Reading your offering
Customize your numbers to see whether your material strategy is helping margin — or quietly bleeding it.
The dashboard will identify dead colors, trapped cash, yield opportunities, and the true cost of your remnant pile.
Color portfolio · what you offer vs. what actually sells
Total offered
—
in the showroom
Active sellers
—
moved in 12 mo
Rare / slow
—
< 2 sales / yr
Dead colors
—
no sales 12 mo
Sales concentration · the 80 / 20 reality
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Material risk · why your yield ceiling depends on what you’re cutting
Average yield isn’t a flat metric — it’s a function of what you cut. A quartz-heavy shop hitting 80% looks the same on paper as a marble-heavy shop hitting 65%; in reality, the second shop may be the one doing well.
Your material mix
— Quartz
— Granite
— Quartzite
— Marble
— Onyx / exotic
Mix-weighted yield ceiling
Your realistic yield ceiling for this mix is —.
—
Material-by-material yield reality
Quartz Engineered
78–85%
Most consistent. No veining direction, no surprise voids. Easy win for batching.
Granite Natural
72–80%
Durable. Occasional pits or fissures, color variation across slabs. Veining usually forgiving.
Quartzite Natural
68–76%
Harder than marble but more natural variation. Vein direction matters; pricier slabs amplify mistakes.
Marble Fragile
60–72%
Soft. Edge chipping common. Book-matching cuts yield further. Storage and handling matter more.
Onyx & exotics Very fragile
50–65%
High breakage risk. Often backlit, translucent — flaws show that don’t show in granite.
The same material name hides 10-point yield differences
When you buy, ask suppliers about…
- Quarry source. “Calacatta” from Carrara isn’t Calacatta from anywhere else. Same goes for Taj Mahal quartzite, Patagonia granite, and every named pattern.
- Mining method. Diamond-wire-cut slabs have less micro-fracturing than blasted ones. Cutting damage doesn’t show in the photo — it shows on your saw.
- Transport handling. Slabs shipped on edge with proper A-frames break less than slabs stacked horizontally. Damage in transit becomes your yield problem.
- Storage history. Was it stored outdoors? In what climate? Marble and onyx absorb damage from sun and freeze-thaw cycles that you don’t see until you cut.
Outdoor storage adds risk
With — of your mix in fragile materials, outdoor storage compounds the yield hit.
- Color fade on onyx and red/black marbles — UV degradation, often visible within months
- Surface drying and micro-cracking on marble and travertine — thermal cycling
- Resin discoloration on engineered quartz — UV affects the binder
- Sealer breakdown on all materials, faster than indoor-stored stock
Inventory aging · where the cash is trapped
0–30 days
—
—
31–90 days
—
—
90–180 days
—
—
180+ days
—
—
Total slab inventory
—
100%
—
The liquidation playbook · when slabs won’t move on their own
Aged inventory isn’t stored value — it’s negative working capital with a clock on it. The longer you hold, the worse the math gets.
0–90 days
Full price
Standard sales motion
91–180
10–20% off
Internal sprint · spiff sales team
181–365
30–50% off
Outbound to channels (below)
365+ days
60% or scrap
Floor space > slab value
Where it goes next · channels in order of return
Adjacent-market fabricators
10–25% off
Call shops 100+ miles away — colors that bombed in your market are someone else’s bestseller. Highest-margin channel; easiest call.
Supplier buyback / swap
30–40% off
Most suppliers will take it back at a discount or swap for a faster-moving SKU. Always ask first, especially under 6 months — they have markets you don’t.
Prefab / builder partnerships
30–50% off
Sell as vanity tops, outdoor kitchens, bar tops, fireplace surrounds. Local prefab shops and home builders need fill stock and don’t chase color trends.
Slab marketplaces & FB groups
40–60% off
“Stone Slab Exchange” FB groups, StoneApp listings, regional surplus auctions. Wider audience, more aggressive discounts.
Repurpose to your own prefab
Standard margin
Cut aged slabs to 24/30/36 vanity tops or fireplace surrounds and sell as in-stock prefab. Best ROI if you have or can build the channel.
Donate or scrap
Write-off / $0
Habitat for Humanity for the tax write-off, or stone recycler for crushed aggregate. Beats holding it; clears the rack the same day.
When it came from a canceled job
Three moves before you eat the loss
- Pursue the restocking / cancellation fee from the deposit. Your sales contract should allow it — even a 10–15% holdback usually covers the carry hit.
- Offer the deposit as credit toward a different color the client actually wants. They stay, the relationship holds, and the original slab becomes general inventory you can re-deploy at full price.
- Try a supplier buyback before listing publicly. If the slab is under 6 months and untouched, most suppliers will swap or repurchase at 30–50% — better terms than any outside channel.
Yield uplift · what every percentage point is worth
Batch same-color jobs
Combine 3+ jobs in the same color into one cutting sequence.
—
Annual savings if you hit a +3 pt yield improvement on batched runs.
Switch to jumbo slabs
Trade standard slabs for jumbos on your top 12 movers.
—
Annual savings on a typical +5 pt yield lift from larger slab footprint.
Standardize top 25 colors
Buy matching dye lots and bundle the volume movers.
—
Annual savings from +2 pt yield plus reduced partial-slab leftovers.
The remnant reality check
Remnants are not inventory assets. They’re a tax on real estate, labor, and forklift time — and the resale value rarely covers the carry cost.
Remnants on hand
—
pieces in storage
Reuse rate
—
reused in 12 mo
Storage cost / yr
—
real estate burden
Handling cost / yr
—
labor + forklift
—
The material decision · pick one move this quarter
Three high-leverage moves — one is the right starting point for your shop.
Where the leverage is this quarter
Ranked by impact to margin and cash flow.
- Customize your numbers above to generate recommendations.
Coming in Phase 2
Deeper material intelligence, building on what you ran here.
Supplier scoringRank suppliers on dye-lot consistency, damage rate, and yield impact — not just price.
Purchasing simulatorTest "what if we reduce suppliers from 14 to 6" and see projected margin.
Batch optimizerIdentify which jobs to combine for the biggest weekly yield lift.
Profitability mappingTrue per-color margin after yield, remnant, and handling drag.
Complexity scoreOne number for how heavy your operational drag is vs. benchmark shops.
Scenario simulator"Reduce colors 30% — what happens to margin, turnover, and storage?"
Next Uplevel opportunity · Subscription
This is a portfolio snapshot. Compass tracks the drift.
Today's color portfolio, yield, and remnant value are one frame. Compass turns them into a longitudinal view — tracks which colors quietly steal margin over months, alerts when remnant inventory crosses a threshold, and pipes the yield and SKU data straight into your break-even and capacity math next door.