Slippery Rock Gazette

Peter J. Marcucci

Photos provided by Rocky Mountain Stone

Custom residential kitchen features Gold Coast granite with a massive travertine farmhouse sink and limestone stove shroud.

If you’ve perused the Slippery Rock cover stories over the last half-year, you may recall the ones featuring members of the Artisan Group. This story is the next installment in this series and again offers some transparency into the differences, similarities and capabilities of Artisan Group members. 

Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Rocky Mountain Stone’s humble beginnings date back many decades, explained Scott C. Lardner, president of Rocky Mountain Stone and former Marble Institute of America President.

“My mom (Lois) and dad (Vince) moved west from upstate New York and ended up in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1957, when the Air Force academy was being built. Working as a stone mason for a few years, dad helped build several buildings at the Air Force Academy. Dad was a Korean War Veteran and wanted to finish his pilot training, begun in New York under the G.I. Bill. Unfortunately, at the time, there wasn’t a pilot training program in Colorado Springs, but there was one in Albuquerque. So they loaded up kids and went there.

“In 1964, an arthritic high school buddy of my dad’s, who was told to live someplace dry, showed up from western New York on my mom and dad’s doorstep.  He lived with us for six months and in that period of time, my dad, who always wanted to have a stone business, decided to start Rocky Mountain Stone, (a supplier of flagstone, veneer, building stone, boulders and gravel). He asked his friend to manage the business,” Scott continued, “and this was the start of Rocky Mountain Stone.”   

Calacatta Gold marble island and bookmatched backsplash add natural beauty to the durable functionality of the quartz countertops.    Photos by Robert Reck

Above: Rocky Mountain Stone Operations: Showroom, Fabrication Shop and Slab Yard

Above: The University of New Mexico Domenici Center Health Sciences building has a mechanically anchored façade of Agra Red Sandstone, material supplied and installed by Rocky Mountain Stone.

Above: A 2005 cladding  job for the PMG High Resort office building has about 15,000 square feet of mechanically anchored Indian High Desert Red Sandstone.

Vince Lardner, who had started a mason contracting business in 1960, continued to run Lardner Masonry for another 22 years as well as overseeing the operations at Rocky Mountain Stone.

By the late 1960s, Scott and his four brothers, now old enough to help out, began showing up after school and on weekends. “They tell me I was seven years old when dad duct taped 4x4 blocks of wood to the brake and clutch pedals of the forklift,” Scott recounted, laughing. “We weren’t allowed to touch the gas pedal, but we did learn how to drive a 4-speed forklift. So we grew up in the business pulling weeds, palletizing stone and doing whatever needed to be done.” 

Thus far, the company’s income was based solely on building stone, and by 1976, Rocky Mountain Stone moved to its current location; along the Pan American Freeway, considered at the time to be out of town. A few years later, in 1978, the rights to quarry travertine from a quarry located in Belen, New Mexico were acquired (see New Mexico Travertine article in this issue), along with a wire saw, radial polisher and a bridge saw,  adding fabrication to the company’s services.

“In 1985, we started a new company for the quarrying business called New Mexico Travertine, and new equipment to process materials were brought in,” explained Scott. “We went to Italy and bought a gang saw, a bridge saw and a polishing line and built a new plant in Belen, where I went to work for New Mexico Travertine as the marketing director. A couple of my younger brothers graduated college soon after, and I moved to the retail business where I became the president of Rocky Mountain Stone in 1989.”

As Rocky Mountain Stone expanded through the 1980s, it did so as the demand for granite expanded, said Scott. “Our first granite job was using Texas Pink. We went to Texas, picked up the slabs and cut them up.” Granite was now on the menu, and the writing was on the wall. It was time for more equipment and a new fabrication shop to house more fabrication, continued Scott. “We put in a Gregori  bridge saw and Park Industries Pro-Edge because we were now in the countertop business and grew from there. By 2005 we had two bridge saws, two CNCs, our line polisher and were doing 15 kitchens a week.”

