Six years ago when Kodiak Mountain Stone was a growing five-year-old business venture, Jeff Heggie, President and CEO, was using some rare down-time for reading. The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo was his selection. It was 2010 and it felt like the first time in a year he had a moment to sit back and think about his business in tranquility. As he pensively read-on, Heggie imagined the ways in which Kodiak Mountain Stone could benefit from Jobs’ brand of creative thinking when he had a sudden realization: “We finish the dream.” This has since become the company’s motto. “Whether it is a new home or a renovation,” Heggie explains, “the owners see the final product in their minds long before they begin. There are so many vital elements to building a home - the electrical, the plumbing, all those things – but they are not part of the final picture, the dream. It’s our products that they see: our stone, our brick, our stucco – or often a combo of them all.”
By David MacDonald T he year before, the U.S. recession was forcing Heggie’s hand – but not in the way you may think. At the time, the team at Kodiak Mountain Stone had to “really take a look at how we were running the business as strictly manufacturers,” he explains. “When things slow down with housing, we typically see more renova- tions.” As Heggie anticipated at the time, the American housing market correction and subprime mortgage crisis of ’07 to ’09 made competition amongst manufacturers fiercer rather than tamer. Only a year earlier Heggie and his team decided to close their manufacturing operation in Cardston, Alberta – which had been on the decline
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS • AUGUST 2016
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