St. Cloud, Minn. – Reaching back to its roots, the St. Cloud area is honoring a granite fabricator as the 2010 St. Cloud Area Small Business Person of the Year. Kip Cameron, president and CEO of Granite-Tops, has been selected for the recognition, acknowledging the role he has played in developing the granite counter top fabrication industry. The Small Business Person of the Year Award is presented annually by the St. Cloud Area Chamber of Commerce.
Cameron started Granite-Tops in 1995 with a partner, three employees, and 3000 square feet of production space. The company was basically a job shop with one saw and limited color selection. By 1997 Cameron had bought out his partner and expanded the production facility by 2400 square feet. Additional expansion followed in 1999 and 2001. By this time the company had 25 employees and a full night crew. In 2002 Granite-Tops broke ground on their current 75,000 square foot facility at 1480 Prairie Drive SE in Cold Spring. In 2005 Cameron purchased a facility in Albertville, Minn. followed by a second expansion in Plymouth. Meanwhile sales climbed from $250,000 in 1995 to $14 million in 2006. At its peak Granite-Tops employed about 85 people.
The decline of the American economy in 2007-09, particularly in the construction industry, dealt a heavy blow to Cameron. Barely able to keep up with the rapid growth the company initially experienced, he watched as sales dropped from $14 million to $13 million and then to $12 million. “But when they went from $12 to $9 million in a year – that was terrible,” Cameron says. “Letting people go is the worst thing a business owner does.”
In the best entrepreneurial fashion, Cameron looked for ways to regain his original momentum. He closed the Plymouth office. In 2009 he moved the production from Albertville, which had been both production and show room, to Cold Spring. This centralized the production process, making it easier to manage. He also introduced a new retail brand: Stone Countertop Outlet, and opened a retail sales office in Burnsville. “Research showed that consumers are doing more of their own research on products and serving as their own general contractors rather than going through contractors,” Cameron said. “Stone Countertop Outlet allows us to access some of that business.” Since introducing the Outlet brand the retail portion of the business has grown from seven percent of sales to 27 percent.
Cameron has also taken advantage of technology to increase customer service and efficiency. Digital imaging services give him the ability to draw the kitchen and countertops and show the customer what they will look like before doing any fabrication. “We can now go from a picture of the kitchen to fabrication by entering a code in the computer,” he says. In addition, technology has allowed him to take a business that was very manual and mechanize it. Granite slabs are moved with machinery, cut with CNC routers, and polished mechanically.
A leader in his industry, Cameron helped found the Midwest Stone Fabricators Association. He is a past president of the association and has worked to develop safety, quality, and warranty standards. He has also worked with designers to build new tools that will benefit the granite fabrication industry.
Cameron was honored at the Chamber’s annual Business Awards Luncheon, Thursday, May 6, 2010
Granite-Tops Wins Small Business of the Year