Slippery Rock Gazette

Joel Davis

Photos by McMahon Marketing and Rivers’ Edge Countertops

Above: The Rivers’ Edge Countertop Showroom has neat, compact, and elegant displays showcasing the company’s capabilities. This young, innovative company offers a unique On Schedule Delivery or 50% Off Guarantee to their builder and retail customers.

Above: Rivers’ Edge CEO Jeremiah Rivers and a talented team of stoneworkers have built a thriving countertop company. In 2012, Rivers narrowed his focus to offering granite, marble, other natural stones, Silestone and Bretonstone®surfaces to residential customers and key area builders, and they are looking forward to a 35% growth in sales in 2016.  The company now has 22 employees and is in the process of expanding to a second facility to house their stone and a second production line.

Above: A bookmatched Orinoco granite countertop and full backsplash graces a mud room in a Goodman Homes new residence built in the upper-end Pulchella Drive development, in Edmond, OK. The digital imaging capabilities of Rivers’ Edge production shop helps them to visualize and fabricate perfectly matched pieces.

Above: Twin vanities with a 4 inch mitered edge built of Q Stone (Bretonstone®) Natural Quartz for a master bath, also in the Pulchella Goodman Homes project.

Above: 10.5 x 4 foot White Ice 3cm Brazilian Granite kitchen island features pattern-matched, full length mitered side panels and a cast iron farmhouse sink. Being able to pick material direct from Brazil is a huge asset for Rivers’ Edge.

Above & Below: This exotic Brazilian Granite kitchen features a long, two-level expanse of textured stone with a decorative ogee edge. The angled travertine backsplash offsets the dark and lively movement in this beautiful stone.

Above: Granite kitchen island is made of about one and a half slabs, expertly seamed and joined near the center sink line. Full-height backsplashes are also featured in this traditional-styled  kitchen.

Above, From Left: Heath Gray and Jeremiah Rivers inspect quarried granite blocks. Each quarter, company personnel travel to Brazil to source new stone. “It gives us a wider range of colors at a better price than we typically could if we were just buying locally,” Rivers said.

People say time is money. For Rivers’ Edge Countertops Inc., being on time makes money.

A reputation for timeliness has paid off for the company, said CEO Jeremiah Rivers. “So what we’ve done is we guarantee to our builders and retail clients if we’re not there the day we’re supposed to show up, we give them 50 percent off their invoice.”

The company does work for one of the largest builders in Oklahoma. “They base their closing dates off of our installation dates because we’ve never moved (a date) in 14 months,” Rivers said. “Basically they do that because we’re the only company that is predictably there on a consistent basis.”

Rivers’ Edge is based in Newcastle, OK. This is slightly south of Oklahoma City. “We produce more through having the largest shop in the area,” Rivers said. “We have the ability to handle large builder accounts without customers having to use multiple suppliers.”

The company backs its work to give customers confidence. “We also warranty the installation of our countertops, the seams and installation of the under-counter sinks,” Rivers said. “If they ever come apart, we’ll come back and fix them. We warranty those things for life.”

Rivers’ Edge offers countertops and sinks. It offers fabrication and installation. The majority of its business is with homebuilders. It also offers retail sales and does some commercial work. The company is a member of the Marble Institute of America. It is also part of its local Better Business Bureau and Chamber of Commerce. 

The company is working toward OSHA certification. It uses a HydroClear water recycling system. The system is from Park Industries. 

Rivers’ Edge is a fully digital production facility. Its shop has two Titan CNC routers. It also has a Fastback inline edge polisher. The shop uses the Park Industries Pathfinder for imaging slabs.

Rivers’ Edge only has a small showroom. It partners with another company to display its wares. “We mainly use our facility for customers to come out and handpick their slabs for their countertops,” Rivers said.

Rivers has been in the countertop industry since 2002. “I started doing laminate countertops when I was in high school and kind of fell in love with the industry,” he said.  “I started my own business in December 2008. At that point, I’d had experience in all types of countertops from laminate to solid surface to concrete, granite, quartz, pretty much everything.”

Rivers began the company as the economy crashed. “(The first years) were pretty tough to be honest,” he said. 

“I didn’t really know how to run a business and didn’t have experience at that, so we flopped around for a while trying to do whatever we could to make ends meet. I was trying to do it on my own. We really only had a staff of three people at that point.”

