Lawrence, KS, August 6--Lawrence businessman Larry Connell thinks he has found a rock-solid trend in the home building industry – granite, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.
He hopes his East Lawrence company, Natural Stone Imports, will prove it.
From a 5,000-square-foot warehouse, Connell is selling 700-pound to 1,000-pound slabs of granite to home builders and contractors who use the material for countertops and flooring.
"It wasn't long ago that the only people who had granite countertops were the people with $1 million-plus homes," he said. "Now we're seeing them in $300,000 or even $200,000 homes."
Because granite seems to be a hot trend in the home building industry, he hopes to sell 20 to 30 of the slabs per day.
With the help of a group of Houston investors, Connell began stocking the warehouse in April, but the business only has been operational for about 30 days. It employs four people.
Though he lives in Topeka, Connell decided to open the business in Lawrence because he thought it would be a better location to tap into the Kansas City and Topeka markets. He also thinks Lawrence builders will be good customers.
"Part of the idea was that there seemed to be a lot of upscale housing going on in Lawrence, so it seemed like a good place to be," Connell said.
The business is set up to deliver in about a 300-mile radius of Lawrence, Connell said, allowing the company to branch into other hot housing markets in Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Data on how much the granite industry has grown during the past decade weren't readily available, said John Castaldo, executive director of the Barre Granite Assn., a Vermont-based trade group. But he said there had been a steady increase in the amount of granite installed in homes since the mid-1990s.
"That is where the industry is seeing its biggest increase," Castaldo said.
Granite probably is benefiting from an overall trend of people spending more on their homes, he said.
"It seems like more people are spending $300,000 or $400,000 for a home, so putting in an extra like granite countertops isn't really out of their budget," Castaldo said.
In Douglas County, the average price of a new home sold in 2003 is about $182,000.
The countertops, which cost from $50 per square foot to $90 per square foot, also are gaining popularity because they're durable, Connell said. The only substances known to cut granite were another piece of granite or diamonds.
"People know it will last forever," he said. "Once you put it in, you're done. If your house burns to the ground, you're still going to have your granite."
Connell started Natural Stone Imports after leaving a 30-year career in the sanitation business, most recently as the owner of Topeka-based Sunflower Sanitation.
He started the business after a neighbor told him about a Houston-based company, PBI Granite, that was looking to expand into the Midwest. Connell uses buyers from PBI to import the stone from countries around the world, including Brazil, India, China, Norway and Italy.
The company sells other stones like marble, slate and travertine. Natural Stone Imports doesn't install any of the stones and doesn't sell directly to homeowners. But homeowners are allowed in the warehouse to pick out a specific slab to be purchased by a contractor.
Connell said that was important because, like diamonds, each piece of granite looks slightly different from another.
