In the 1970s, while Mike Sorg was still in high school, he began working at Shelburne Marble & Stone between Hoagland and Monroeville, Ind. He loved the creative process when working with stone, and after finishing college, he returned to the area and bought out his former employer in 1985. Sorg renamed the business Classic Marble & Stone, and he worked the 2,000-sq.-ft. shop alone at the outset.
Thirteen years after buying the business, Sorg relocated to a larger warehouse in Hoagland, and today, he leads a professional staff of salespeople and stone artisans in a 30,000-sq.-ft. facility. He acknowledges the fact he came into the industry at the right time to benefit from the granite countertop boom, but he attributes his success on the fact that he and his employees take every opportunity to keep learning.
As part of his effort to learn about countertop fabrication, Sorg has sought industry knowledge and new techniques from around the world. He has a strong friendship with the owner of the Edstein Creative Stone, Nigel Ferguson, in Australia, whom he met at a stone show in Italy. They bonded over the idea of going paperless and making use of new software systems.
Sorg believes in embracing the future and has seen a significant number of changes in the countertop industry through the years. His facility is now fully automated and includes two bridge saws, a waterjet cutting system and three CNCs. He has also made an effort to make the company more sustainable by reclaiming water and recycling scrap materials.
Read more of this Fabricator Profile here: Classic Marble & Stone
