Pre-fabrication Countertops Or Getting Better

Granite countertops from China are getting more and more popular in the US market, while competition among local suppliers is increasingly intensified. How to get around the pricing competition and maintain or increase a market share, is now a challenge facing every manufacturer in China. GHY Granite Co., Ltd. (www.black -granite-monuments.com), a leading supplier of granite countertops, discloses its effective way to improve satisfaction of their clients.


go to http://www.huligar.com/journal/ to read more.

[werks]

prefab :roll:

[JeffC]

and what is wrong with pre-fab?? it is not the quality of the stone that makes most jobs. it is the quality of the installer. i have seen far to many"custom" (and i use that word losely) jobs that look way worse then any pre-fab job i have ever done. Pre-fab has its place, i make way more profit on my own doing pre-fab then any other form of income in this industry. i work for a custom shop during the week. most of the crap the try to push out to meet deadlines is not up to par but they dont listen. if they want to pay me to install theyre crap that comes off a cnc and then pay me to go on a call back to touch up edge details and such thats theyre deal. but i can tell you the pre-fab decks i do on the weekend are just as good as my custom shop on theyre good days.

im getting tired of defending these decks. just because people dont see the profit they can make and time they can save on basic jobs then that your fault. dont knock the guys that make over a 1000 a day putting granite in jobs you would never get anyway. sure theyre are bad pre-fab companys and im sorry if youve delt with them but you should be able to check the quality before you buy. i see nothing wrong with pre-fab and besides most of you not liking how its undercutting your custom shop. i have yet to hear a good argument why you dont like them. please tell me. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PRE-FAB???

Hey Jeff, did you go over to the news room. This guy seems to have a hand on most of the problems that most people had with pre-fab, which was thickness, edge profiles, over all polish and available size. as a restoration guy i never saw pre-fab as a bad thing, in fact the more stone that get in stall the better for us. you know what? lets see if we can get a list of companies that sell cut to size slabs. why is cut to size more excepted than pre-fab?

I sell and install pre-fab as well as slab. Slab (3cm) is more popular with most customers because they understand it and it is the standard in the industry. Customers are affraid to try new things and get worried when the price of something is less than what everyone else is charging. I have spent way too much time trying to educate my customers to get them on a comfortable level with the product.

The whole idea behind pre-fab is that you should not have to have the expensive machinery needed to fabricate from slab. These tops should be ready to cut to size, cut sink holes, and install.

The troubles I have had with pre-fab are that the companies making and distributing it are all crooked and will sell you whatever junk they are producing at that time. When you get bad product from them they will not stand behind it either. I have seen pre-made vanity tops which I have had to spend hours fixing piss poor polish jobs on edges and inside of sink holes. I have had to spend way too much time fixing poor polish jobs on edges of countertop blanks. I have had to repair way too many poor fill jobs which the factory have miscolored or not colored at all. I would never again purchase any stone from oversea's without being there when the container was being loaded to be sure of the quality of the product.

With all the quality issues and re-working created with the pre-fab tops coming from oversea's I can actually fabricate and install a slab top quicker and with less seams than the pre-fab.

All of my pre-fab customers have been happy with the product in the end of the install but as far as for me as a business I find no advantage in working from pre-fab. I only needed to spend about $7k to convert my shop from pre-fab to slab.

If anybody likes pre-fab so much I have about $45K worth of it in stock I will sell you for $30k just to get it out of my shop. It is taking up floorspace I would like to have back. You pay the shipping.

Dave

Hey Dave, is that the green stuff you had at the class.

Times are changing. More and more quarries are getting smart; it is easy to handle smaller block with less waste. Instead of them selling the left over junk, they have start mining specifically for pre-fab.

I have heard you can buy pre-cut slabs in any size you wish. If you add four inches to 3 sides you have a matching backsplash. On of the greatest advantages to a pre-cut slab, the customer sees what they are getting. I will no longer here. “They said they were going to cut around that spot�.

Cut to size is coming, same as the water jet and digital template.

The main issue I see with pre-fab vs slab is not the piece size and quality so much but the edge profile. When you buy the blanks you buy them with a profile. Most customers want a choice. The blanks I bought are with square edge. This gives me the option to put any edge profile the customer wants. If I re-cut the edge for another profile I have had the edge done for nothing. Therefore I am just as well of having a sawcut edge on the front to begin with. Otherwise, I would have to stock many different colors of stone in many different edge profiles. I can cut from slab just as fast if not faster than pre-fab. I do this every day. There is absolutly no time savings when fabricating with pre-fab. Only more seams to assemble on the installation site. Yes the pieces are smaller and easier to handle but that is not enough of a savings in my book. My customers who go pre-fab get a quality job and only they know it is pre-fab. It is my time that is the issue.

Yes, the green butterfly I brought to the class was one of & colors I have in stock. All 3 pallets if it that I have are garbage as well as about half of 3 other pallets of another color. The other 5 colors are much better quality stone but have occasional random fabrication blemishes.

Dave

One thing that I noticed from the artical was that they are boasting to be ISO9002 certified. The ISO program realy has nothing to do with quality of the product going out the door. It is a documentetion program which closely details procedures of manufacturing. It is a very lengthy paper trail for everything a manufacturing company does. It does not mean that the products going out are of quality. Trust me I was a manufacturing Engineer for 16 years and helped both of the companies I worked for set-up their ISO certification systems. It is a load of B.S. I have no faith in any of this.

Dave, I fell the key to all of this, is as you said early. Never purchase any stone from overseas without being there are having a reputable agent when the container was being loaded to be sure of the quality of the product.

I am sure there are 1 or 2 guys that get good pre-cut slabs.
Dave and everyone else, where do you get your pre-cut slabs?

Yes Jo, that is the key.

I bought from (joh removed the link) who has changed their name to (joh removed the link) since my purchase. Gee I wonder why. One of the partners in this business is the webmaster of the evil :evil: stone forum. They may be getting their stone from another manufacturer by now though because their chineese partner was trying to back door them out of their customers. Take that.

Dave