Monuments & Headstone Manufacturers – What Must You Look For?

Do you own a funeral home, a death-care service company or a monuments or memorials showroom? Are you trying to find a quality monuments and headstone manufacturer who can become your long-term suppliers?

This guide will educate you about how you can go about choosing a quality monument manufacturer.

How to Choose a Quality Monument/Headstone Manufacturer?

1. Must own a Monument Production Factory and Quarries

The first and foremost selection criteria when it comes to choosing a quality monument manufacturer is to ensure that they own both a monument factory and granite quarries. There are some monument manufacturers who do not own a production facility but will still try to take on orders by outsourcing such orders to actual manufacturers of monuments.

 

Kattima Granite owns a 35,000 Sq.Ft monument production facility in the port city of Chennai, India. The factory is equipped with state-of-the-art monument production facilities that include specialized fabrication and finishing machines and stations and equipment, EOT cranes, gantry cranes and dedicated packing and loading zones. The factory also employs hundreds of granite craftsmen, sculptors and artisans specialized in monument making.

Besides owning a monument production factory, Kattima Granite also owns several quarries across India. Quarry ownership ensures consistent and cost-competitive access to premium granite stone varieties used in monument production.

2. Must Have a Proven Track Record of Making Quality Monuments

Monuments are products that cater to a very sentimental audience. People spend a good deal of money on a monument that they believe will be a symbolic representation of a loved one that has passed on. Therefore, it is imperative that you work with a monument manufacturer who has perfected the art of monument making, preferably over several years.

Kattima Granite for example has been in the monument business for over 40 years. Over this period of time, the company has supplied tens of thousands of monuments that now embrace the legacy of thousands of lives once lived, across hundreds of cemeteries in USA, Canada, Japan and more.

2. Must make all types of monuments, including bespoke monuments

Monuments are a very personalized product. No two monument requests are the same. While most customers begin to design their monument with a template, the end-design they have in mind is almost always a unique product. Your monument manufacturer must therefore be able to cater to this requirement of making any monument that is requested.

Monuments comes in many shapes and sizes. You can learn more about the types of headstones.

When it comes to ordering bespoke monuments, you must make sure that your monument manufacturer has the ability to take a CAD drawing and convert it into a finished monument. At Kattima Granite, we routinely take orders where our customers send us PDFs and other buyer reference documents with drawings of monuments that they need, which we then convert into monuments.

At Kattima Granite, we also make Jewish monuments, Asian Monuments, All-Faith monuments and more.

3. Must offer a variety of granite stone and colors

A good monument manufacturer will offer a wide variety of stone choices for the monuments that they make. They must also be able to offer the same stone in several grades as well, to allow you to source monuments that cater to all budgets. Some of the most popular monument colors are India Black, Coral Blue, Paradiso, Tropical Green, Indian Mahogany, Sera Grey, Catseye Brown, India Pink, SADG, Bahama Blue, Blue Pearl and Emerald Pearl. Kattima Granite carries all of the above mentioned stones and many more.

4. Must offer competitive prices

As a retailer or funeral home owner, you probably want to do your best to be able to price your monuments affordably. However, it can be difficult to accomplish if the cost of acquiring your monuments is high to begin with. This is why it will be best if you work with a reputed monument manufacturer based out of India, one that is already serving several American customers. By ordering direct from manufacturers, you cut out several middle layers where the cost of monuments are marked up, both eroding your margins as well as driving the prices up for your end customers.

At Kattima Granite, we offer very competitive prices with absolutely no compromises on the quality of monuments we make. Please send us a quote request to find out for yourself.

5. Must Make Timely Deliveries

Most monuments are ordered several months in advance. But, it is very common for manufacturers to still delay orders, despite the long lead times. The last thing you want to do is to leave your customers frustrated with a delayed delivery, especially when they have gone to great lengths to plan a service to commemorate their loved one with the erection of a monument.

At Kattima Granite, we are very upfront about the delivery deadlines we can feasibly meet. Our production deadlines are usually between 30-60 days, after which the monuments are shipped to the USA or wherever in the world you order from. Shipping then takes an additional 40 to 60 days, meaning your lead times are essentially about 2 months to 3 months from the date of ordering. These timelines we offer are very expedited, especially when you consider the quality of monuments we produce and also factor in the savings on cost you can enjoy by ordering from us.

6. Must Offer dependable and customized packing options

Your monument manufacturer must use comprehensive packing practices to safely deliver your monuments. It would be a shame if your monuments break or are damaged during transit. At Kattima Granite, we offer several packing styles that have worked dependably for four decades. Our breakage rate is less than 0.5% and we readily replace items broken during shipping, in the rare instances that they happen.

Kattima Granite also offers customized packing options that cater to customers needs. For example, some of our customers request an individual crate for each of the monuments that they order. This then allows them to ship our package directly to the customer, without unpacking and repacking. We also use custom packing protocols as instructed by the client, if they have special instructions. We also work with our customer-configured container layout specifications.

