In StoneTalk Episode 38, Patrick speaks with Vinny Tavares of Pacific Shore Stones and Jesse Miller of Integrity Enterprises about buying stone direct.
Listen to this episode to discover:
- The value of buying stone direct from the source
- The challenges and pitfalls of buying stone direct
- How to team up on stone buying trips to increase your buying power
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes… and please let us know what you think! You can leave comments for this show on the StoneTalk Facebook page or on this site.
If you have stories or insights that you’d like to share with other fabricators, please reach out to Patrick.
Transcript
Today I am speaking with Vinny Tavares of Pacific Shore Stones and Jesse Miller, a former fabricator. They’ve teamed up to make it easy for fabricators to buy material directly from places like quarries in Brazil. Super interesting story. Let’s give them a call and talk about it.
Vinny: Hey, Patrick, this is Vinny from Pacific Shore Stones. How are you doing?
Patrick: Great. How are you, Vinny?
Vinnie: I’m pretty good. I have Jesse here with me as well.
Jesse: Hi, Patrick. How are you, sir?
Patrick: Good. Actually, if you can start by just giving me a summery of Pacific Shore Stones, and then just tell me how you two connected and what special things you’re working on.
Vinny: All right, Pacific Shore Stones, we’re a distributor of all kinds of slabs, so natural stone, quartz, sintered stone, and porcelain, and we started back in 2004 in California, hence the name “Pacific Shore.” And we have 16 locations now, all of them in the southern part of the country. We’re from coast to coast, opened our first one in Los Angeles, all the way to Charleston, South Carolina and we’re primarily in what I call second tier cities. That’s kind of been our strategy from day one. So we’re in Austin, we’re in San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Birmingham, Memphis, Bakersfield, California. Jess and I, we met…Jesse used to be a fabricator in Oklahoma City. How long ago was this?
Jesse: It’s just been a couple of years now. It’s been about 3 years since I owned a fabrication company. I talked to Vinny and I do some business consulting now and we were talking about their Oklahoma City location and some ideas. I had this evening a couple of days after that where I really sat down and thought about the slab distributor business and how they interact with the fabricator and what the holes in that were. And somehow or another I landed on the concept of, “Man, why don’t they just take fabricators down there and teach them how to buy and walk them through the process?” And Vinny and I talked about a week after that and he one-upped me. They got the infrastructure distribution. I’m sorry, go ahead, Patrick.
Patrick: No, I was just laughing at that image of him one-upping you. Please continue.
Jesse: So yeah, he one-upped me. I thought about him teaching fabricators but they have that ability. On top of it, they have the infrastructure to distribute, they have the relationships. I don’t know if you can tell by the accent or not but he’s not from Texas. He’s Brazilian-American so he’s got some incredible relationships and these guys have been purchasing a lot of stone for a long time.
Patrick: Very nice. So you got this grand idea of helping fabricators buy direct. Has that come to fruition? Have you taken some fabricators down and taught them how to buy for themselves, has that worked?
Vinny: Yes, we did. The first one was in December, so right before Christmas, I think it was the second week of December, and we took five fabricators from different markets and those happened to be fabricators closer to us, so people we already knew that we were servicing through our locations. It was one guy from Oklahoma, one from Arkansas, one from Tennessee, and one from Alabama, so five total. And we did the second trip which was two weeks ago. It was the second week of January and on that trip, we had three fabricators. So our next one is in March, mid-March and we already have six people scheduled to go.
Patrick: So, there’s so many different angles to look at this. First of all, so you’re a travel agent now, it sounds like. You’re helping people go down. If I were a fabricator, especially if I were starting out, I would use a distributor like Pacific Shore Stones. I’ve talked with fabricators who have traveled around the world buying slabs directly. First of all, why would a fabricator want to do this? With or without you, what are the advantages of buying direct? I assume cost is one of those, but how much of a difference is that and is there anything more than cost?
