May 2006 Industry Leader:

Dennis Stoscher: Teaching the Concrete Industry the Merits of Diamonds

For Dennis Stoscher, co-owner of Intertool and Leitch & Company located in San Leandro, Calif., growing up on a farm outside Erie, Penn., has played a huge part in his day-to-day life. "I have a farming mentality," he explains. "A work hard, fix it mentality. I've learned to be inventive and creative in order to solve problems." Stoscher also has a technical background; his family moved to the Bay Area where he completed high school and he received his bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the University of Redlands, and attended both San Jose State University and the University of Santa Clara for his master of science in electrical engineering. "I really wanted to be an architect, but Redlands didn't offer that," Stoscher recalls. After spending the next 18 years working in the Silicon Valley with electrical circuits, Stoscher and his wife, Elna, bought Leitch & Co., which was at that time a monument equipment and supply company for the West Coast. After five years, Stoscher decided to work in "stone for the living" and made the transition.

As for his change from high tech to granite, it's not the leap it seems. "It turns out silicon is a pure form of granite," he explains. "So the transition was not very difficult technologically."

Stoscher began to develop tools for the marble and granite industry, such as a bullnosing machine for tile and slabs—a small automatic saw that cuts vertically and parallel through granite.

To alleviate scratching surfaces and to deal with uneven surfaces, Stoscher created the first of three generations of polishers, which the concrete market soon discovered.

"When Fu-Tung Cheng was writing his book, Concrete Countertops, he used a lot of our equipment," notes Stoscher, adding that this opened up the concrete market for Leitch & Co., and Intertool is now shipping machines to Europe.

The first generation polisher was a center-driven planetary polisher called the DS 300; the second version, made out of rubber tires, was planetary with rubber wheels inside a plastic housing, which was quieter but had less torque; the third and current, DS 301, is an externally driven planetary system.

"It's like riding a bicycle in first gear; you have lots of torque, but low speed," explains Stoscher. "The elevated torque allows you to run at a low speed without stopping, which is ideal for polishing."

After a search for the best right angle polisher with power, the DS 301 was ready.

"It's ideal for grinding, honing and polishing concrete," he continues. "It also fits a series of other industries, including woodworking, solid surfaces, boating, metals and plastics."

Stoscher also created three floor machines (one 12-inch and two 24-inch) and just debuted his new 7-inch machine at the 2006 World of Concrete. Basically a shrunken version of the DS 301, it runs on three 3-inch planetary heads versus the three 5-inch heads of the standard DS 301.

"You can even run your own polisher on it," adds Stoscher, pointing out that for those who can't afford the DS 301, this is a viable alternative. "It can be used for tight places like stairs...it finds its way into lots of tight areas."

One of what Stoscher calls his "sleeper" products is the DS 302, a floor machine version of a 12-inch hand machine with wheels that turn 90 degrees to parallel walls, which eliminates having to grind and polish toe kicks by hand.

A self-proclaimed "hands-on, hardware type guy," Stoscher aims to help streamline processes. "I watch people do things, then come back a year later and they're still doing it the same way. Two years later the same thing."

"A few years ago, I went to a California Monument meeting, and I was polishing headstones with diamonds, and I got a better finish. I told them they'd be using diamonds in three years; it only took two."

Stoscher is always listening to customer feedback and says when he creates a new piece of equipment, it all boils down to execution. "I convert a wish list into a problem-solving solution," he says.

"Concrete is the area of our business that's the fastest growing, and concrete polishing is going to be phenomenal in the next five years," Stoscher observes. "It's an educational process to get concrete guys using the best price-performance diamonds. You have to overcome price to get true value."

But for a farm boy with a technical background, Stoscher is definitely up for the challenge.

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