Markets and an Industry in Flux 

In 2007, a failing real estate market combined with wrenching swings in the stock market, sent banks and insurers collapsing into the arms of the feds. 

One year later, the Great Recession was in full force, and by 2009 Rocky Mountain Stone’s business had drastically contracted. The company was forced to go from 60 employees down to 22 within an 18-month period. Fortunately, they not only hung on, explained Scott, but eventually grew from the situation after implementing a program called Synchronous Flow, an overall business operations system that brings control and stability to an otherwise chaotic or difficult process (See Synchronous Flow articles, www.slipperyrockgazette.net May 2017 archives, and June 2017 archives).

“Fortunately for us, we had implemented Synchronous Flow in 2007. At the time, I really didn’t see that the housing market was going to constrict, because we had a $3 million backlog, and we were as busy as we’d ever been. Synchronous Flow was a game-changer, though, because we had dramatically more throughput without a whole lot more cost. The remodel market is what sustained us from 2009, and being able to do a six-day turnaround was a huge advantage and allowed us to remain in business. 

“At the time we were faced with additional challenges, too. The first was that in this market it was tough to find somebody that really knew how to keep a CNC running, and the second was how to get a good finish off of it. So we wound up running pieces on our CNC, and then putting them on a bench for edge touch-up. This over-processing didn’t make sense from a manufacturing standpoint. In 2014, this changed after we got a Park Industries Fusion. With pieces coming off the machine with all the radiuses, sinks, and holes cut, the pieces go right on to our Velocity and then the only remaining task is the final polishing of the edges by hand. We love the Fusion. It’s an amazing machine and produces an average of 350 to 500 square feet per day without too much trouble.”

Scott: “Cosmos granite is a beautiful material, and really complements the clean lines of this modern, residential kitchen.”

Above: The RMS showroom includes stone samples from AGM, a strategic partner with the Artisan Group.

Above: The UNM basketball arena, aka “The Pit,” features Vista Grande Onyx Splitface from New Mexico Travertine.

Above: This private residence exterior features Angel Fire Travertine Splitface from the New Mexico Travertine quarry.

Company Basics

The work load of the Park Industries Fusion (saw/water jet) that Scott spoke of is currently supplemented with a Park Velocity edge polisher, a Park Fastback edge polisher, a GMM bridge saw, a Brembana CNC and eight of the best fabricators in the western side of the United States, said Scott. “Our biggest asset is our people, no question about it. It certainly isn’t me who’s doing all this work. We’ve got a really great staff of 35.

The company is currently backed up with work, running four installation crews to keep up with the three to four kitchens produced per day in their 12,000 square foot shop. Scott does occasionally bring in cut-to-size containerized materials from Asia and Brazil, but mostly buys from AGM (Architectural Marble & Granite) and a few other local distributors.

“AGM does a really good job of supplying what we need. They came in and helped us set up a pallet of standard and exotic colors, monitored our usage and based their buying off of a matrix of Artisan Group members. They then did a really, really great job of anticipating what materials were selling in what markets, and tracked them on a monthly basis so they could place their orders with accuracy. I could call up and say I need two bundles of Venetian, a bundle of Ubatuba and a bundle of Crema Bordeaux, and they would say, ‘We’ve got it all. Here are the pictures.’ A few days later they’d be on the truck. It was almost uncanny. The value of that was just unbelievable!”  

Staying Consistent with a Consistent Process

“When the customer comes in and makes a selection, we tell them that when we come out to the job to template, all cabinets need to be in place unless we are replacing an existing countertop. When we show up, we do so with a template form showing all of the design details that the customer has to approve. 