Vinny: So that’s a great question. Let me start by saying that fabricators have been buying direct since I got into the business and I’m sure even prior to that, but I think that recently there’s been a trend where more and more people or more and more fabricators are trying to buy direct. And I think there’s different reasons why this is happening. I think one of them is there’s an oversupply of material, especially in Brazil, where I think that most people know that the economy down there is not good. You have all these manufacturers with this oversupply and they don’t know what to do with all this inventory and they are literally bombarding anyone or everyone in the U.S. that will buy containers.
And because internet and all those things, it’s pretty obvious that every fabricator that I think we talked to received a phone call or visit or email from all kinds of factories and quarries, so the market is a lot more open in that sense. So that’s one.
Two, Cosentino started that program a few years ago. I don’t know exactly when, but I remember the first time I heard about it I was like, “Wow, that’s interesting.” And I have an idea why they did it. They have a big factory there and they figure, “Hey, we have this monster to feed and this factory is feeding our locations in the West but we might as well sell to whoever wants to buy it from us.” And I’m just talking with different people, different fabricators throughout the years, I kept hearing from a lot of them that they really enjoyed going there with Cosentino and doing that.
Then there’s some other brokers out of Brazil that started to offer essentially the same thing, which is take people to Brazil. So that’s how we got into this. But then to specifically answer your question, what are the benefits, and cost is probably the biggest one. So the gap that we fill or that we bridge is the opportunity to show to the fabricator what I like to call what happens behind the scenes in a country like Brazil. For example, there are literally a few hundred companies in Brazil that either are already exporting or they have the desire and/or ability to do that.
Those 300 factories, I’d say, they buy from another couple of hundred of quarries. That big matrix, so to speak, is always changing because quarries have problems because they stopped producing a certain material or because we’re human beings, right, so if quarry A were selling to factories one, two, three, four, five, six months down the road, they might have fought with one of those guys and now they’re not selling to factory one, two, three, four and five and maybe they’re selling to factory one, two, seven, eight and nine.
To keep up with all of this, that’s what got me into this business to begin with. We have our team of people in Brazil, three people that just work for us, nobody else, and what they do all day long is travel throughout the country and buying stone to feed our own 16 locations and we buy a lot of containers. So the idea was we live in a world now that’s all about transparency so why not bring some of those fabricators with us and I think some of the other programs or educational part when I like to call the behind the scenes.
Maybe people don’t have the same access that we are able to provide, which is if they have a particular color that they have in mind and let’s just call it Santa Cecilia, whatever, and you know there’s probably 10, 11, 12 existing quarries of Santa Cecilia at any given time, but certain fabricators are very particular because of their builders or whatever it is, only work with this type Santa Cecilia. Well, it’s our job, I know who the factories are at this particular point in time are working with that type of Santa Cecilia so then we take them there. And if it happens to be, let’s say the quarry of this Santa Cecilia and they happen to have a factory right as well, then we take them there and then they can see the real issues behind the color.
I always try to put myself in the shoes of fabricators and I think every fabricator in this country has heard from distributors like myself, “Oh, this color is hard to get now,” or, “This color, the quarry’s not producing.” And a lot of times it’s true but a lot of times people are just making it up and I think there’s tremendous value for the fabricator to see it for themselves. And that’s one of the things that we offer to them.
Jesse: I think, for me, two of the factors that a fabricator should look at when doing this is the first one, no offense to Pacific Shore Stones, but I sent customers…we did builder business so it wasn’t my customer typically that was at the slab yard. It was their customer, and so I didn’t have a chance to contact them ahead of time. The communication that can get lost in a slab yard is a big thing. It takes a lot of time internally communicate effectively on their part my part and so streamline communication, if I don’t have to send them to a slab yard, it’s a lot better for my business ultimately.
