Inside an 18th-century barn house in New Hartford, longtime friends Gordon Hines and Mary Sage have spent the past seven years custom engraving sacred words onto bricks and river stones.
Their business, Brick and Stone Expressions of New England, specializes in everything from pet memorial grave stones to what’s known as brick fundraising, a way for customers — including The International Tennis Hall of Fame — to sell engraved bricks to patrons to raise money for their cause.
“(Brick fundraising) is the bread and butter of our business,” Hines said. “The nice thing about it is it’s not a one-time shot. We’re always doing reorders, which keeps a steady cash flow coming in.”
One of the things Hines and Sage pride their business on are its idiosyncrasies, or as Hines says, the simple fact that no stone they use is ever the same.
“This isn’t a cookie cutter thing. We can’t mass produce; it’s all custom,” he said.
Although their company doesn’t make stones for cemeteries, they do receive orders from people wanting to memorialize a loved one who has passed away. Recently, Hines made a special stone for a fisherman who had died. His friends wanted to place a custom-made, 18-inch rock near the river bed he used to frequent. At a cost of $100, Hines was able to make a stencil of the man’s silhouette throwing a line into the water.
For this customer and many others, the stone is often the first step in the grieving process, Sage said, and it has to be done just right.
“There’s no margin of error. Once you blast, if it’s wrong you have to throw it in the stone wall,” Hines said, noting it takes an eye for detail to make sure he’s doing precisely what a customer requests. Occasionally, he says, customers do e-mail him with an “oops, I want to change my memorial inscription” comment. In these instances, he works with them to offer a reduced price redo.
It was after the death of Hines’ dog several years ago that he started researching memorial stone businesses. He said the closest monument engraving company he could find for his pet was on the other side of the state. That’s when he got together with Sage and started realizing they could develop a business together.
With a combined investment of $50,000, they were able to pull it off. They didn’t have a website initially. Instead, they would travel to retail stores with their hand-carved stones and sell wholesale. Five years ago, Hines said they invested in a solid website and had so many orders coming in that they stopped selling to retailers. Now, they only sell to one — Harken’s Market in East Windsor.
“The Internet changed everything. Customers find us and they can e-mail us their designs. We just scan them straight into our program,” Hines said. “In the olden days, they used to use X-Acto knives. Now, we can do a stock rock (from a scan) in just a couple of minutes.”
Since the business operates out of Hines’ family farm, there is little overhead cost other than heat, insurance, website maintenance and carving equipment. By using a flat rate postal service, they’re able to find affordable shipping options for materials, he said.
Hines and Sage are working on at least 25 projects at a time. The prime season for their business is March through October, which is a good thing because Hines also maintains 10,000 Christmas trees on his farm.
“Every year we grow. Our base is getting broader. We’ve quadrupled in size over the past three years and we’ve done it during a recession,” he said proudly.
Joanna Smiley writes the weekly Local Insight column. Reach her at jsmiley@HartfordBusiness.com.