“The first thing that the template technician does is create a line drawing of the tops on the template form with dimensions taken with a measuring tape. He then adds the sinks and faucet holes, radius corners and center lines for cutouts. He then shoots it with a laser and verifies that the laser measurements match what he pulled from the tape measure. Once the dimensions are verified, the design details are reviewed with the customer and we get a sign off on everything. Upon his return to the shop, the job then immediately goes into production. There is, however, one step in between, and that is re-pricing the job. Part of this step is a remnant from doing new construction, where a customer would walk in with a roll of plans and say, ‘Let’s do it’, give a deposit and then four or five months later our template tech would go out to the job. I’d then get a call from him saying, ‘I don’t think I’m at the right house! It doesn’t look like the plan that’s in the work order!’ 

“In new construction things change; they add an island or move the refrigerator or extend the countertop. So we made it part of the process to pull up the quote and verify the pricing, and if it goes up or down by more than five percent, we call the customer and give them a new price.

“The job then goes into Slabsmith for the layout. The slabs have already been photographed, so we do the layout, drop in the sinks and holes and send the layout to the customer. We don’t charge any extra for this. Our CAD techs are also set up on a program called My View, so that, if the customer wants to be involved in the layout, they can go in and look at a real-time screen shot and walk the customer through the layout process. It’s a huge benefit for the customers or designers that may be out of state. It then goes into the shop, and two days later it’s sitting on the rack for one of our install teams to take to the jobsite for a first class install. We normally say that it’s a 5- to 6-day production turnaround from the time of approval. Both the template appointments and the install appointments are confirmed with the customer two days prior,  as well as the day before, so that there are no surprises when it comes time to do the work.    

“As you know, there are curve balls thrown at you every day, so we have a production meeting every morning, and if there is any kind of issue we take care of it. When you take care of a little issue immediately, it remains a little issue. If you ignore a little issue, it can become a big issue. So we make a point of addressing all issues at that morning meeting. We also review sales, production and installation numbers every day. This only takes 15 to 20 minutes and goes a long way to keeping everybody on the same page.”  

“So how has doing business changed since your last interview in 2013?”, I asked Scott (see Slippery Rock Archives, May 2013). “I think you’ll find this interesting,” he replied. “The Albuquerque MSA, (Metropolitan Study Area) includes three counties surrounding Albuquerque. In 2006 there were 9,600 building permits given, and in 2011 only 1,080. So this market had dropped by 85 percent and, on top of that, the value of the permits had dropped 30 percent as well, so it was a double whammy. The bottom of the market was 2011, but by 2013 things were looking up with primarily remodel work. Last year (2016) we were back up to about $5 million in sales, gaining ground on our high water mark of about $8 million in pre-recession days. So last year we had a great year and every year since 2013 we’ve increased our sales by 15 to 20 percent.” 

The company’s service radius includes all of New Mexico as well as some surrounding states, said Scott. “We’ve got about two million people in this state, and about a million of them live in this MSA. The other million or so people live in Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Farmington. These are not big cities, and New Mexico tends to be very rural, so we cover the whole state of New Mexico as well as Pagosa Springs and Durango, Colorado. We’ve done work in west Texas, too, but as a rule we don’t go there. 

“What we are starting to see over the last few years is more new home construction, with our current mix of business being 70 percent residential and 30 percent commercial.
In the residential arena we are still seeing 80 percent remodel and 20 percent in new construction, and mostly in the $300 to $500 thousand dollar range. Back in the heyday, it was 90 percent new home construction. Our demographic target marketing has always been $100 thousand household income, women 35 to 55 years old, with an active lifestyle and fashion conscious. I kind of like where we are now. Business is good. We are, however, trying to be more present on the web.” 

Rocky Mountain Stone has produced a number of intricately cut “giving trees” using their waterjet saw. This tree features a rainforest green marble trunk with colorful Indian Autumn slate leaves.

Image Relates to Long Term Success

“I think image is a function of consistency,” continued Scott. “We have our challenges just like everyone else. Our showroom is not always perfectly clean, everything is not always in the right place all the time and the shop is a mess sometimes. But I think that part of our success is providing the highest quality product that we can make and always fixing anything that goes wrong. There’s the old adage that ‘the customer is always right,’ so sometimes you’ve just got to bite your tongue and say,  ‘OK, we’ll replace it.’ I think that for us, over a thirty-year period, we’ve garnered that image. 

