From The Ground Up | After 45 Years in Business, Higgins Stone's Values are Rock Solid
By SAMANTHA MARSHALL | Photos by JOHN BURNS
In 1980, Mike Higgins was working in real estate when sky-high interest rates impacted the industry. So instead of simply buying or selling land, he chose to mine it instead.
He paid a landowner to let him use their land to quarry limestone, where Mike worked alone to produce a single limestone block each day. From there, he’d use his homemade stone splitter to turn the fruits of his labor into smaller, sellable units.
Mike’s first clients included a home builder in Denver and the grandson of the founder of Pepsi, who hired Higgins Stone to supply limestone for his personal residence in Cherry Hills, Colorado. Still a team of one, Mike would haul the limestone in his pickup truck to a mason in Kansas City and the mason would deliver it to his clients.
Forty-five years later, Higgins Stone quarries, cuts, finishes and sells five different “types,” or facies, of Kansas limestones. Their customers range from commercial builders to do-it-yourselfers taking on home improvement projects. Visitors at their two retail locations (one in Wamego, the other in Topeka) can browse everything from veneer to cut stone.
“He started with absolutely nothing,” said Holly Higgins, the company’s operations manager. “Since then, he has grown Higgins Stone into a tremendous small business.”
CARVED IN STONE
In 1991, Mike hired 17-year-old high school student Scott Wichman to help Higgins Stone with small jobs.
Scott knew nothing about stone at the time but despite his youth and inexperience, he found himself quarrying and selling rocks for small patios and flower gardens. Eventually, Mike started to hand more responsibilities to Scott.
“He dumped me in some situations where I thought, ‘You're going to take a 17-year-old kid and put him in charge of this?’” Scott said. “But he had all the faith in the world, and I just went.”
Scott began college but kept working for Mike. After he graduated, Mike offered Scott a full-time job, as well as a minor ownership stake in Higgins Stone. Scott is now the company’s lead production manager.
When Holly joined the team in 1998, Higgins Stone employed only seven full-time employees. Most were busy working in the plant, fabricating raw limestone into finished products.
During the housing boom of the early 2000s, stone brokerages bought limestone from Higgins Stone on behalf of architects and general contractors.
“All of a sudden, we started seeing our limestone shipped on railroad containers to Canada and boat trips to Hawaii,” Scott said. “I never would have believed the rock we quarry here in the middle of the United States would be shipped to other countries, but here we are.”
In 2008, the housing market slowed and many of the stone brokerages folded, putting pressure on Higgins Stone to find commercial jobs. Scott did this by scouring public information for projects in the works, then tracking down blueprints to get the information he needed to make a bid.
“We had to get aggressive,” Scott said. “We couldn’t wait on someone else to sell a job.”
But landing bigger bids proved to be a bigger challenge. When Kansas State University started taking bids for the construction of the Bill Snyder Family Stadium, Higgins Stone did everything in their power to make a competitive offer.
“It was difficult to earn someone’s trust so they would have faith in us to perform on time and with good quality material,” Holly said. “Before the K-State job, it felt like being a young kid trying to prove their worth.”
STONE COLD SUCCESS
Once Higgins Stone won the bid for K-State’s new football stadium, the real work began. The team had only nine months — the time from one football season to the next — to complete the ambitious project.
“We were relentless,” Scott said. “There were some long days and long weekends. We just had to keep going.”
The stadium’s construction timeline was so tight that a minor equipment breakdown could delay the entire project, since the schedule had no room for even a one-day repair. But the company succeeded in the end.
“That job allowed us to show everybody, including bigger general contractors who build all over the country, that we could pull off a job of that magnitude in that tight of a timeframe,” Scott said.
Similar jobs soon followed, with Higgins Stone setting their sights on everything from major arenas to historical projects demanding they find a perfect match for 150-year-old limestone. Some of their most recognizable projects include the INTRUST Bank Arena in Wichita, the Oread Hotel in Lawrence and the Cyrus Hotel in downtown Topeka. They’re even responsible for the Farmers Mutual headquarters in Lincoln, Nebraska.
As of 2025, Higgins Stone employs 45 people. Seven work in sales or administrative roles, while the rest can be found in the fabrication plants and quarries scattered across the company’s 2,100 acres of land.
They’re able to produce as many as 50 blocks of limestone a day — a giant leap from the single block Mike produced daily when he was just a solopreneur.
“We do a lot of little interesting projects that may not be substantial dollar wise, but are always fun,” Holly said.
Scott added the company is always looking for ways to grow without biting off more work than they can chew.
“With any type of growth, you're going to create bottlenecks,” Scott said. “If we decide we need to saw more rock and buy another saw, we then need to quarry more rock so we can feed that saw. Then we need to increase production, which means more equipment and more people. A lot of our growth came from knowing full well we had to upgrade and get with the turn of the century.”
EMBRACING IMPERFECTION
For Higgins Stone, setting expectations can be a challenge with new customers who may be unfamiliar with limestone’s natural properties. Holly says this is typical when working with natural stone.
“There’s a big design factor in these projects. Customers might look at one piece of limestone and want every stone for their big house to look like that one piece,” Holly said. “Just like people, no two pieces are exactly alike.”
Limestone is dense but also porous. If it isn’t properly sealed, it acts like a sponge and becomes less weather resistant over time. But well-sealed limestone handles temperature changes well and provides good insulation.
The company believes in being upfront with customers about limestone’s characteristic imperfections and inconsistencies. When customers understand what makes each piece unique, they have a greater appreciation for the finished stonework, Holly said.
“It’s our responsibility to make sure our customers understand reality. That’s why honesty and communication are most important,” she added. “If you can’t be honest, there’s going to be a lot of project delays, problems and missed expectations.”
Customers are often surprised to learn that limestone is the same price or cheaper than big-box stone.
“The Kansas limestone is a no-brainer because it is a very good limestone, both for aesthetics and longevity,” Scott said. “We set our prices to be fair, not to get rich quick or retire on one project.”
For those who are willing to forgo the uniformity of manufactured — in other words, synthetic — stone, limestone’s natural beauty and competitive pricing can be quite the reward.
“For people who appreciate the naturalness of the product, its natural beauty within it, it's a really great and beautiful material,” Holly said.
FUTURE FOUNDATIONS
Higgins Stone has ambitious plans for the future, but Holly said Mike’s leadership keeps them grounded.
“It all starts with hard work,” Holly said. “It’s always been important to Mike that we are educated and able to handle any business aspect ourselves.”
“We got to this point where we don’t pay too many people to solve our problems. We do it ourselves,” Scott said. “In working with Mike, I’ve developed into that guy who can do pretty much everything I need to do out here.”
For other entrepreneurs hoping to match Higgins Stone’s almost five decades of business, Holly says it comes down to confidence.
“You’ve got to believe in yourself, number one, because nobody else will if you don't believe in yourself first,” Holly said. “You have to have faith in yourself to get there.”
When asked what advice he’d give to businesses that are eager to grow, Scott said he’d warn them not to become so focused on growth that they become lax in other areas.
“When you start putting a lot of focus on things that are new, you take away from something else,” Scott said. “Then, all of a sudden, you’re not paying as close attention to customers because you’re most focused on growing.”
Scott said he and Mike worked through that challenge by having Mike focus on growth opportunities while Scott managed existing business.
“It works really well,” he said.
While the days of one employee extracting and fabricating limestone are now a thing of the past, the team at Higgins Stone knows other challenges await in the future. However, they also know they’ve built a solid foundation for overcoming them.
“Mike has always told me this, and I repeat it to my son now: ‘Just swim,’” Holly said. “All the negative things will fall off if you just keep swimming.