7. Must offer risk-free payment terms

Beware of monument manufacturers who expect you to pay in full, upfront. While you must not pay for your monument order upfront, you also cannot expect the monument manufacturer to create your monuments without any payment. The payment risk therefore has to be balanced. At Kattima Granite, we require a 40% deposit on order confirmation. The rest is only due when the bill of lading is drawn and provided to you as shipping proof. This is an arrangement that has helped us harmoniously work with our customers for 40+ years.

Kattima Granite Monuments

Kattima Granite is a 40+ Year Old company that specializes in the manufacture of granite monuments and memorials. In 2022, we shipped out over 50,000 cubic feet of monuments to monument wholesalers and retailers across America and Canada. Please learn more about us at https://www.kattima.com/monuments/

Granite and Quartz have been part of a long running debate of which one is better than the other. Even though the answer is too obvious, it is imperative to support this answer with a thorough comparison of the properties of Granite and Quartz.

Granite is an igneous rock formed by quartz, feldspar & mica. It’s hard enough to resist abrasions and strong enough to bear significant weight. It can also resist weathering and can accept a brilliant polish. They are directly mined from the quarries and are cut into slabs of different measurements based on the requirements of customers.

Quartz is termed as an engineered stone or man-made stone. It falls under the category of natural stone, as it’s manufactured by mixing earthed natural quartz and polymer resins.

Now that we know the basic points that distinguish granite from quartz, let’s move on to the facts that prove granite is in every way a better option than quartz.

1. Durability

So, we have a question here! If you’re to build your dream home, what would you prefer for your kitchen top, benchtop, island counter and wall cladding, an artistic and durable stone or something that’s just ravishing in terms of looks? Undoubtedly, it’s going to be a durable stone. Granite, being a naturally formed material, has good properties and good rating on Mohs hardness index. The hardness of granite makes it easy to give a long-lasting glossy finish to its surface. Granite can withstand high temperatures and other adverse conditions. You’ll be surprised to know that quartz lacks these amazing properties to some extent. A hot pan can literally burn the surface of a quartz countertop. The reason behind the low heat resistance of quartz is epoxy resin, which is a bad conductor of heat. Granites are also widely used for invisible cooktops due to its high resistance to heat.

2. Ease of maintenance

While choosing a material for your residential or commercial project, it’s always important to consider the maintenance which will consume both your time and money. Porosity is considered as an important property of granites. Some granite materials need to be protected from stains that penetrate due to its porous nature. A good quality sealant can be used to avoid this stain penetration. If you think of it, you’ll understand that spending some time sealing the granite is much better than having a quartz countertop that easily melts upon exposure to high temperatures. You’ll also have to spend a fortune to fix the damaged area.

3. Aesthetics

You can’t deny the fact that aesthetics is one among the many elements you want to see in your house or commercial buildings. A natural stone like granite can give an aesthetically pleasing look to your wall claddings and benchtops. Granite comes in a huge range of colours and patterns. In some countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, China and the Middle east, granite is considered as a symbol of social status. They use the stone in the interior and exterior decor of their residence. Granites come in different colour ranges like, blue granite, red granite, black granite, pink granite and grey granite. Talking about the sizes in which granites are available, the rough blocks directly mined from the quarry are cut into gang saw size or cutter size based on the customer’s preference. Granites are available in different surface finishes in the market like, honed finish, leather finish and polished finish. Quartz are cheaper stones and can’t be sculptured to the required model or shape and its surface can’t be polished to high gloss or any other texture as of granite. The range of colours in which quartz is available is very poor and it’s also not as aesthetically pleasing as granite.

4. Eco-friendly

At first, it’d appear as if quartz causes less environmental degradation. But when you actually think of the processes involved in the production of both the stones, you’ll realise that quartz is more dangerous to the environment than granite. As both the stones are natural stones, both of them are mined from quarries. But quartz poses the real threat as it undergoes additional processings to mix the polymer resin which is a chemically hazardous material to use on countertops.

5. Negligible fading issues

Direct exposure to sunlight can easily fade a quartz surface and can change the properties of the resin which tends to lose the artificial shine over a particular period. This is why granite is widely used in exterior works like landscaping, monuments, staircases, and wall cladding.

At Katti-ma, we offer a wide range of granites in different colours, and some of them are exclusively available at Katti-ma. We are proud owners and distributors of the exotic Costa Dakota, Cladon Blue, Steel Blue, Red Pearl, Elephant Grey granites. We also have – Indian black, Black Pearl, Hassan Green, River White, Black Fantasy, Viscont White, Black Galaxy, Sera Grey, Steel Grey, Bahama Blue, Indian Mahogany, Paradiso, Blue Pearl, Catseye Brown, Kovai Gold, South African Dark Grey, Regal Black, SG Black, Samantha Blue. The range is constantly expanding with the addition of more colours.