Oct. 17 was just another day for Kathy Sciarrino.
Barely mid-morning and her second appointment of the day was late. Her attorney called about her former CFO; providing more information on the financial officer’s embezzlement of almost $750,000 from her family’s business, and his pending incarceration. Yet still another call from an associate of the man who saved the company from filing bankruptcy with an emergency loan in 1995. He had just passed away.
Much of the last decade was like this day for the Sciarrino family business of European Natural Stone Co. in Santee: Up one hour and down the next, always busy, but not always profitable. However, by diversifying the product line and the distribution channels, European Natural Stone is on pace to clear $12 million in revenue this year.
In the last four years, the firm’s revenues have increased by at least $1 million every year. They were $3 million in 1997 and $7 million last year. European Natural Stone shapes granite slabs to fill custom orders for kitchen and bathroom countertops, flooring, shower walls, and wet bars.
– List Of Clients Is Impressive
The firm’s clients include the Federal Justice Building in Downtown San Diego, the Kona Kai Hotel on Shelter Island, and the private residences of Joan Kroc and Padres’ owner John Moores.
The company was created in 1978 to keep Pete Sciarrino close to his wife, Kathy, and their three sons. At the time, Sciarrino worked three jobs just to make ends meet.
When a car accident put Sciarrino on medical leave, his wife convinced her husband they could start their own granite countertop business.
The business was something they were both familiar with: Kathy’s father helped create a similar company called the Florentine Co. and Pete was employed there at the time of his accident.
The Florentine Co. of San Diego is now one of European Natural Stone’s main competitors, as are American Marble in Oceanside, and F.S. Marble in Miramar.
However, European Natural Stone didn’t really take off until the early 1990s and only then during a debilitating economic recession.
– High-End Products Keeps Firm Profitable
Because the company sold high-end products, it stayed afloat selling custom-fit granite slabs to affluent clients and to commercial homebuilders, said Kathy Sciarrino, senior vice president.
European Natural Stone’s products are still available in the local home option units of homebuilders including Kaufmann & Broad, Standard Pacific Homes, Continental Builders, and William Lyons Homes, Inc.
Greystone Homes, Inc., currently offers only European Natural Stone’s granite kitchens in their new, local homes; about 260 in all, said Michael Levesque, division president.
“We chose them because they were local, but more importantly they had the facilities to turn out the amount of kitchens that we needed,” Levesque said.
As the market recovered, European Natural Stone introduced less expensive products through a wider range of distributors, including 80 regional Home Depots, 15 Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouses and several Home Expos.
For a time there were only three types of decorative countertops available: granite slabs, the most expensive; Dupont’s Corian, the mid-level priced product; and ceramic tiles, the cheapest of the three.
– Filling Demand For Affordable Products
“A lot of people were satisfied with the second best (Corian) because they couldn’t afford granite slabs,” Sciarrino said. “We wanted to fill the void.”
European Natural Stone began distributing custom-ordered Silestone in July 1999, a 93 percent quartz counter priced between granite slabs and Corian and the product sold in the remodeling stores. The firm also introduced Granite Express in September 1999, a granite tile more expensive than ceramic tile, but less than Corian and 40 percent less than granite slabs, said the European Natural Stone senior vice president.
A home interior employee at Home Depot in El Cajon said the product was selling faster than any other countertop product they had.
In order to accommodate the increased orders of Silestone, European Natural Stone invested over $1 million in new cutting and polishing machinery.
Sciarrino said the deals were very important to the long-term success of the company.
“When the housing market slows, we believe home remodeling is going to be very important,” Sciarrino said.