Patrick: So I want to make sure I understand things because, again, I’m not a fabricator, so I might be missing something. I think what you’re implying is that if I’m going to maintain my own inventory of stock colors, I might as well go get it direct. It would take that effort and save that money as opposed to building up my own stock inventory through a distributor because it’s just going to be a lot cheaper. So I could buy a bunch of stuff from Pacific Shore Stones, but if I’m going to get a couple of containers worth of stuff I might as well go get it directly. Is that what you’re implying or did I miss your point?
Jesse: Yeah, I’d say so. If your going to stock material, reduce the middleman as much as possible. Now, they add a lot of benefit with this program because they already have the infrastructure. If you’re in one of their markets you don’t have to offload bundles. That’s huge I know a lot of fabricators are intimidated by that, there not set up for it and we have ways to help train them in that as well. But yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
Vinny: They might not have the space.
Jesse: That’s right. They may not have the space and the way that they’re doing this program is they’ll store material and deliver it to you as necessary if you’re in one of their markets. So you take the best parts of their business and you increase your capabilities as a local fabricator through this. I didn’t get to the second benefit as a fabricator. If you buy multiple matching bundles, your waste factor goes down tremendously and this gives access to that. So whether you’re buying a full block or you’re just buying a couple of bundles that are sequential, then your waste factor goes down tremendously.
Patrick: Nice. And could you help me with some remedial terms and actually quantities? So how many slabs are typically in a bundle, is there a specific number that is…?
Vinny: Yeah. If it’s three-centimeter, six or seven slabs. If it’s two-centimeter, 8, 9 or 10, sometimes 11.
Patrick: Okay, then how many bundles are in a container typically?
Vinny: Typically seven, but with our program we have distribution centers at the port so we have one in Los Angeles, one in Charleston, so we could put eight bundles. We can put more square footage than if a fabricator would try import containers by themselves.
Patrick: You mentioned block as well. How many…A block is the thing before it’s cut, right? So how many slabs are typically in a block or does that vary quite a bit too?
Vinny: It does vary but typically we’re talking three centimeters of 50, 60 slabs. Blocks do vary in size and some very big blocks can get up to close to 70 slabs in 3 centimeters. So most of them would be between 50 and 60 slabs in a block for 3-centimeter.
Patrick: And you have a very nice video on your website, Vinny, talking about how you extract stone out of the ground largely for and homeowner customers I assume.
Vinny: Yeah.
Patrick: One question I had. Do you sometimes…I couldn’t tell whether you sometimes then actually import the blocks and cut them here or are they always typically cut closer to the source, such as Brazil?
Jesse: Closer to the source.
Patrick: That was my assumption but I wasn’t quite clear on that. Okay, then finally for these remedial questions, I assume container…is container kind of the minimum unit of transaction you think about when you’re going to a country and buying direct or can you get a half container or can you get a bundle or typically do people think in one container or is it more than one container?
Vinny: That’s a big question. If you’re a fabricator and you’re doing that yourself, you’re basically, if you go to a factory then you need to find seven bundles to put in that one container. There’s no flexibility. Now, they cannot just tell you two bundles and then you put two bundles inside a container. Yes, you could do that but the freight will make it not appealing, right?
And with us, what we’d offer to you, people that went with us in December and up with this trip in January, is we’re at a factory in a typical trip where we’re there for a week, we can visit anywhere from 5, 6, 10, as many factories as necessary. But if fabricator is not a factor for us and they only like one or two bundles, and this is very likely scenario, sometimes you go to a place and you see a whole bunch of things, but you only really like one or two bundles. The beauty with partnering with us is I’m buying something from that quarry for our own locations so you can just piggyback with our containers so you can bring in those two bundles and I’m filling up that container with six more bundles for my stock and once it gets here, you’ve got your two, I’ve got my six and it’s a win-win.
Patrick: This is a very interesting scenario. So again, a couple of assumptions I want to validate or correct me if I’m wrong. So first of all, I assume the dozen or so people who you taken down to Brazil so far, these were existing customers of yours already, people who were customers of your distribution business, correct?
