Top 5 Engineered Stone Brands on online search engines

I've written a few times about marketing and engineered stone, although the industry itself is far from being in the spotlight of this digital era, some brands are already in the lead. A Internet study has defined the top 5 brands in the engineered stone industry with higher online exposure. I personally believe that the online exposure of some engineered stone brands, is due to the great marketing skills they apply off-line. So, when someone looks up in a search engine an engineered stone by its brand name, this means that they know exactly what they are looking for, it's also a result of the excellent efforts made by the branding of that product.

So which are the top 5 engineered stone brands most searched on the Internet?

Viewing this list, the top position may not be a surprise for most of us, but we will end up with useful conclusions regarding which brands of engineered stone are commonly  searched for on line.

1st Place : Silestone

Silestone is the engineered stone brand with more online exposure, every month we have more than 250.000 searches, this means that the end consumer marketing is working well, the brand is being recognized not only by the market operators but by the end clients themselves.

No doubt that Silestone has in the past been a pioneer, their marketing skills are the best in the industry, leaving their direct competitors far behind.

2nd Place: CaesarStone

In 2nd we have CaesarStone, especially due to their great exposure in the US, they appear to have very good results, currently more than 110.000 searches per month are done with the word CaesarStone (either alone or in a phrase). They've got a good image with the public, and really have a unique marketing skill, centered specifically on the product, while Silestone strategy tends to focus on people, events and special features.

3rd Place: Zodiaq

A Dupont brand, reveals a good marketing and branding strategy, it ranked 3rd in search engine, although the number of average searches for this engineered stone brand is just below 30.000. Dupont also owns Corian brand for solid surfaces, the Zodiaq brand is far from the on-line relevance of the Corian brand, Zodiaq has a long way to go to catch up with its sister brand.

4th Place: Stone Italiana

Incredible, Stone Italiana is the first Italian producer of this list, for International leaders as they assume to be (Italian manufacturers), looks like marketing and branding has been left behind. I think that this may be important to reflect on, especially marketing managers of the engineered stone industry. Stone Italiana has just over 20.000 searches per month.

We may question why Stone Italiana is well quoted, I do admire Stone Italiana, they have really good quality and very innovative products, I figure they may even be leaders in innovation, so the brand has become relevant to the market.

5th Place: Compac Marble & Quartz

With just a bit more than 15.000 searches, we have Compac Marble & Quartz (Marmol Compac), they've been doing a relevant job in marketing, however I think that the name change a few years back, and other issues regarding their branding has made it difficult for people to easily recognize their brand name. I guess that this 5th position is probably not according to their budget spent on marketing, but sincerely I think their branding is not easy to understand by the general public and most of the market agents. Some call them Compac, others still refer to them as Marmol Compac.

Just an overview of the data, Silestone brand is top in this league, followed well behind by CaesarStone. The other brands have a really low exposure, but I believe that the digital era for engineered stone has not began for most manufacturers.

This study excludes solid surface material like Corian, Avonite, Staron and others, although Corian for example has a great search engine exposure and brings in more than 500.000 searches a month, which is an impressive figure.

The Italian engineered stone industry is far behind in this web 2.0 era, the brands are not as recognized as others, they may have much to learn from these 5 good examples.

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.