Three Generations Shape Emco-Williams’ Customer Service
Peter J. Marcucci
Photos by Derek Brodka, Larry Hood and Courtesy Emco-Williams
From its beginning in 1962, Emco-Williams’ roots have stood firmly planted within the greater Knoxville, Tennessee area as a producer of cultured marble products. Located in Sevierville, Tennessee, about an hour’s drive from Knoxville, the company was founded by Hubert Williams, a local entrepreneur. As for the Emco- portion of the name, it was simply an abbreviation for Electro Mechanical Corporation, a franchise that Williams had purchased to make multi-colored cultured slate.
Decades later, Hubert Williams put Emco-Williams up for sale, and when destiny came-a-knockin’ at the door of Bill Grove Senior, he took notice, he recalled. “The company is 58 years old, and we’ve owned it for 32 of those years. When we first bought it, the company was manufacturing bathtubs, whirlpools and shower enclosures.”
In an effort to add more value to their products, Bill Senior and son, Bill Grove Junior, decided that every shower enclosure would now come with glass doors and one other option, continued Bill Senior. “When we got into making the glass doors, we decided that offering mirrors wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Around that same time, a company named Bevels came up for sale in Knoxville. It turns out that Bevels did beveling on glass for mirrors. So we visited the company and got a list of their equipment, because before we buy any company, we always wanted to make sure that the equipment was an asset, and that we were getting good assets. Surprisingly enough, one of the glass beveling machines was a Z-Bavelloni.”
By the next morning, Bill Senior had called Z-Bavelloni in Greensboro, North Carolina, and gave them the model and serial number, and asked them if they thought the machine was worthwhile, he explained.
“Turns out, the person I talked to was their granite equipment salesman and he said, ‘Now, I’ll tell you what you want to do. I’ll be there tomorrow, and we’re going to get you set up to fabricate granite. If you fabricate granite and have one of these machines and have a sign out on the street, you’ll be flooded with business.’ Sure enough he came up, and sure enough we bought the machine, and sure enough we were flooded with business, and that’s how we got started in granite fabrication, 17 years ago.”
“Yes,” recalled Bill Grove Junior, “but it was a little difficult in the beginning. We had no knowledge of natural stone and no one to ask for help, so when dad and I went for training at Z-Bavelloni in Greensboro, we took Jon Burns with us. Jon was one of our employees who had been working with cultured marble. He was very computer savvy, and he and I learned how to use the machine even before they installed it. Then, from that point, it was trial and error. We’d put the stone on, and hope it would turn out okay. Every time that we did a project, we’d learn a little bit, and we would then challenge ourselves with a piece that was a little bit more difficult. The biggest challenge was learning how to handle and cut it more efficiently, and how to install it better. It was learning on the fly, and we’d try and get better at it with every kitchen.”
In the beginning, the company’s fabrication work was residential, but seeing opportunity in other markets, the company since then has become about 50 percent residential and 50 percent commercial, explained Bill Junior. “Commercial work to us is hotels, motels, hospitality, rental cabins, resorts, time shares, apartments and restaurants. We are quite diverse, and we are now getting into the growing trend of porcelain. We’ve done a few jobs, but we are not a big fan of it, yet.”
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Above: Check-in desk at Westgate Resort features stunning samples of Santorini Quartzite. Emco-Williams’ business is split about 50-50 between residential and commercial clients. |
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The Nuts and Bolts
Emco-Williams currently has two locations. All fabrication is done at the Sevierville location, which also includes a showroom. There’s a second showroom in Knoxville for the city folks looking to adorn their living space with quality stone amenities or cultured products. “We actually still do cultured marble to this day,” continued Bill Junior, “but stone and cultured are not remotely similar. They are two different animals, and we have separated the cultured section and natural section within the factory. The front half is granite and the back half is cultured.”
The all-under-one-roof, 18,000 square foot facility sits on three acres. Approximately two-thirds of the fabrication space is natural stone production, and one third is for cultured production. However, in the next three months, according to Bill Junior, they are going to phase out the cultured production portion, and expand fabrication into that space. “We are just too busy with stone fabrication to keep doing it the way we’ve been doing it, and we need more space.”
