BLOOMINGTON, IND., 11/11/16 – The Tracery Stone Company announced recently that it will fabricate limestone products exclusively, giving up its previous fabrication of granite and marble products. The Birmingham, Alabama company, a fabricator associated with the Indiana Limestone Company, has been a leading provider of stone in the southern United States for more than 90 years.

Jason Garner, president of Tracery, said several considerations guided this decision.

“We’d gotten to where granite and marble were 4 percent of our sales and took up 35 percent of our time,” he said. His company might spend more administrative time and troubleshooting on one granite slab than on a three-truck-load limestone project.

The nature of the granite/marble business, Garner said, often requires in-process changes by homeowner, with complications that arise when the fabricator isn’t notified. These issues cost inordinate amounts of time for which it is difficult or impossible to be adequately repaid.

Customers inspect granite slabs intensely, and may reject them for minor defects. If a slab is broken, which happens all too often, there’s an immediate $1000 loss. Limestone is less expensive as a commodity, and if it is broken it can usually be repurposed for other jobs.

Garner’s great-grandfather emigrated from France in the early 1920s, establishing a business that became a top fabricator and distributor of custom stone across Alabama and in other southern states. Through the generations, Garner’s family has fabricated many types of stone. The decision to concentrate on limestone fabrication only came after years of consideration.

“Unlike granite, there aren’t that many people down here doing limestone,” Garner said. In contrast, Tracery operates a fully-equipped limestone mill, which confers a major advantage on limestone projects.