Cheesemakers turn to stone in Le Sueur

One question can launch Marty Davis into motion -- darting up ladders, side-stepping chutes and zigging around vacuum presses, diamond-polishing beds and rows of quartz slabs at his family's year-old Cambria stone plant in Le Sueur, Minn.

As co-owner and general manager of the new company, Davis, 37, is out to tackle the most minute problem and prove that Cambria can thrive among importers as the only U.S. maker of quartz countertops.

The start-up, which also makes quartz floors, resurrected a moribund technology and brought 100 jobs to Le Sueur and 50 to Eden Prairie. Still, Cambria stands as a $35 million gamble for its bankers and the family, which is better known for making cheese.

Three generations of Davises have made cheddar cheese for Kraft Foods. The company was started by Stanley Davis as a dairy business in 1943 and has continued with his son, Mark, and Mark's sons, Marty, Matt, Mitch and Jon.

Peel into a Kraft single, rip open a box of macaroni and cheese or dig into a "Lunch able" and Davis cheese is likely inside. Every minute, a 40-pound box of cheddar rattles off conveyors at the family's separately operated Davisco Foods plant a mile from Cambria.

Davisco, with $450 million in annual sales, also makes lactose, whey proteins and other ingredients for Hershey, Bisquick, baby formulas and even a Japanese yogurt firm.

Successful transition

The family's transition from cheese to stone marks its first non-food venture. Regardless, it quickly has won a following. Builders, homeowners and offices have praised the gleaming, granite-like product. And bankers familiar with the family were determined to lend a hand.

Wells Fargo financed part of the plant. LaSalle Bank installed quartz stone counters in its Minneapolis office and made a multimillion-dollar loan for equipment. The rest of the money came from the family.

"They make a good product. We are cautiously optimistic that they will make this work," said Ward Nixon, the banker for the family's cheese business who gave the nod on the personal loan. "If I had to bet on a jockey, they are not bad jockeys to bet on. They have proven a lot of skeptics wrong.

"Part of what makes these guys successful is that they are incredibly energetic. You could say stubborn," he said. "They bring a professionalism and a food-processing mentality to a business that seemingly could operate at a lower level."

Still, Nixon sees that the family must master entirely new distribution routes that tap contractors, designers and architects instead of food firms.

Cambria is making progress. It sells its upscale quartz products nationwide through 24 distributors and has one customer in Asia.

In Minnesota, Cambria has opened a marketing office in Eden Prairie, launched commercials on WCCO radio and built kitchen and bathroom vanities for several Parade of Homes houses this year. Its counters and floors also appeared at the recent Home and Garden Show in Minneapolis.

Next month, Cambria will open finishing shops in Chicago and Atlanta. Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and Phoenix are on the horizon.

The journey has been swift but purposeful.

"We think we are too dependent on one industry," said Jon Davis, 32, general manager of Davisco's cheese division. "We thought it would be nice to be more diversified."

The start of something

When bankrupt Technimar Industries in St. Paul liquidated its quartz machinery three years ago, the Davises leapt.

Years before, Mark Davis had been so impressed by Technimar's quartz technology that he made a small investment, buying a half-percent of the company. When its managers failed to get Technimar running, he lost his investment.

He wasn't alone; other investors suffered losses amid Technimar's controversial bankruptcy. A Minneapolis police pension fund lost more than $10 million. The city of Cohasset, where Technimar planned a never-opened factory, lost $2.3 million it put up as collateral for a bond issue.

In comparison, Mark Davis' investment was small. "But it wasn't small to me," he said, still angry.

Nonetheless, he remained impressed by the potential of the technology -- impressed enough to buy it.

"He thought it was a risky investment, but he thought it was worthwhile," said Marty Davis.

"I was attracted to the manufacturing process," said the elder Davis. "To me it was extremely similar to making cheese. Temperature and time make cheese. And time and temperature make this product. They've just got different ingredients."

So father and sons spent $8 million for some of Technimar's equipment, plunked down another $10 million to import machinery from Italy and began construction on the factory, which opened in January 2001 and throttled into full production in May.

The main $16 million plant sits just off Hwy. 169 and does double duty as an elegant showroom. The 2,500-pound bags of quartz chunks, granules and powders that come to the plant morph into non-porous, stain-and scratch-resistant surfaces with the help of presses, a towering oven and a dab of resin.

The process created some high-paying jobs for workers laid off at neighboring ADC Telecommunications in Le Sueur and bankrupt Excelsior-Henderson's motorcycle plant in Belle Plaine.

Sharon Hastings joined Cambria a year ago as a production leader after being laid off from ADC. "I'm glad I came here. I've worked my way up, and I make a lot more money than at ADC," Hastings said as she watched a freshly baked 10-foot slab roll out of the oven.

Seconds later, new hire and former ADC worker Nancy Finnesgard jumped into inspection mode, scrambling behind suction-equipped robotic arms that hoisted the slab out of a massive mold.

Cost-containment

Multimillion-dollar equipment is one expense the family didn't shirk. The belt-tightening lies elsewhere.

In Cambria's small finishing shop in St. Peter, the family has trailers for office space. And Marty will continue to use a folding metal chair in his beautifully detailed office in Le Sueur.

"I'm using that little church chair 'til it's all going good," he said. "You don't do anything fancy 'til you know what the hell you are doing."

It's a rare moment of caution for Davis, who proudly touts the new product while torpedoing himself through the plant and the town.

To those who would slam the family's expertise, Marty Davis insists, "We are in this for the long haul. This is a 150,000-square-foot factory, not a a short-term venture."

Give him the chance, and he'll try to prove it.

While zipping a female visitor through a tour, Davis stopped at the Whisky River Restaurant and ushered her inside the men's room to show off the newly installed Cambria floor and vanity. A slight problem with the countertop seam sent him on a cell-phone mission until he contacted the installer. The job would be redone.

"Quality is a must," he said.

Back inside the plant, Davis greeted each employee by name, ripped off a manhole cover to expose the water recycling system and hopped up and down various platforms to point out mixers, ovens and cutters.

The competition

The finished product is impressive. Tiles are cut on site. Countertops are trucked to the St. Peter finishing shop, where precision cuts are made under the watchful eye of quality assurance manager Matt Davis.

Still competitors abound. Silestone imports its quartz slabs from Spain and sells tile and counters through Home Depot and 65 other distributors nationwide; CaesarStone USA and Dupont import their slabs from Israel and Canada, respectively.

Asked about his latest competitor, Silestone manager Carlos Ocha in Eagan acknowledges that Cambria has "the same technology, the same quartz and the same product."

Ocha emphasized that "we sell worldwide. But the main thing is that this is a family-owned business that has worked in stone for three generations. Cambria is owned by a family in the food industry."

Silestone and most other competing products end up in homes. Seventy percent of Cambria's sales have been commercial, but that's changing. March sales were 60 percent residential.

"Residential sales are growing at a straight line up," Marty said.

Wendy Danks, marketing director for the Builders Association of the Twin Cities, said Cambria "definitely has a chance of making it."

It's a growth industry, she said, with homeowners and offices demanding higher-quality products than five years ago. Laminates are out. Stone, marble and quartz are in, even in modestly priced homes.

Cambria is riding the winds of that trend and hopes to be profitable next year. "These things take awhile," Mark Davis said. "It's like giving birth. Pretty soon the baby walks."

-- Dee DePass is at ddepass@startribune.com .