? What’s this? What’s that? I want to know that I’m talking to somebody who knows what the heck they’re talking about; if they don’t, get me somebody that does. More and more the consumers are becoming more educated, and they’re being more demanding of what goes into their homes or what goes into their facilities and they want to know more about the products. Those that don’t should be told and educated on what it is, because they’re just doing their [inaudible 00:43:36]. We can’t afford to be out there dumbing down the industry. We need to make it professional.
You want to demand a high price or a good price for something, then you need to sell it for what it is. Sell it for a Mercedes, don’t sell it for a Volkswagen. In order to do so, you’ve got to make it look better, be better, and show people why it’s better. We’re not doing that enough. We’re not educating everybody down the road. We’re doing a better job than we did 20 years ago. We’re still not reaching out far enough. The market is too big, it’s too diverse. More stones are coming out there and are available to the consumers, but more the more come out there, the more difficult the market becomes, the more educated the people need to become to understand those stones, to understand the dos and don’ts of those stones.
I did a ceiling in alabaster. It’s amazing what you can do with natural stone if you understand, like I say, the dos and don’ts of it, and the possibilities. There’s things that can be done in natural stone that you can’t do in these imitation products.
Q: What kind of countertops do you have?
MATHHEWS: I have Brazilian gold, 3cm, bull-nosed, and I had it specially designed it as well as when I did the tops, I had them on the L-shaped pieces actually cut an L out of the slab, rather than cut two rectangular pieces from either of the joints. I had them actually cut an L so when you put them together it looked like one piece. The spots and movements of the stone all match. I use Turkish travertine in my foyer, which is okay. I had to select it and then I had them buy extra, and then I selected that. I had to do a dry layout and before they did it I even turned each piece to make sure I liked the way it was laid.
I think that was important to do; there are many failures out there in the marketplace with stone and travertine, and with projects. I’m always getting asked to testify as an expert witness, and I turn 99% of those down, because I guess my nature is to explain that if there is a problem, it’s because the seller didn’t explain it. I have seen failures, for example, in kitchen countertops and the consumer says, “Well, I didn’t get what I wanted.” I say, “Well, that’s because you’re not educated and you didn’t ask the right questions, and you didn’t spend the time researching it like you should have.” They go, “That’s true.” But the bottom line in responsibility, to me, comes down to the person selling it.