Vinny: On the first trip in December, yes. On the second one, no.
Patrick: Interesting.
Vinny: Yeah. We started getting some people that haven’t bought from us before and then in March as well we had people that we haven’t even heard of, but kind of a friend of a fabricator so they asked me, “Hey, I have a friend in Louisiana, can I take them to the trip?” And we talked to them and, “Sure.”
Patrick: That’s really cool. So kind of collectively part of what you’re doing then is increasing your over all buying power, because if you go, you don’t buy everything that you see either, right? So if I’m a fabricator and I see two bundles that I know I want, then overall, you’re getting a cut of that in some way. Maybe not as big as cut as if you took the risk that someone might want to buy it.
Vinny: Absolutely. That’s true and just as you’re asking me this question, I thought of some certain things that happened on the first trip which is we had a lot of the fabricators that were there with us interested in quartzsites and then they ended up buying a lot of quartzites, and I’m looking at what they’re buying and I ask myself, “Well, if I was on the same trip without them, I would have bought this.” And that’s because with natural stone there’s a lot of natural problems with it. Everybody knows about the cracks, the fissures, the fills, you know, the gauging issues, blemishes, all kinds of things and most of them natural, but then as a distributor, I always ask myself, “Should I bring this and how much of a hassle is it going to be to sell this later?” But if a fabricator is answering that question during the trip, then it’s a win-win again.
But you’re right. Towards the end of the trip it’s kind of interesting because talking to one of the owners of one of the factories that we went to, the guy was very happy because he’s like, “Vinny, some of those bundles would have been impossible for me to sell to you. You wouldn’t have bought them even if I got on my knees and begged you to.” And he was laughing and I said, “Yeah, I didn’t want to take the chance to bring something here that in my mind most fabricators would probably not like it.” But it’s different because I’m not a fabricator and I don’t pretend to be one. I think every fabricator knows what he can deal with and what he cannot deal with as far as those natural issues.
Jesse: Patrick, that buying power goes both ways too. Because of the volume these guys buy, when a fabricator does that trip and they get exposure that even an extremely large fabricator or even a small group of extremely large fabricators, they just couldn’t create the buying power that these guys have in this program, and so it’s an incredible opportunity for everybody to benefit.
Vinny: Yeah. I want to give a real example with real numbers, something that happened on the trip. It’s a kind of scenario that I didn’t anticipate but it kind of happened and every fabricator that I’ve talked to, I try to use this example. A client of ours that went with us from Oklahoma City, he wanted some Santa Cecilia and he was very specific on the type of Santa Cecilia, meaning what quarry it came from. And we were showing him all the different Santa Cecilias and that factory happened to have, I don’t know, 40 bundles in stock or something and he had a very specific price point. I think he wanted $2.50 FOB Brazil and on top of that we have the shipping and then we have our cut which we can talk about it later.
But the point I’m trying to make here is, of course the bundle that he liked, the factory wasn’t willing to sell it for $2.50. I think they wanted $3 or $3.20. But during the same trip, as we negotiated with them, I ended up buying 25 bundles for the $2.50 for my own stock. And I knew that if the fabricator wanted three or four bundles, that the factory didn’t want to do for that price. And then I turned to them and said, “Hey, listen, I’m buying 25 bundles of the Santa Cecilia and I’m buying a whole bunch of other bundles of exotics here. Do me a favor, just put those four bundles for the $2.50, okay? We’ll compensate with some other materials.” So the factory said, “Yes.”
The fabricator is very happy and at that moment I could tell the fabricator, he knew that in his mind even if he were to go to the same factory on his own and be able to negotiate or talk to them about the Santa Cecilia, he wouldn’t be able to get it for the $2.50 because he wasn’t buying 25 more bundles of the same material plus a whole bunch of other bundles from the same factory of other materials.
