Aaron J. Crowley

Stone Industry Consultant

I was born in sunny San Diego, California. 

But shortly thereafter my parents got out of the Navy and moved to Portland, Oregon, a damp and occasionally cold place. My body never recovered from the climate shock and every winter I grow more convinced that I was not meant to live where palm trees can’t grow.As such, it’s amazing that I ever fell in love with the stone business, a trade where we come in from the wet and cold, to work in the wet and cold…

STONE SLEEVEWell, they say that necessity is the mother of all invention, so perhaps that’s how the idea for the Original Stone Sleeve (a waterproof wet polishing sleeve for fabricators) was birthed one cold rainy day about 12 years ago, during a conversation with a friend who loved to water ski.  Being perpetually cold, I exclaimed that anyone who goes outside in Oregon and gets in the water on purpose is crazy. He went on to tell me that they water-skied year round, to which I laughed out loud in disbelief.

I literally didn’t believe him, but he persisted by telling me that they wore “dry” suits and actually stayed quite comfortable despite the frigid temperatures. He went on to describe the waterproof rubber seals at the neck, ankles, and wrists to which my ears and perpetually cold arms perked up.“Did you say waterproof rubber wrist seals?”  “And where does one find one of these dry suits?”

I breathlessly questioned.Within hours I was frantically flipping through the yellow pages and interrogating water-ski supply salesmen about their dry suit inventories as visions of a waterproof wet polishing sleeve materialized in my head.

Miraculously, the top two dry suit manufactures in the country were both located in Oregon, and it wasn’t very long before I had a pair of sleeves “lopped off” of a discontinued suit. And not long after that, I was taking them around and bragging to my fab buddies that the sleeves of my sweatshirt stayed dry and I stayed San Diego warm as a result.

The response was overwhelming and before long samples in neon yellow, purple, and deep blue were showing up on the desks to stone tool suppliers all over the country for product managers to review. The universal response was, “Nice idea but no one is EVER going to pay that much for a pair of sleeves.”

Not surprising, Braxton-Bragg was the first supplier to buy a pair.  In fact they bought a box of 50 pairs and ran an ad in The Express and the rest is history.

Well, there’s a little more history than that.  About 5 years ago, Braxton-Bragg’s current product manager informed me that they had been approached by a company with a Chinese-version of our Stone Sleeves.  He was graciously informing me that a carbon copy knock off our flagship product was going to give us some serious competition (Thank you, S.B.).

It wasn’t long before the stone tool suppliers who carried our Stone Sleeves were carrying a copy-cat product for half the price.  Needless to say our sales suffered for a few seasons as indistinguishable pictures showed up next to the real thing in the catalogs.But then something happened…those overseas imitations didn’t wear well, the seals separated, and suppliers tired of the returns.

Then slowly, sales of the Original Stone Sleeve began to return and it is a pleasure to report that thanks to the unequaled quality of American Manufacturing and the loyalty and support of suppliers like Braxton-Bragg, American fabricators are again buying them as fast as we can make them.

Thanks for letting me thank you!

Aaron J. Crowley is the founder and president of FabricatorsFriend.com, the exclusive promoter of Stone Sleeve fabricator sleeves and Bullet Proof aprons. He is also the author of Less Chaos More Cash. You can reach him by email at Aaron@CrowleysGranite.com