Becca Cranfield is a director of Athena Stonecare, a leading stone restoration company serving the Home Counties and the South of England. With specialist expertise across marble, limestone, travertine, granite and other natural stones, Becca and the team are committed to ensuring stone surfaces endure beautifully. A former Women in Natural Stone Chair, we caught up with Becca to find out what makes her tick.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I’m a morning person, which many people will know from the 5am emails that land in their inbox! I’m the most creative first thing and so I’ll usually focus on some project work. This could be writing blogs or social media posts, creating a new system for the team to use on-site, or conducting business analysis. I tend to head out to the gym for a break around 9 am. I’ll then have a few hours focused on being reactive - answering client emails and calls, posting on our social media story and checking in with the team to see how their job is progressing. The rest of my day is either spent networking or in meeting with other businesses that we collaborate and partner with. Being a small business means that I look after everything that doesn’t involve doing the actual work. I add content to the website, review our RAMS, build and maintain relationships with our referral partners and create all of the content for social media. 

How integral are materials/surfaces to your day-to-day? 

All of our work is centered on natural stone. We restore and maintain any stone surface that is found inside a building. Around 70% of our work is floors and this is usually limestone, marble or travertine, although we do also work with sandstone, slate and granite. The rest of our services focus on worktops and bathrooms and typically this will be marble. 

What are the biggest lessons you have taken forward from your original training? / How has your education informed your career?

Before I joined Dave at Athena Stonecare, I was working in the charity sector. My career has been varied but always focused on income generation/ strategic growth. My first role was at a small national charity where I worked my way up from being a Community Fundraising Assistant to managing HNW donors. This is where I also learned my plate spinning skills. In a small team, I could be hosting an evening at Bonhams one day and then creating new database the next. I learned basic wordpress, social media content writing and importantly relationship building skills too. I took this forwards into my role at a larger national charity as a Business Development specialist creating partnerships with brands that could strategically align with the cause. My latter roles were back in small charities as Head of Fundraising, driving the strategic direction of the team. These combined experiences put me in a good position to grow Athena Stonecare from a business point of view. The biggest gap in my knowledge when I came into the industry was the crucial need to know about stone! That is why when I first started, my role was split between laying the foundations for growth behind the scenes and working on the tools. My first 6 months saw me working 50% of my time on site with Dave. It gave me a real insight not only into how we do the work but also our client base too.

Which project/s are you most proud of being involved with and why?

Although most of our work is with private clients, we’ve also been involved in a number of Church projects. These are always a little more special as they mean something to an entire community. Usually the brief is around restoring an older part of the marble or limestone floor to match in with some new tiles that have had to be added as part of a renovation project. One that always stays in mind is Pershore Abbey. Dave feel so much in love with the place and the warm welcome that we actually spent Christmas there the year that the work finished and even had his new wedding ring (long story!) blessed by the vicar on Christmas Eve. 

What do you feel are the main challenges facing the stone and surfaces industry today?

In our part of the industry, it is a lack of knowledge. The very nature of our work is that we come across a lot of people who have installed stone in their home and have not looked after it properly. Many clients will have never been given any information on how to clean or maintain the stone when they buy it. This can then lead to the misconception that stone is difficult to live with/ should be avoided. However, it is actually just as easy to look after as any other surface as long as you know how. This is why we created our Athena Aftercare guide that gives homeowners a clear overview of how to care for all stone surfaces in their home. This is now distributed through stone suppliers for us as the point of purchase. We love working closely with stone suppliers who share this ethos of preventive maintenance. It can benefit the entire industry if we make sure that anyone using stone can do so with the right knowledge and fall in love with the material.  

In your opinion, what are the positives of using stone in the built environment? 

It is durable and timeless. As simple as that. If you walk the streets of Rome, you’ll see travertine and marble everywhere. It doesn’t need to be perfect to be beautiful, in fact, the more wear a surface has it creates a patina that tells the story of that stone in your home. We see clients who renovate and decorate their homes countless times and the stone remains. It will never go out of fashion and there are so many different ways to make it bespoke and personal to a project too. The fact that there is no two pieces of natural stone that are exactly the same makes it pretty special. 

How does sustainability shape your thinking and decision-making, and how do materials fit into this?

Our business feeds into the sustainability conversation as we are restoring only existing stone surfaces. At least half of our work is for clients who are renovating and want to keep their existing stone rather than replacing it. Being able to grind and refinish a stone floor to look new again is not only cost-effective but reduces waste and gives the existing material a new lease of life. We take great pride in being able to ensure that the stone in a client’s home will last forever.