Patrick: That’s just a great story, that makes perfect sense. Again, it’s all about pulling your buying power while controlling risk for…you know, you wouldn’t necessarily, again, be purchasing that material but he knew he wanted it, so that makes a ton of sense.
For people who…again, the most interesting listener to me is someone who has never gone to Brazil before who’s maybe thinking of doing this. Can you give me a rule of thumb on the cost savings. If I bought Santa Cecilia from a distributor from Pacific Shore Stones and was used to doing that, if I then went and got the same approximate material, a container’s worth or a couple of bundles’ worth at least in Brazil on this trip with you, would I be spending half as much for that, more than half, less than half? What is the approximate savings? I don’t really have any context for that.
Vinny: I’ll take this one. For the core colors in your Santa Cecilia, Ubatube, Caledone, Napoli White, Balance White, all those colors, the savings are not that great. And by not that great, let’s say that customer in Oklahoma, so he’s paying $2.50 FOB Brazil, I think by the time that he landed in Oklahoma City, he was in the mid fours, and he told me he could buy it from people in Dallas or people in Oklahoma City probably for that kind of quality in the low fives, maybe $5.25. If he got lucky, maybe $4.95, but then he runs into the availability issue. He cannot get that kind of quality for $4.95 on demand every single day of the week.
Now, if we’re talking $0.75 or maybe $0.40, or maybe $0.50, it doesn’t seem like a lot. On a percentage basis now we’re talking 10%, 15%, maybe even 20%. Now, it gets really interesting on the other side of the spectrum, so if you’re talking like a quartzite like a Taj Mahal, for example, the typical price for three-centimeter throughout the country, distributors will sell the materials in the 30s. If it’s really nice material, maybe mid-30s, sometimes even the high 30s. Especially now, again, because of the whole oversupply, because of what Brazil is going through, you can get some really decent Taj Mahals for $14, $15 range FOB like Brazil. Again I don’t want to say it’s going to be the super premium first quality that you might be able to get that you can buy $39.95 at a local distributor. But from 14, 15 FOB Brazil and you be landing that stuff in the U.S. in the high teens, maybe 18, 19, that’s a huge difference.
And then going back to what we were talking before, if the fabricator has the opportunity to touch the material and lays his hands on that material and make the determination on the spot that fill or crack or fissure or whatever the issue is, he can determine if that’s something that works for him or not. And based on the experience that we have with the people that went in December and January, those are the ones that people got most excited about because they’re like, “Man, I can land this stuff for $18 or $19 and I know that if I go to my local distributor, I’ll probably be paying $30 for something of the same quality, type of material.” Now we’re talking not only percentage, a very significant number, but even a dollar amount. So now we’re talking about $12, $13, $14, maybe $15 a foot. It adds up. You do times 350 square feet in a bundle of 3-centimeter material, now we’re talking thousands of dollars.
Patrick: That’s super helpful. Thank you. Again, this is very interesting and I’m going to get to the point where I ask how do people contact you and if they’re interested in trying this, but a few more kind of basic questions. One, when should a fabricator not consider this approach? Let’s throw cold water on this and say what sort of people are not ready for this or when should you not do this?
Vinny: Right. So I think the first thing is the size of the fabricator, right? So if it’s a guy that’s doing maybe two, three kitchens a week, he doesn’t have the volume yet to be able to buy a container or buy in the quantity that this trip will make sense. So maybe he’s not there yet. I have been asking myself this question and I talked to some of the fabricators, so from a volume standpoint, I think that anyone doing a kitchen or a job a day, you probably have the volume to entertain this. And certainly people that are doing two or three jobs a day, that I think it makes sense, especially for those people that are doing more remodels, higher end, more exotic. If you’re just with core colors, builder-grade, then like I said before, the savings are not that much or that great so it might not make sense for you.
Patrick: It sounded like with the core colors it’s more about availability, really, just making sure that you can get the quantity that you want. And then for the more exotic colors, perhaps it’s even below the top of the top end but kind of that sweet spot, that it’s about money.
