| Starting a Stone Supplier
|
|
| Interview with Innovative Stone Founder Karen Pearse
|
|
|
|
|
Karen Pearse, founder of Innovative Stone, has a lifetime of experience in the stone business. We spent some time with her to learn more about her company and how they became one of the leading global suppliers of natural stone
|
|
|
If you've seen some of the natural stone in the Time Warner Center, Bloomberg building, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Tiffany's and Harrah's Casinos, then you've seen the work of entrepreneur Karen Pearse.(article continues below)
|
|
|
Ms. Pearse rapidly has grown her stone products company in Long Island, New York into a global leader in her industry. We asked her a few questions to learn how she has done so well.
|
|
|
|
Innovative Stone Stone is a leading international supplier, fabricator and installer of natural and man-made stone products used for dimensional stone, hard-surface flooring and branded residential countertops. Essentially, we sell natural stone products.
|
|
|
The company serves as a distributor of natural stone slabs throughout the United States and Canada.
|
|
|
| Raised in a family-owned residential stone and tile business, I founded Innovative Marble and Tile in 1981. |
|
|
|
I grew the Company from an initial investment of $5,000 and was able to break $1,000,000 within the first year of operation. Almost thirty years of consistent growth has enabled Innovative to become one of the largest companies in the industry
|
|
|
|
Other man-made materials including countertop companies such as Cambria, DuPont, Silestone, etc.
|
|
|
|
Being a female CEO in a male-dominated industry has been more difficult than I imagined
|
|
|
|
Yes, been more knowledgeable about how people cannot be trusted completely.
|
|
|
|
In 2006, my company was the first to introduce branded granite countertops for residential use in the U.S., which is a $12.7 billion industry today.
|
|
|
To solidify the company's global competitive advantage, I remain dedicated to innovation: I also changed the way the commercial market bought stone in the early 1980's by creating a system for selling direct to the end-user.
|
|
|
|
Dream big and trust your intuition. You can always do the things you want.
|
|
|
|