When opportunity knocks

Rick Klassen and Roy Hughes were just casual friends when Hughes approached Klassen, founder and former owner of Gerick Sports and Boarders Choice (now The Choice) with his thoughts of opening a granite fabrication shop.

“I liked the idea of expanding my former business, Classic Tile,” said Hughes in his English Midlands accent, “and I saw that there was a definite place for a granite fabricating shop in the East Kootenay.”

He asked Klassen, whose business acumen and entrepreneurship he admired, for his opinion of the idea and Klassen agreed to look into it, more as a favour than with any intention of entering into the business.

“As I did my research, though,” Klassen said, “I started to think that this guy might be onto something.”

Knowing that Hughes was looking for investors, Klassen offered to provide capital, leadership and management, while Hughes agreed to look after the technical side. They became business partners in Kootenay Granite Plus in Cranbrook, B.C., in 2007.

Business is booming

Five years later, business had increased to the point where their first shop was simply too small. To enable continued growth, Kootenay Granite Plus needed more machinery.

“In our old shop,” said Klassen, “from the perspective of power, water and just sheer space, we couldn’t afford to put in any more large machinery.”

Kootenay Granite Plus recently moved to its new, built-to-order home on Cranbrook Street North. The pre-engineered steel building was supplied and constructed by Norsteel of Kelowna, B.C.

In addition to more floor space, the new shop has 35-foot ceilings, allowing for the installation of overhead cranes, which are used to move the heavy slabs of granite.

“This building is 50 per cent bigger than the old one—it’s 15,000 square feet,” Klassen said. “The additional space gives us the ability to develop different lines and different aspects within the stone business. It’s really nice; we’re loving it.”

The majority of Kootenay Granite Plus’s raw product is sourced in Brazil, India and Italy.  The 10-foot by 15-foot slabs of polished granite, cut from solid rock, are displayed at Kootenay Granite Plus in ranks rather like posters in a gallery—only heavy! This is not a catalogue store—when customers make their selections, they are not looking at samples. The very slab they choose is the one that will be cut to specification and become their new countertop.

Once the customers make their choices, the team at Kootenay Granite Plus goes to work cutting, polishing and eventually installing the finished products. Both partners spoke with great warmth about their team members, saying that none of them started out as experts, but that all of them have a great work ethic and a true team spirit.

Plans for the future

The partners share a vision for the future of the business, hoping to expand into other stone-related areas of business, like gravestones and grave markers.

“That would involve lots of the same suppliers and the same machinery that we work with right now,” Klassen said. “Now that we’re in this new location, we’re able to take on other parts of the stone industry and develop them extensively.”

“We’d like to become more of a design centre,” Hughes added. “We could become known as rock stars!”