Vinny: Yeah, you’re right and one thing that to me throughout the years, it never made sense. Fabricators have to work with production builders. They all have what they call the “builder program.” So the fabricator, they’ve got to decide what is on my entry level right, so what are the three, four, five colors that I go to my builder in my local market and be super competitive. And if you’re in a extremely competitive market like Houston or Southern Florida where you’ve got to be in the 20s, which is a crazy number, so then you put those three, four, five colors and go to the builder and say, “I can do this for $26, whatever,” and then you have your level 1, your level 2, and your level 3, a lot of those fabricators, they are making those decisions with no information whatsoever on availability and what’s actually happening at the source. So in this case, and a lot of those colors, 80% of those colors are from Brazil.
Those fabricators, they make those determinations based on what they’re hearing from the local distributors, which I’m not saying they’re all lies. They’re probably telling most of the time the truth, but those salespeople that they’re talking to, have they ever been to Brazil, do they really know what’s going on? Most of the companies don’t know. So the fabricators, they just do the best they can so they put those problems together to find out six months later that color is not available or that color is available but it’s changing three times in shade or in tone or all kinds of variables and now they have to go back to their builders and say, “I’m sorry. Can I go back to your model homes and I’ll cut you another sample.”
So with this trip we can really get down to the source and say, “Okay, what are the colors that you’re interested in and what are the things you’re most concerned about?” Most people are going to say availability and kind of those things and we take them to the quarry and we expose them to the issues that the quarries are facing. And for example we can go a quarry of New Venetian Gold and say, “Hey, look, they have 40-50 bundles here in stock and those are the variations, okay? So we go from this dark to this light. And as far as issues, this is the type of material that they usually have with this kind of blemish or this kind of line,” whatever the situation is and we can explain it and show it to them. So now the fabricator can go back to the U.S. and then make an educated decision of what colors they want to put in the builder program. And that’s something that how much is that worth?
Patrick: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. and it sounds like if I go on this trip with you, pretty much you’ll either take care of the shipping or figure it out with me, I don’t have to worry about that. And also even you can help me with the storage if I don’t have enough room to keep it, you can help me figure out where to store it until I need it. You can help me with those things too, right?
Vinny: Yes, exactly, and with the payment terms as well. With some of the quarries we get 90 days and we extend that to the customers as well.
Patrick: Very good. Obviously you’re from Brazil so you know Brazil very well. Do you personally, separate from this program, do you visit other countries as well or do you focus on…?
Vinny: Absolutely, I do, I do, yeah. I go to India, Italy, I’ve been to other places like Vietnam, like Morocco, pretty much everywhere that there’s stone. Mexico, Turkey, I go to. But I started with Brazil for obvious reasons. You know, I was born and raised in Brazil and most of the granite comes from Brazil anyway.
Patrick: So the next time you go to one of these countries, are you going to are you going to consider taking other fabricators along?
Vinny: Yeah. I think this is so new to us, the first literally in December so we’re talking two months ago, but some of the fabricators that went with us, they’re like, “Hey, are you guys thinking of doing something like this for Italy?” And help people that are interested in white marbles and so absolutely this is something that we want to be able to operate in the future. We want to consolidate more of the Brazil trip and make it…it looks like we’re going to be doing this once a month.
Patrick: That’s great. One last question before we wrap up with some details. Again, I’m thinking in terms of a fabricator and controlling my risk, and you may not know the answer to this but you might have some ideas. Let’s say I buy a container of quartzite or something that I think is going to be great in my market and I was just wrong and it turns out I’m stuck with material that I can’t get rid of. As a fabricator, what do I do to get rid of that even if I have to take a loss? Do distributors like Pacific Shore, do you buy those things back or if I don’t want them, you don’t want them? How do I get rid of a large amount of material that I might not be able to sell myself?
