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Growth spurt for Shondel's Stone Creations after one-year in businessDec 29, 2008 (Daily Iowegian - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Tucked away in a garage on North 18th Street is the home of a 12-month old Centerville business going through a growth spurt. Owners Kris and Hope Shondel before the end of the year will move part of the operations for Shondel's Stone Creations to 1001 East Maple. Business for the Shondels has been so good they plan to add on to the Maple Street property next year and possibly hire additional employees. The company that makes outdoor concrete yard and garden bird baths, figurines, statues, stepping stones, memory stones and benches the Shondels took over from Uncle LaVern "Slick" Shondel is off and running. However, the transition from working full-time jobs to independent business owners wasn't without some doubts. "Basically I kind of looked at Hope and said, 'We better find out if there's actually a market for this stuff,'" Kris said. "Because we had no customers, anything at the time." So Hope mapped out several circular routes in Iowa. "Basically I said, 'This is where I want to go,'" Hope said. "So I got a map out and I made a route of where I wanted...a loop. And a yellow pages search on the Internet for florists in this town and this town and this town and around the loop I went." Today the number of routes has grown as has the number of customers on those routes. "The first route had 10-12 customers on it," Kris aid. "And that route now has 20, 22 on it. And we're constantly picking up a new customer here, a new customer there." When Hope and Kris took over, they had approximately 32 different, unique items. Today that number is nearing 200. Building the business meant a lot of cold calls to floral shops and garden centers and attending craft shows. "The last show we did was in Des Moines," Kris said. "We already had 12 to 15 pieces sold before we ever left. Just because people had seen us before and wanted Christmas presents." The creation of a stone product starts with what the Shondels call a "mother mold" -- a heavy duty hard fiberglass mold they make themselves or occassionally purchase that holds everything in place. Next a latex rubber mold is fabricated fitted to the mother mold that accepts the Shondel's custom made mix of concrete and Portland cement. "It's concrete mix out of a bag. And we use some Portland mix in it. We actually create our own mix. We mix our own special blend and we put black dye in our concrete to give it the dark color," Kris said. The concrete is allowed to cure 18 to 20 hours before the mother mold is disassembled, or in some cases before the latex mold is slipped out, and the new concrete product is exposed. From there, the item is given a feathered coat of white paint to give it some depth and some items are painted with appropriate colors. Besides wholesaling products to local Centerville retailers like Hy-Vee in the spring and Flowertique on the square, the Shondels deliver across most of Iowa to flower shops and garden centers and to Earl May stores in four states: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri. "We currently have about 75 florists that we deliver to in Iowa," Hope said. "They range from Waterloo all the way over to Woodbine. We cover most of southwest Iowa and central west and north central." The garage the Shondel's work out of at 406 North 18th St. is also their retail outlet. Their products range in price from $8 for a ladybug to $170 for a bench. Shondel's Stone Creations Web site is www.shondelsstonecreations.com. The Shondels have been married seven years and have five children and two grandchildren. Hope is from Newton and Kris was born in Centerville. "We have this all to owe to him, basically," Kris said. "Uncle LaVern, they call him 'Slick.' Everybody would know him by Slick." "We're hoping to expand quite a bit actually," Kris said. To see more of the Daily Iowegian or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailyiowegian.com/. Copyright (c) 2008, Daily Iowegian, Centerville, Iowa Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |