Joe Howard is a do-it-yourself kind of guy.
Howard’s company, Palisades Stone, produces manmade stone for the construction industry.
When he discovered the process, Howard took the idea and ran with it.
“I was a manufacturer’s representative and had a line of stone selling in Columbia and was looking to become a distributor in Springfield for that line,” Howard says. “And then I thought, ‘Well heck, instead of distributing it, why don’t I just make it?’”
He found about 60 molds on the Internet and took off for Kentucky to buy them.
“Then I had to figure out how to pour concrete, mix and color,” Howard says.
More than a decade later, Howard and a team of 15 employees are replicating that model at his company’s 1350 E. Commercial St. plant. Howard opened Palisades Stone in August 2000 under Springfield Hearth & Home Inc., which he formed in December 1993.
Depending on distributors
Although Howard declined to disclose 2010 sales, he says company revenue was up about 25 percent for the year.
Howard said one reason is a focus on rural areas, where some of his nine distributors reported 30 percent sales growth.
“We’ve reached out to a bigger geographic area,” Howard says. “Springfield still seems kind of flat.”
Howard says he’s pursuing residential projects near Lake of the Ozarks and West Plains in southwest Missouri.
Palisades Stone uses a distribution channel model to sell its product.
“I’ve always believed manufacturers should be focusing on manufacturing the product,” Howard says.
Palisades Stone distributes in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.
Rick Turner, owner of Springfield Cultured Stone, distributes for Palisades Stone in the Springfield area, sharing office space with Palisades on Commercial Street. He measures, orders from Palisades and delivers the manmade stone for each job his company undertakes.
After working at Glenstone Block for 14 years, Turner says he wanted to try something on his own in March 2001, when he formed Springfield Cultured Stone.
Turner says the demand for stone was strong until a couple of years ago when the housing market soured.
Although most of his clients are residential home builders, commercial clients include Bryant Edgeman Masonry, for which Turner performed work on new Harter House grocery stores, and O’Reilly Hospitality III LLC. Springfield Cultured Stone laid the first-story exterior stone veneer on O’Reilly Hospitality’s $9.8 million, 12-story Hilton Garden Inn nearing completion at James River Freeway and Glenstone Avenue.
“It’s kind of nice to see your product up on something that noticeable, but I also like seeing the fireplaces, when people do a fireplace in their houses,” Turner says.
The process
Producing the manmade stone takes about three days, Turner says, and most orders can be filled in about a week and a half. Material and labor for the stone veneer products cost around $10 per square foot.
Turner describes the four-step process of making the manmade stones:
• Mix the concrete using lightweight aggregate, or mineral crystals, with one or more rock fragments;
• Put color shade into molds before pouring the concrete mix to allow the color to permeate through it;
• Pour the concrete mix into the molds; and
• Remove the mix from the mold the next day.
The manmade rock industry has been around since the early- to mid-1950s, Howard says, but didn’t gain popularity in southwest Missouri until the mid-1990s.
Palisades’ newest product, Howard says, is a byproduct of technology.
He makes a concrete fireplace mantel that looks like wood, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of flat-screen TVs hung above fireplaces. Because wood is combustible, it requires more space between the mantel and the fireplace than a concrete mantel.
“Wood mantels have to be placed so many inches above fireplace openings,” Howard says. “By replicating wood out of concrete, we can cut that distance down.”
The mantels make up only about 10 percent of the company’s revenue, with stone veneer making up the rest.
Tough times
Like many businesses that count on construction for their survival, distributor Turner has experienced a significant business drop that started for him around 2006.
While looking over his client list, Turner points to about 15 of his 75 clients that are no longer in business. His company’s 2010 revenue was $200,000, down dramatically from $1 million in 2005.
Turner says he’s optimistic for the summer, but he’s seen no signs of a recovery yet.
Area housing starts increased to 1,102 through November 2010 from 1,033 in 2009, according to a December MarketGraphics Research study of Taney, Stone, Barry, Webster, Christian and Greene counties. Experts say the market is now beginning to recover from those inflated inventories.
In Springfield, there were 65 building permits in January, up from 50 in December, according to
www.springfieldmo.gov.
At the recent Home Builders Association Home Show, Turner says several more people than at last year’s show stopped at his Springfield Cultured Stone booth with interest in using the product in remodeling projects. Turner and Howard are hopeful for the coming year.
“It can’t get any worse,” Howard says.[[In-content Ad]]
