Blanco Zeus is now Zeus Extreme : How does the color naming work in this business?

Blanco Zeus, Glaciar, Nero Portoro, Botticino, and many others are names most peole in the engineered stone business hear about daily. I believe most of you have wondered how the naming process of the colors and series is done. Can say that their are no standards that influence the name or the series, it's mostly a marketing decision of the manufacturer. I've participated in some of these name picking marketing activities, and many times I believe the consumers must also wonder why they named the color with that specific name.

Historically, we have had an evolution regarding naming and products. Prior to the 90s, the most common and sold engineered stone products were engineered marble products, these colors are currently still available and most producers have settled to call them the Traditional Series. Way back then and as you can see in the picture, the majority of the texture was true natural marble, some very similar to the natural stone, so manufacturers in general started to call these products using the natural stones name, which quickly helped marketing these products, as most traditional marble stone names are easily recognized by the general consumer.
From the 90s until today, the evolution of this industry has surpassed all expectation, in the 80s most manufacturers had a very rigid offer of colors to the market, and the same color range besides limited it also would last several years practically unchanged. In Italy, even today, some manufacturers even use the same names for similar colors like Botticino, Nero Portoro, etc. While other producers would just use the color type and add it's origin, like Bianco Carrara (White is the color and Carrara is the place where it’s extracted from)
Another curiosity regarding color and series naming, in Asia most colors are identified by local manufacturers by numbers or a combination of letters and numbers, rarely do  we see Asia manufacturers using names. Although they tend to name the series with names, very common to see flower series, as one of them.
In the last few years, engineered stone colors have become similar to fashion item, which is constantly renewing itself. In general, 80% of sales is attained by 20% of the colors sold, in most companies it will be less than 10 colors. But the manufacturers need to keep renewing to keep their marketing machine working, so their research and development departments have become an important part of their business.
Most manufacturers have the products divided by type, especially producer who have both engineered marble and engineered quartz plants, so their top level product range will be divided into 2 or 3 groups. In the intermediate level they’ll have range or series, these are named according to the physical characteristics of the colors, the naming is based on the creativity of the marketing department and management. For example, Silestone created a few years ago the platinum series, with all colors using grey shades, this year they are launching the Nebula series, which is a vein series, a base color with a contrasting vein. So most colors in each series will have similarities, these can be made up on shade/color, raw materials used or even technology.
The naming of the colors, as I said before there is no standard and the creativity of each manufacturer is revealed through this naming effort. Some have used mythology in the names, others use ancient cities, and I’ve even seen Las Vegas casino names. Besides these non-related names to the colors, you will find that some manufacturers will just associate a word to the color, like a beige color is called sabbia (sand in Italian), arena (sand in Spanish), Dune, etc…
Behind the scenes there is logic behind the color naming process. And one of the latest curiosities, is that currently every producer is looking for the whitest white, and looking for the perfect name to define the color, we have seen colors like Blanco Zeus become Zeus Extreme (Silestone colors that have evolved) and Glaciar become Absolut White (Compacs Color range).

Compac Marble and Quartz – Marmol Compac

Who is who in the engineered stone business? Compac Quartz, Compac Marble and Marmol Compac are all sales brands of one of the biggest engineered stone manufacturers in Europe. 

Commonly known as Marmol Compac due to its origin, as this group began manufacturing engineered stone in 1975. Its engineered marble plant is located in Spain, just South of Valencia. In truth it still is the main headquarters for all operations, although, most of the production output and invoicing is generated in their Portuguese plant called Silicalia. Here they have a engineered quartz manufacturing plant with 4 production lines running and a fifth one bought (running market information). Silicalia is located in the central part of Portugal far from any major city, as also is known that they had several benefits from the local town to install their factory in their county. In terms of industrial expansion, they are planning to install an engineered marble plant near Baza, close to Almeria. Although due to market expectations they’ve only settled for a nice big sign next to a major motorway.

Silicalia was installed in Portugal due to contract limitations. Breton, the Italian manufacturers of the machinery and owner of the technology and  know-how, set up an exclusive agreement with Cosentino Group ( Silestone brand), giving them a manufacturing and know-how exclusive rights, this exclusivity is indexed to the quantity of quartz production lines bought, being two years for each one. Therefore, Cosentino started production in the 90s, and currently they have 11 production lines installed, so that’s 22 years of exclusive manufacturing. Nevertheless, Quarella also has an engineered quartz plant in the Northern part of Spain called Prestige, they’ve been excluded of such agreement, as they are the oldest engineered quartz plant operating in Spain.

So Marmol Compac, the original name, was given due to the engineered marble technology they bought a few decades ago. By accumulating engineered marble and engineered quartz in their core business, the name Marmol Compac was changed to Compac Marble and Quartz. Engineered stone companies producing both engineered marble and engineered quartz in Europe are few, being Marmol Compac in the top 5 positions regarding production capacity.

Compac Marble and Quartz is a family managed enterprise, that is based on a warehousing sales strategy, as most of their sales originate in Spain. They’ve set up an owned warehousing distribution units all over Spain, and have expanded this strategy to the United Kingdom. Although I did hear recently that the operation in the United Kingdom was in great difficulty and in the eminence of closing the warehousing units in this market. They also have their own US distribution system set up.

Compac Marble and Quartz have been one of the most innovative companies in this sector, they have a very good R&D team. They’ve created some very unique colours, one of my favorites is Silver, a grey colour with very light sparkles, in my opinion, it’s a great result of extensive R&D. I have a photo of it, although just looking at it you will not see how profound the colour is.

They’ve also have evolved in white colours and have currently on of the best pure white colours in the market. In marketing they’ve followed Silestones foot steps and have used VIPs in promoting their products, although still quite behind Silestone, but I’d give them a 2^nd place worldwide in marketing.