“Another thing is that we have a residual reputation. Back in the heyday, 80 percent of our high end residential market was doing work for 30 to 40 custom home builders constructing half-million dollar homes and up. That was the market that we lived in, and because of this, we have a reputation for being the highest priced fabricator in this market, which is not necessarily the case these days. We sell a durable product that most people are only going to buy once or twice. My two pieces of advice have always been: do a really good job because it’s a noble product and it deserves to be right. It’s going to last forever, and your kids are going to see it, and it’s going to reflect what your idea of quality was. Second: don’t give it away. You’ve only got one chance to sell it, so sell it for what it’s worth and don’t cheapen it up! People that sell their products cheap are in a race to the bottom, and it will catch up to you. So if you’re consistent with your product, your showroom, have nice people and installers that look good, respect people’s homes and thank customers for their business and that sort of thing, you will have success — and that is the image of Rocky Mountain Stone!”   

The Rocky Mountain Stone team presents a check to The Rock at Noonday – the Alex Fund, an Albuquerque, New Mexico charity that provides food for the homeless and hungry, five days a week.

Above: This laser-etched Black granite medallion was commissioned for a UNM student art exhibit.

Above: The UNM Cancer Treatment and Research Facility entrance wall includes a water feature.

Above: Specialty work for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund

What Makes Rocky Mountain Stone Different

“What makes us different from our competitors? We actually have a showroom,” Scott replied, laughing. “But seriously, we’ve been at this same location since 1978. That’s almost 40 years, and people know who we are. We are also involved in the community and participate in lots of fundraisers. Sometimes there will be a live auction and we’ll donate a kitchen package. You can’t imagine what it’s like when you’re at some of these black tie or gala fundraisers. 

Some of these people are pretty high-end, and when you get your name in front of them and give away a granite kitchen certificate, well that’s been a marketing gem for us. Plus, you’re giving back to the community.” 

Dealing With the New OSHA Regulations 

“I’ll begin with an interesting back story,” Scott continued. “In 2001 we had come back from Christmas break, and I had received a certified letter from my Workmen’s Compensation carrier saying that in 30 days they were canceling our insurance. At the time, we were in a program called Builders Trust, a self-insured fund run by the Home Builders Association.
Most of these self-insured groups typically have a pool of funds that pay out the small claims, and if there are any catastrophic claims they buy re-insurance. At that same time, many of the re-insurance companies all over the country had pulled out of this type of coverage because of silicosis. We had to scramble to find a new carrier for our Workman’s Comp and ended up with a 50 percent increase in rates.

“Shortly thereafter, we had a company come in and set up monitors to measure the amounts of free silica in our work areas.  I’ve been in marble shops where you couldn’t see the other side of the shop because of dust, but this was not our shop, because almost everything we do is done wet. So they set up monitors and did a week-long study that showed we didn’t have free silica in our shop. The result was that we got a more reasonable cost for our Workman’s Compensation program. 

“So if you’re running a shop and cutting everything wet, I really don’t think the new OSHA rules are going to be an issue. The levels of free silica that they captured in our shop were negligible, because we cut wet and hose everything down at night. If we do have to cut or grind dry, we do it in a back room with a vacuum system while wearing a respirator. So I do think that some of the small shops out there that are doing dry work are going to have to go wet! That’s the only solution! 

“One other thing when it comes to OSHA, in most states, there are two sides to their program: one is consultative and the other is compliance. In New Mexico, if you call OSHA and tell them that you want them to visit your shop to make sure you are compliant; they’ll send a consultative person there to walk through your shop, look at all your programs, your documentation and everything else. They will then make recommendations, and you have to fix any deficiencies. They will then write a letter saying that your shop is compliant, and if a compliance officer walks in the door, you show him the letter and he will simply turn around and walk out. It’s a much better position to be in, because I’ve been on the compliance side of it, and it’s no fun at all. They show their badge and walk in your shop and start writing tickets. So we’ve been pretty proactive about that stuff, and in the future, if we need to do more air quality testing, we’ll do that and have it documented so we don’t run into any issues with OSHA. We call them every two years for our consultative visit.