The hard first years paid off. “They say if you can survive them, it can only go up from there. Pretty much for me for the first six months to a year I didn’t hire anybody. I didn’t have the overhead, and I didn’t have the expenses, but I was able to work on getting clientele.”

In 2012, the company narrowed its focus. It ditched concrete and recycled glass. It switched to solely offering granite, quartz, and natural stone. That’s when growth took off. “At that point, we really started growing the business and started hiring a lot of people.”

The company has grown to 22 employees. It has a six-person installation crew, with eight people specializing in production.

The lean economic times helped with recruiting good employees. “So far what it’s done for us, it’s helped us actually get some better people on our team,” Rivers said. “They want to work at a place where they feel like they can have a job and have a career.”

Rivers’ Edge has been a Braxton-Bragg customer for at least four years. It purchases polishing pads and installation supplies. It also buys sealers and support brackets from Braxton-Bragg. “We recently purchased our first CNC router bits from Braxton-Bragg,” he said. “I think the guys like them a lot.”

The current Rivers’ Edge facility is about 9,000 square feet. There are expansion plans.  “We’re very excited about  the next few years,” Rivers said. “We’re in the process of building our second facility at our current location.”

The company needs room to grow.  “Right now, we’re bursting at our seams and all our materials are stored outside. It will be an 11,000 square foot indoor facility to house all our materials and also house a second production line for continued growth. We’re planning to have that finished by end of the next year.”

Rivers hopes to enter at least two new markets in the next three years. “We’re also in process of looking into other markets for expansion. We’ve grown tremendously. Two years ago we were maybe producing a kitchen a day —about 40 square feet. Now we average over 450 square feet a day, and we continue to see that grow.”

Each quarter, company personnel travel to Brazil to source new stone. “It gives us a wider range of colors at a better price than we typically could if we were just buying locally,” he said.

Advertising does not stop with personal referrals. “We get a lot of word of mouth, but we do all the social media: Houzz, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram,” Rivers said. “We actually have an outside marketing company that does most of it for us. We’ve also started doing some TV commercials and some co-op marketing with some of our suppliers. We also do home and garden shows. We do a lot of cold calling. We host events.  We’re pretty aggressive. We get out there.”

The staff of Rivers’ Edge has ambitious goals. “I’m 30 and most of the people who work here are 30 or younger,” Rivers said. “To be honest, we actually want to be the first countertop company that is nationwide. Right now there is not really a countertop company that services the entire U.S., and we’d like to be the first one.”

Some companies in the Oklahoma City market are seeing slow sales. Not Rivers’ Edge, though. “That’s not the case for us,” Rivers said. “In October, we had the strongest month we’ve ever had in sales and production and our pipeline is extremely strong. We’ve got a lot of big projects that are coming up that we haven’t even started yet with our builders and commercial jobs we’ve landed. For 2016, we are realistically expecting about a 35 percent growth. We’re extremely optimistic, and we keep gaining more market share as we speak.”

Rivers is proud of a recent project in the Pulchella Drive development in Edmond, Oklahoma. “Basically it’s a David Goodman (Goodman Homes) residence in the most premier community in the state. It’s a $4.5 million house, and we did all the stonework in it.”

The job featured aspects like custom stone trim. It was made out of quartz to match wood trim. It also featured a countertop with two full slabs that waterfall down the sides of cabinets.

Rivers’ Edge has received several awards in the past two years. In 2014 it was honored as the 5th fastest growing privately owned company in Oklahoma. In 2015, the company was honored as the 7th fastest growing. 

Also in 2015, Rivers received the Entrepreneur of the Year award from Action Business Coaching and an Oklahoma City “40 under 40” award in 2014. In 2015, Rivers’ Edge was listed at 517th on the Inc. 5000 list.

The employees of the company deserve credit for its success, Rivers said. “It is because of them. I have a really great team. I’ve been very fortunate. My best friends work for me. They treat this place like it’s their business, too. They’ve given their blood, sweat, and tears to help this place grow. They care about it, too. The first person I hired seven years ago still works here.”

Rivers’ Edge strives higher. “We feel like we work for a higher purpose in what we do,” Rivers said. “We are providing people’s dreams.”

For more information about Rivers’ Edge Countertops, visit their website www.riversedgecountertops.com .