Producing approximately two kitchens per day, the materials ratio is 80 percent granite, 15 percent quartz and 5 percent marble. Equipment consists of two Z-Bavelloni CNCs, a Montresor Luna 740 edger, a Donatoni CNC Jet saw, a Marmo Electro Meccanica manual saw and a Sasso Flying Flat edge polisher. Additionally, a Rye-Corp Fab King is the go-to machine for sink area fabrication for commercial projects. According to Bill Junior, the shop is totally wet and employs a recently installed Turrini Water Filtration System that provides 169 gallons per minute.
Synchronous flow to the shop is accomplished through two inside sales personnel and an office manager, while fabrication is achieved with 11 fabricators in the shop (four are dedicated machine operators), and the remaining craftsmen provide hands-on finishing or warehouse and slab routing. Three two-man crews in three trucks take care of the installation end. “Our people are very good at what they do,” continued Bill Junior, “and most have helped us grow. One of our lead installers, Ken Posey, was so good with people, that we made him a salesman. As an installer, he really made customers feel comfortable and is very quality-oriented. His abilities are one of the key reasons why granite took off for us. ”
Emco-Williams’ service area is about a 60-mile radius from Sevierville, but they occasionally travel beyond that for commercial jobs. As for the logistics, Bill Junior said, “After a salesperson meets with the client at their residence, we’ll digitally template the kitchen with an ETemplate Laser, and place all the measurements in a folder and bring it back. Typically, the salesperson will then create the finished shop drawing and digitize it, because he has established the client’s needs. The saw operator will then take it, and if the customer wants to come in and take a look at it– which doesn’t happen a whole lot– we will take them to their slabs and do a complete layout.
“The job layout is also given to the CNC operator, and if the client did not come in for a layout, both the saw operator and CNC operator will collaborate on countertop placement and bring the job into production.”
Bill Junior went on to explain that most of their residential clients are mid-level, adding, “Our area is not like Nashville where you have music and movie stars and professional athletes. Our area has more tourists with timeshares, cabin rentals, etc. There are nice homes, too, but not a lot of really high-end. Our work comes to us through area designers, builders and owners, and when it does, our people give personal service, because this is a family personalized company. Making our clients happy is more important to us than high volume, and because of this we have a good, solid business, and an excellent reputation.”
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| Above: Wet edge finishing with their Montresor Luna. The production staging area in background (and below) uses a fleet of red Hercules carts. |
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Above and right: Gearing up for early morning production in the 18,000 square foot facility. E-W was an early adopter of CNC technology for granite fabrication, but sometimes a hand-polished touch is needed. Below: Emco-Williams runs two Z-Bavelloni CNC machines to keep production flowing smoothly. |
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| Above: Emco-Williams recycles about 95% of its wet fabrication water with a Turrini water filtration system, which can provide 169 gallons/minute to their CNCs, saws, and wet polishing machinery. Their exterior slabyard stocks approximately 200 slabs of premium stone and also select stone remnants. |
Words of Wisdom
Bill Senior: “What got us to this point is our ability to find and train people. My son and I are mechanically inclined, and we don’t have a whole lot of problems with mechanical things. We understand machinery. However, people are the life blood of any business, and you just have to find the good ones and train them.”
Bill Junior: “We are still having problems keeping up with the demand, so just today we called about purchasing another Donatoni CNC Jet Saw. My long term goal is to construct a new building that is more conducive to our needs, such as a duel table robotic saw, overhead cranes and a better way to get our water back to the filtration system. Basically we want to be more automated to grow the business. Not gynormous! Just a little bigger. We like being a smaller, independent and customer-oriented company that knows its customers.
“Ultra Compact materials have not taken off in this area. We’ve done a few of these types of jobs and had a few inquiries, but we are not busy with it. It really depends on the application. If it’s a commercial application and a designer likes it and it’s going to be outside, I think porcelain is a great product. But as far as inside, I haven’t seen many people that like it. People here, like me, still like the idea of natural stone. We are, however, going to start doing showers with quartz or Dekton-type materials when we get rid of our cultured production, because this is the direction that we are going. This is our next venture, and it’s coming up soon.”
As for Bill Grove Senior, he is a self-described “86 years young,” stays very active in the company, and vows to never quit working. As for his wife, Carol, when she’s not driving her husband around town or to work, she can be found playing bridge with her Senior friends.
For more project and company history, please visit emco-williams.com .
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| Above: Mitered hostess stand for a hospitality property. |
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| Above: Multilevel double vanity for a master bath suite. Below: Custom Juparana Bordeaux granite bar top features an undulating decorative edge that echoes the ridges of the nearby Smoky Mountains, in this rustic mountain retreat. |
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