“We also have weekly safety meetings, show videos, and do ‘tool box talks.’ We also have a safety incentive program where if we go 30 days with no accidents, the employees each get an extra $10 a month; after 60 days with no accidents it goes to $20 and after 90 days it goes to $30 and stays at that level thereafter, as long as there are no accidents. It costs me about a $1,000 a month for the entire crew, and it is well worth it.  My experience modifier is currently in the low 70s and my savings are dramatically more than what we pay out.

Above, Left: Upper landing wall of the MACK Energy headquarters features a bookmatched  Supreme Gold granite water feature which extends two stories.  Above, center: The MACK headquarters features Peruvian Travertine wall cladding throughout, plus a Rain Forest Green conference table. Above, Right: MACK building exterior view shows the Peruvian Travertine cladding also used on the exterior.

The light-filled atrium of the MACK Energy

The Artisan Group

Scott and company joined the Artisan Group in 2004 and were one of the originals. He had this to say about that: AGM is the import company that is the common denominator of the group. When they first came out with the idea of putting together buying groups, it was the granite buyers group and the Corian buyers group. Jack Seiders was way ahead of the curve and realized that these Corian fabricators (and there were some big ones) were beginning to lose market share to the granite business. So Jack got out in front of that and recruited a bunch of Corian fabricators, taught them what to look for when buying granite as well as setting up a stone shop, and cultivated the Corian fabricators group into a granite group. Pretty smart from a big picture, strategic perspective. 

“So the Artisan Group is independent of AGM, but the Seiders family has been the driving force behind it. John Lancto, the president of the Marble Institute of America this year, is also the current executive director of the Artisan Group, and he’s a pretty busy guy. 

“So it’s branding, being part of a buying group, shop tours and the sharing of metrics and practices are basically what the Artisan Group is about.

“Only one company in a 200-mile radius is allowed to join, and only when vetted and voted in by the other members. Being part of this group has been a huge asset to us.” 

Above, Left: Oratory front, Ave Maria University chapel, constructed with stone from New Mexico Travertine. Above, Center and Right: Limestone flooring for residential projects, waterjet cut by Rocky Mountain Stone.

Looking Forward

“We are in the process of re-organizing the company,” continued Scott. “There is kind of an upside potential, if you will, of Rocky Mountain Stone versus New Mexico Travertine. This potential is dramatically higher for New Mexico Travertine only because Rocky Mountain Stone is limited by geography and how far we can go, whereas New Mexico Travertine’s market is nationwide. So I’m trying to get it set up to spend more time down in the plant in Belen to help build that business. My brother Jim does an outstanding job and it is a very successful company, and I think we can grow it to be even more successful. As far as Rocky Mountain Stone, it’s our intention to pass it down to the next generation. We’ve got some great people here, and I need to let them run it.”

As for Vince Lardner, the 86-year-old visionary of Rocky Mountain Stone, he is still involved in the company to a small degree, but has not been active in the day-to-day functions since the early 1990s. He stays busy with 18 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, as well as two antique airplanes and 14 classic cars.

Rocky Mountain Stone is an accredited member of the Marble Institute of America, the Albuquerque Local Home Builders Association, and the New Mexico American Institute of Architects. Past awards and notable achievements include the coveted Pinnacle Award in 2003 for book-matched Scheherazade travertine shower and steam room, supplying all the stone and installation for the remodeling of the New Mexico State Capitol building, fabrication work at the University of New Mexico’s basketball arena and, through New Mexico Travertine, the chapel stone for the Ave Maria University near Naples, Florida.

For more information about Rocky Mountain Stone visit www.rmstone.com, and for more information about New Mexico Travertine please visit www.nmtravertine.com .