Compac Marble and Quartz has also innovated in distribution, they’ve opened two outlet type warehouses for second choice slabs, discontinued colours and other excess stock. The prices are really good, however you are limited to the existing stock.

Cultured Marble : Is there any way out for the Breton engineered marble plants?

Engineered marble or cultured marble as many call it, has been living a severe crisis since 2008. In truth while the engineered quartz production plants are almost back to normal production, the engineered marble or cultured marble plants are still in a deep crisis. When I refer to engineered marble, cultured marble, I'm referring to polyester resin based materials which use block technology.
In fact, their are several issues regarding this product, basically they are at a strategic point trying to re-think production to make the whole investment viable. Some of the European companies which use Breton Block technology are in deep crisis and fighting for survival. In the last few years Breton has sold more slab production lines than block production lines, nevertheless the block production lines produced in the last few years  most of them were installed in China.
In Europe the main cultured marble producers that use Breton technology are:

• Quarella - Italy

Quarella is the biggest composite stone producer in the world, as they claim, and I figure they might have reason to make such claim. They have a few block production plants and have suffered seriously with the crisis. They export to almost every country in the World, and have been practicing very aggressive pricing in Asia.
They have created a product which uses the block technology, it's an evolution series which has given the product a greater superficial hardness. The Evo series was launched last year, and is a strategic solution for the decrease in market share in the cultured marble sector.

• Rover - Italy

Rover is a Quarella group company, they mainly produce engineered marble products, however they do offer a limited number of colours in engineered quartz, they call it the Borea line. 

• Marmol Compac - Spain

Marmol Compac or Compac Mable, as they had to re do the naming of their whole brand, they used to call themselves Marmol Compac, although with the engineered quartz plant project, it made it difficult to market both products using the same brand. So they have spent the last few years defining their brand strategy and exchanging/renewing all marketing material they had.
Anyway, Marmol Compac has bought land near Baza, southern part of Spain to install a new Breton Block plant. Nevertheless the current crisis on engineered marble has slowed or literaly stopped that project.
Marmol Compac has survived thanks to the engineered quartz plant, if it was not for that I believe that they would no longer exist, or maintain a major producer status. They have shifted most of their excess personnel from Spain (engineered marble plant) to Portugal (engineered quartz plant). They've dedicated most of their resources in the last few years promoting and developing engineered quartz products, leaving the engineered marble in stand-by waiting for better days to return. In a lunch meeting a few weeks ago, a friend told me that they have recongnized that the engineered marble has been left behind, and 2011 they'll be dedicating more resources to the engineered marble products. So I guess we may have some new engineered marble products in 2011.

• Santa Margherita -  Italy

Santa Margherita, is one of the most technically evolved engineered stone plants in the World, it's Breton major partner. Besides being present in both engineered marble and engineered quartz markets, they seem to have survived with less sacrifice the engineered marble crisis. I guess due to the fact that they are smaller than the direct competition, and due to their well established marketing network.

• Agglonord - Italy

Agglonord mainly produces engineered marble blocks, they outsource all the other parts of the business. They use the old Breton technology, and have some quality problems due to that. The founder of Agglonord was Mr. Quarella, the same founder of Quarella. A few years ago he sold Quarella and established himself again in the sector, although besides being one of the brightest minds in the industry, Agglonord still lack some quality standards, mostly due to the fact that the old Breton technology is less effective when producing fine grain products. Personally I admire Mr. Quarella, unfortunately I never met him, but had a chance to meet his daughter, to whom I expressed this feeling. It's important to have recognition for great accomplishments and I think that their are a few people who really did something for this Industry in the past. We should not forget that engineered stone today has a stronger brand than it did 30 years ago, marketing these products back then was a very difficult thing, they had to deal with a mentality that had established natural products as a natural stone solution.

• RMC- Portugal

I was sad to know that RMC is going through a tough stage. They are the smallest in production, although they've created a few products which have marked positively their effort. I've received information that they are going through a deep crisis in sales. I hope they can re-create their whole production process, the European Industry needs as many producers as possible.

Why is cultured stone loosing market share?

• Chinese competition

In Asia in the last 10 years many engineered marble plants have been set up, few with Breton technology and many with Chinese technology. The Chinese market is big, but we continue to see many Chinese engineered marble and engineered quartz arriving to the European market. The quality may not be as good, but in general they are capable of selling similar products in Europe at a lower price. So European companies are reaching out to creativity to block Chinese competition in the European market, although I doubt they'll succeed, the Chinese have proven in several other markets that they can overcome barriers.

• New products with competitive price

While engineered stone in general are increasing in price, due to raw material costs which have been sky rocket in the last 6/7 months, other products like porcelain tiles are arriving to the European market at very low prices. The market today has many options, and most of them tend to be competitive in pricing. 

• Similar textures with more resistance

More substitute products are being used, the washroom vanity top industry is being invaded by whole ceramic piece units, vanity and wash basin in one piece. The tile industry, has been overcome by ceramic, porcelain, natural granite, and other products. Even engineered quartz is sometimes looked at as an alternative to engineered marble, as it is similar in texture, but much more resitant.

• Colour trend

The colour trend which has occured constantly has also done some damage to the engineered marble, dark colours, minimal designs, etc, etc... have come and gone in the last few years. We all know that, engineered marble has great difficulty in producing acceptable products in dark colours. The difficulty to manufacture them is equal to its application problems, flooring is out of the question, unless you have a maintenance crew constantly working. So basically, the light colour has been the main stream of textures.
Most companies have tried make a pure white colour, which you can easily find in Chinese producers, but have little traffic resistance. The solution for this type of products would be hardening the surface and making more resistant material, I guess maybe Quarella is on the right track, the rest should just follow and innovate on the way.