Vinny: In this scenario that you just described, you’re pretty much stuck with it in the sense that I don’t think that I can offer much help and I don’t think the distributor for that matter would be interested in buying whatever you, a fabricator, cannot sell. But one thing that I think that we offer with this problem is the peace of mind that if you’re buying from a broker in Brazil or you’re buying from any company in Brazil directly, and then if something goes wrong in the sense that it got here and you’re 100% sure that they loaded the wrong bundle, that’s not the bundle that you actually picked, or you open the container and it’s cracked, or you knew that there was a crack but the crack opened up during transportation, which happens, or any other kind of problem, with us, we’re here.
I have 16 locations and if that were to happen and for some reason you didn’t get your bundle, then we can easily take that back. It’s not that big of a problem. We put it back to one of our locations. In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. We offer this. A lot of our clients went on the first trip, they’re like, “What happens if something gets here and it’s just wrong, it’s not what I ordered, it’s broken?” We’re like, “Well, we have insurance so if it gets here and it’s broken, the whole thing broke, then it sucks to be you because you’re not going to get the material. But other than that, you’re not out of any money. Like I said, if you got something that’s not what you bought, then obviously it was a mistake on our end and something happened, we’ll take that back. And you don’t have that choice if you’re buying directly because if it’s here, no factory will take it back.
Patrick: Right. For what it’s worth, we at Moraware actually have…we wrote a free tool a few years ago that some people use, it’s called RemnantSwap. You can go to remnantswap.com. And when people have left over pieces they don’t want, you can just sell them and some fabricator’s looking for things, it’s just a way for people to say, “I’ve got this stuff. I want to get rid of it,” and people looking for that stuff can find it and figure out how to make it economically viable for both to do that transaction. So sometimes that helps. The very last thing, I know there are going to be people interested in this and want to do this, how do they contact you? Go to your website or do you have a special number to call? How do people find out more?
Vinny: If you want more information about this, you can call us, tell Nathalie True. She works with me at purchasing at Pac Shore, she goes on the trips with me. She also happens to be an American-Brazilian, born in the U.S. but her mom’s from Brazil so she grew up a little bit in Brazil as well. She speaks Portuguese and English, both languages better than me and her number is 512-391-9006. 512 from Austin, she lives here in Austin as well so 512-391-9006. And Nathalie can answer more questions that we didn’t have a chance to talk about here and can give you more details on what typically happens in a week when the fabricators are down in Brazil with us.
Patrick: Awesome. I’ll put that number in the show notes as well. Super interesting, I appreciate you coming on the show and talking about this. Any parting thoughts, anything you want to share or are we good?
Vinny: I think we’re good I think we covered pretty much everything. Your questions are some of the things that I was hoping I would have the opportunity to answer and you asked them before I even had you ask you.
Patrick: Super.
Jesse: Patrick, thank you for the opportunity, man. We appreciate you guys.
Patrick: I really appreciate it, thanks Jesse. And where this came about we were actually at the MIA Reception at Stone Expo in Las Vegas this year and Jesse, being a good networker, came out and just said “hello” and started asking what he did. And the second he started explaining this, I just said, “Don’t tell me without telling everybody. Let’s get you on record and talk about this because I know other people will be interested too.” So thank you for connecting and sharing that story, Jesse. This is a super interesting project. I wish you both the best.
Vinny: All right, thank you, Patrick.
Jesse: Thank you, Patrick. Have a great evening
Patrick: You too. Talk to you more soon. Bye-bye.
Thanks for listening to StoneTalk, the podcast for countertop fabricators. If you liked this episode, be sure to visit stonetalk.org or subscribe to StoneTalk in iTunes for more. Visit the StoneTalk Show Facebook page to join in the conversation and follow @stonetalkshow on twitter.
StoneTalk is brought to you by Moraware, makers of JobTracker scheduling software and CounterGo estimating software for countertop fabricators. I’m your host, Patrick Foley, and I look forward to spending time with you again on the next episode of StoneTalk.
