As a leadership reorganization continues to take effect, Perrysburg’s Cutting Edge Countertops is showing that change is something the company is good at adapting to as it continues its growth.
“The three owners here are not going anywhere,” said Brian Burns amid a process in which he, his brother Brad Burns and former associate-turned-partner Jeff Erickson, who founded Cutting Edge together in 2006, are stepping back from the company’s day-to-day operations in favor of enhancing other areas of the company.
“We are in this for the long haul,” Brian Burns said. “We grew the business from zero to what it is today. We just felt like having a board of directors would shape the business quicker than having three people lead the company.”
In this way, Doug Heerdegen has been hired as the company’s new president, while the others will get more involved in industry trade groups, with Mr. Erickson leaning into his involvement in the Natural Stone Institute, and Brian staying involved in the Rockhead group, for example.
The founders will then fill three spots on a new five-person board of directors, including a long-time business mentor and a fifth person they are still looking to identify.
For the Burns brothers, the leadership transition is just the turning of a page in the long journey to get to where they are today.
“My brother and I ran a family-owned business in Tiffin doing kitchen and bath remodeling for the most part,” Brian Burns said. “In the middle of us bouncing back and forth from different countertop fabricators we bumped into Jeff, whose dad owned Erickson Glass and Stone. He became a vendor of ours. We were a customer of his.”
During this time, the Burns brothers dreamed of getting into countertop manufacturing to serve kitchen and bath dealers because of something they noticed after years in the industry.
“The industry was missing the service aspect,” Brian Burns said, noting prevalent practices of the time, which included “taillight warranties” or contractors often not keeping promises or being punctual. “That was the reputation of the construction industry. That is just how it was, and we thought we could bring something different.”
Getting started
The brothers and Mr. Erickson all had experience working in small family businesses in their careers. They said they realized through this experience that community image was important and that customers are more than one-and-done items but are community members that they would see after work.
That was the attitude and culture change that led to the founding of Cutting Edge, now at 1300 Flagship Dr. in Perrysburg.
“The culture we want and the reputation we want is that we are going to do what we say we are going to do," Brian Burns said. "It used to be anyone could sell anything construction related and get a sale, but that changed after 2008 and the housing crash, but our foundation was already high customer service, high quality.”
In the time since then, Cutting Edge has grown massively, now encompassing offices in the Indianapolis, Ind. area, the Detroit area, and the Columbus area, in addition to its main offices in Perrysburg, where it keeps a showroom and where its main fabrication arm is.
Having started with only two employees, the company now has more than 200 across all of its locations.
The outer locations act as a kind of “hub and spoke” model for the company in that everything is manufactured at the “hub” in Perrysburg and then shipped out as finished goods to the individual service centers in other states, which then have staff install the countertops in their cities.
“That allows us to stay local in all of the markets that we supply,” said Brad Burns. “We have local sales people talking to customers and getting out in the community. It is the same thing for people that are out doing the field measures and the whole installation side.”
He said that over the years, the company has grown much deeper into its industry than it initially was, and he really likes that.
“We have a broad customer base with retail. We service kitchen and bath dealers and residential contractors,” he said, noting the company also does a lot of work with 150 home centers between Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio such as Home Depot, Lowe’s, Floor & Decor, and Cabinets to Go.
Still, even when sales are made in a home center like that, Cutting Edge technicians perform other parts of the installation and follow up with the customers, Brad Burns said.
Though growth has been large, the Burns’ connect their success back to the company's values, which they said they hope to preserve even as they transition into a new era.
“Our morals, our ethics and our route to business mirror up so that it is a smooth transition in that sense,” Brian Burns said.
New president
Mr. Heerdegen, who started at the company as president in March, said that the leadership base and makeup of Cutting Edge was very attractive to him from the outset. He came to Cutting Edge from Palfinger USA, a Tiffin-based distributor of heavy machinery like cranes and forklifts.
“I was pulled towards a closely held company that was local,” Mr. Heerdegen said. “For 25 years, I worked for two global companies, so I was looking for more of a local feel.”
Though the companies he has worked for have been of a slightly different scope, Mr. Heerdegen said the customer-focused ideas he has learned in his past business experience prepared him for success at Cutting Edge.
“I have seen success and been part of success in a customer-first mentality and that jumped off the page when I visited here,” he said. “I realized pretty quickly it wasn’t a countertop company. It was a customer service company that sells and installs countertops.”
Mr. Erickson said that these insights and the track record of success at growing companies make Doug the right person to take over as president.
“How do you do that gracefully?” Mr. Erickson said of company growth. “It is really important that there is one voice. The three owners share the same values, but we go about things very differently. Now you have three voices that are saying the same thing but saying it differently, which becomes confusing.”
Mr. Erickson said this is a problem because scaling a company takes a more unified voice, which hiring a president like Doug could provide.
“There will always be challenges,” Mr. Heerdegen said. “I am just starting to learn the industry. Coming from material handling, it is in the same industry but at a different end of the spectrum. There are just a lot of nuances to the trade of countertops.”
Business partnership
Callie Hornbacher knows this trade very well. She owns Wesson Builders, a design-build residential remodeling company based in the Shoreland area of Toledo. Cutting Edge has provided Wesson with countertops for the last decade plus.
“Cutting Edge has been a great partner, and it has been a really, really nice fit,” she said. “We have a design center at our office facilities, and we have countertop towers and selection towers that people can select from. We pick their countertops out with our customers, and we use their showroom for customers that want to see the full slabs of countertop.”
Ms. Hornbacher said her company maintains a close relationship with Cutting Edge all throughout a job through scheduling and installation.
“They are very good at their processes too so that is a fit for us because they are very process focused,” she said, noting that she loves the idea of having a supplier like Cutting Edge that is locally based. “We do our schedules very alike. Like I want to schedule a whole job out when we start so they are able to give us template dates and install dates right when I initially schedule and that allows us to run our jobs very smoothly.”
She connected these tenets of Cutting Edge’s business back to its being so customer-focused.
“We get good communication all the way through the line, from their showroom designers to their project coordinators to our area sales representatives and from there to our installers,” she said. “I do find that they are focused just like we are.”
First Published June 11, 2023, 1:30 p.m.
