Business Sense: Best Hiring Practices for Your Countertop Fabrication Business

By Katherine Gifford of Moraware For years, hiring has always been a huge challenge for the stone industry. Shops are busier than ever, and the labor pool is smaller than ever. We can’t fix that, unfortunately. But, we can try to help by sharing some best practices when it comes to hiring … Read more

Business Sense – Never Stop Improving

Tips for Continuous Improvement in Lean Manufacturing for Countertop Fabricators By Katherine Gifford of Moraware It might be the fifth and final principle, but when it comes to lean manufacturing, they do actually save the best and most important for last. Continuous improvement is the fifth principle of lean manufacturing, and … Read more

Health & Safety Watch: June is National Safety Month

Join the National Safety Council (NSC) in observing June as National Safety Month. In doing so the organization offers free materials to share in order to create a culture of safety in the workplace. Each week in June NSC provides materials focused on a different topic. This year’s topics include … Read more

Fabricator Profile: A Top En-counter

Provided by Durasein What Huntington Beach, Calif.-based solid surface company A Top En-counter lacks in size, it makes up for through creativity, ingenuity, passion, the utilization of advanced equipment and experience. Owner Kevin Libby didn’t take the traditional path to solid surface fabrication, but rather started his journey building houseboats. … Read more

Health & Safety Watch: A Safe Workplace is Sound Business

OSHA has recently updated the Guidelines for Safety and Health Programs it first released 30 years ago, to reflect changes in the economy, workplaces, and evolving safety and health issues. The new Recommended Practices have been well received by a wide variety of stakeholders and are designed to be used … Read more

Business Sense: 7 Valuable Things We’ve Learned From Visiting Successful Countertop Shops

By Katherine Gifford of Moraware Over the last 18+ years, we’ve had many amazing opportunities to visit countertop shops. Whether it’s through a tour associated with an industry event or visiting our own awesome customers, we’re always happy to see just how creative fabricators are getting with the way they … Read more

Health & Safety Watch: Safe+Sound Week

Safe + Sound Week is a nationwide event held each August that recognizes the successes of workplace health and safety programs and offers information and ideas on how to keep America’s workers safe. This year OSHA invites companies to participate August 9-15. Successful safety and health programs can proactively identify … Read more

Business Sense: Good customer service will make you more money

by Katherine Gifford of Moraware It’s too easy to deprioritize customer service when you’re overworked and you don’t have a large enough team to step in and help. And given today’s market, when the jobs are rolling in with little effort, it’s hardly motivating to put extra work into a … Read more

Business Sense: How to Better Manage Countertop Shop Scheduling

By Katherine Gifford of Moraware What words come to mind when you think about your scheduling process? For a lot of fabricators – especially those with smaller operations – it’s chaos.  Striking the right balance of supply and demand is what scheduling is all about, but when everyone at your … Read more

Cambria Announces Investigation of Antidumping/Countervailing Duties Evasion

Cambria announced in a press release that the and Border Protection agency (Customs) has preliminarily determined that fifteen U.S. importers have evaded the antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on quartz surface products from China. As part of its recent determination regarding evasion, Customs found that fifteen importers evaded the AD/CVD … Read more