How Triton Stone grew from a location on River Road to become a $200 million powerhouse
From that entry into the stone import business nearly two decades ago, Jensen and her sister Rachel Jones have built Triton from a New Orleans newcomer to one of the top 20 distributors of its kind in the United States competing in a $2.2 billion-and-growing sector.
Today, the company, which the family has since purchased from its original owners — is the New Orleans area’s biggest wholesaler of quartz, marble, granite and other materials used for kitchen counters, bathroom features and other high-end design elements. Its Harahan gallery is filled with millions of dollars’ worth of stone sourced from all around the world, including pristine Carrara marble from Italy and “creamy” Taj Mahal quartzite from Brazil.
From 31 locations in the Midwest, the Gulf South and the Mid-Atlantic, the company generates more than $200 million in annual revenue. Its fleet of trucks distributes material that comes into the country through ports in New Orleans; Norfolk, Virginia; and Houston. Nearly 350 employees sell about 10,000 stone slabs and 10 times that amount of sinks each month, along with high-end tiles and tools for the stone fabricators that cut and install countertops.
The Jensens attribute Triton’s growth in large part to their family’s decades of experience in the transportation industry, where the goal is to move things as quickly and cheaply as possible. In addition to TCI Trucking, the company Jack Jensen founded, the family now runs a half-dozen related businesses, including a liquid storage and transportation company, a plastics packaging subsidiary and a birdseed sterilization facility.
“The job is always evolving and changing,” Katie Jensen said. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about logistics. Our job is to get the material to our customers at the lowest possible price.”
In a sense, Triton’s New Orleans roots date back to the early 1980s, when Jack Jensen quit working for a local railway company and went into business for himself, launching TCI to help clients move containers filled with everything from coffee to lumber and petrochemical products from the port to Gulf Coast warehouses.
