By K. Schipper
OWENSBORO, Ky. – Rick Thomas is a business owner who’s all about seeing a need and filling it.
The difficulty in getting granite and marble countertops for his custom-home customers first got him into the stone business more than a decade ago. Since then, it’s taken Unique Granite and Marble into outdoor kitchens and commercial production, as well as into stone and quartz distribution.
In the end, for Thomas, it’s really all about people. As he says, that’s help him find directions to expand.
“We try to see where there’s a demand that’s not being met, and figure out a way to take care of it,” he explains.
Certainly, Unique’s emphasis on custom products stems at least in part from Thomas’ early success with Rick Thomas Custom Building, which he founded in 1991. Not only did the company have its own cabinet shop; it also specialized in doing a large part of the work with its own craftsmen – on-time and with a high degree of customer satisfaction.
When natural stone became the countertop of choice for high-end homes, Thomas began offering it. However, there was no one in the Owensboro area selling slabs or fabricating them.
Not only did his clients have to travel two and three hours to pick out their materials, but sometimes the products – and their delivery – weren’t to Thomas’ satisfaction.
Things came to a head in early 2002 as the company finished a remodel. The limestone countertops arrived late and weren’t sized correctly. Thomas ordered some equipment, and his team took the job on themselves.
“We were building custom cabinets, so we thought stone couldn’t be that much different,” he says. “It was definitely different, but it was enjoyable to see the end product, as well as the job satisfaction from seeing what we were producing.”
The move into countertops came at a key time for Thomas. Not only was there a slump in the home-building business, but he says it became increasingly difficult to find good subs. Unique officially opened its doors as a separate company in 2004, and Thomas closed the home-building operation the following year.
Today the range of products Unique offers ranges from granite, marble and quartz to less-common offerings like soapstone, limestone, slate and quartzite. The company also features some of stone’s competitors, including copper and stainless steel, and Thomas is currently weighing the merits of getting into selling butcher-block tops.
“We aren’t necessarily looking at manufacturing them, but doing the sales, templating and installing,” he explains. “I’ve been talking with a couple people who do a lot of butcher-block work and maybe we’ll try some of it. We’re seeing some demand for it, and I’d like to see if we can do it for a minimal investment.”
In much the same way, the company has gotten into doing precast concrete finishes for outdoor fire pits and outdoor kitchens. With his crews, he says it takes only a couple days to set up on outdoor kitchen using the precast.
The company’s move into doing outdoor kitchens probably best reflects Thomas’ thinking when it comes to adding products and services, although he says some of it is simply instinct.
“There weren’t many people in our area doing outdoor kitchens,” he says. “Customers would come in looking for countertops, but they’d been waiting four, five, even six months to get their outdoor kitchens ready for the tops. We figured we could do better than that, so we checked out the profitability of it and gave it a try.”
Today, Thomas says approximately 10% of his business comes from outdoor projects. The bulk of the business, some 60%, is custom countertops for homes. The remainder is a market he describes as commercial/multi-family.
While some of that involves hotels and other commercial facilities, the bulk of it is for larger apartment complexes – Thomas says primarily in the 250-300-unit range.
With large jobs, how does Unique manage to compete with China? Two words: quality and flexibility.
“They don’t have to order countertops for the entire complex ahead of time,” he says. “That way, they don’t have to tie up their money or, if there are changes, end up with a bunch of material they can’t use. We build as we go, usually 24 or 30 units at a time.”
It’s a product mix that works for Unique. The company currently operates two facilities. One is made up of three separate buildings and includes the company’s 8,000 sf2 custom shop, a 2,000 sf2 showroom, and outdoor storage of approximately 2,000 slabs.
A second facility a couple blocks away holds the company’s 36,000 sf2 commercial shop, which runs two shifts. Both shops feature a mix of CNCs, dual-table sawjets, and line machines and both run three installation crews, as well.
Thomas manages to keep the equipment humming through a mix of marketing strategies. Although Owensboro has approximately 60,000 residents, even today stone fabricators are few and far between, and Unique serves a market that’s basically two hours in any direction.
The company does some box-store work and sells through custom cabinet shops, but word-of-mouth remains its most-consistent marketing tool.
“People choose us because of the selection of products we offer, as well as quality and experience,” Thomas say. “We’re able to do some things that some of the other shops have difficult with, like quartzite with integrated mitered trench sinks and showers with one-piece sloped floors. We are not afraid of custom work.”
In fact, if there’s one challenge Thomas sees with his customers today, it’s that with so many choices available, it gets harder for them to make their selections.
“With multiple colors of granite and marble and the different quartz lines and quartz colors, it’s difficult for them to figure out what they want,” he observes. “It’s certainly taking longer; it’s a real sales challenge.”
Fortunately, Thomas says he is backed by 63 good employees, some of whom have been with him since his custom-building days. All are trained in-house, and he says often when he finds a good employee, that person has friends who also have good attitudes and good skills.
“The single most valuable tool I have is my people,” he says. “Their attitude and their skill sets go a long way. We try to treat them the way we would want to be treated, and a lot of them become like family.”
Some of them are. One of Thomas’ greatest pleasures is that two of his sons now work with him in the business. And, while his eye is on continuing the controlled growth of his company, for Thomas ultimately, it’s all about the people in the shop and the people who come through the door.
“We’ve had a lot of good customers and we have a lot of good employees,” he concludes. “Being able to interact with new customers and keep the employees long-term has made this an enjoyable place to work. I like coming in in the morning.”