Back in August 2016 when Spotlight on Business last spoke with Jeff Heggie, the President and CEO of Kodiak Mountain Stone, he explained how his vision – and execution – was simple when he began operations in 2005: manufacture beautiful masonry products for exterior sidings, fireplaces, feature walls – or any project his customers could dream up. “We finish the dream” quickly became Kodiak Mountain Stone’s slogan. “After all, it’s our products that they see. The owners see the final product in their minds long before they begin: our stone, our brick, our stucco – or often a combo of them all,” Jeff told the magazine more than two years ago. But just as often, he recalled earlier this month, that combo included something that only a competitor offered. “That really made us take a look at how we were running the business strictly as manufacturers. And after everything kind of crashed there in 2008 and the housing market took a nosedive the focus became renovations. That’s when we opened our stores, our showrooms in Alberta, and we started to develop relationships with a lot of the other manufacturers – and eventually started distributing their product in our stores. At first a lot of them were hesitant and I think some of them looked at us as a competing manufacturer only. But once they realized we were not trying to pull any fast ones or anything – that we were legitimate – and that we just wanted to be able to offer a whole line of products out of our stores, beside our own, they were on board.” Today, Jeff explained, the Kodiak Mountain Stone brand has completed its transition from producer to supplier and now offers an even wider variety of manufactured stone, natural stone, brick, acrylic stucco, and light- weight concrete fencing products to fit the needs of distributors, homebuilders, and homeowners north and south of the 49th parallel.
By David MacDonald W e couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for those existing business relation- ships,” Jeff said with humble enthu- siasm from his office at Kodiak Mountain Stone’s Lethbridge, Alberta homebase. “Bringing on the best in new manufactured lines, as well as some other phenomenal natural stone lines, really filled in the gaps that were there – and that’s what I wanted to address from the start.” Those natural stone lines include Merrill- stone and Natural Stone Veneer Internation- al, among others. “Particularly on themanufactured stone side, I really believe that we’ve got the number one products available in the marketplace today – I’d say in North America as a whole. We’re supplying Creative Mines products; we’re supplying ECOstone products; we’re supplying Eldorado Stone and Harristone. You can’t beat those products.”
Jeff’s confidence in his inventory, he explained, comes from one place: “Our cus- tomers are confident in the products that
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OCTOBER 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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