StoneCasterStudio.com has become Reputation Management case study.

June 2, 2010 - PRLog -- After a death in 2008 at Stone Caster Studio, the surviving founder Shawn Romant appeared to disappear for a few months while cleaning up the aftermath of loosing his step-father and mentor.  Due to Shawn Romant's absence, Stone Caster Studio was attacked by angry customers who thought the company had closed it's doors and ran off with their money.   (Not to mention a competitor who took advantage of this situation by posting phony negative reviews himself)

Most websites that are attacked on Ripoffreport.com, and sites like it, are destroyed basically over night.  http://StoneCasterStudio.com was able to stay alive and continue to grow.  

Shawn Romant says:
"I couldn't handle the mess created when my Step-Father passed away along with handling Stone Caster Studio's day to day operations.  I was appointed to replace my step-father in his existing material mining company, while running Stone Caster Studio.  I was thrown right away into court battles and heated business meetings that were at levels I never experienced.  

I had to make choice, forget about what my step-father built during his life and focus on Stone Caster Studio, or put Stone Caster Studio on the back burners and focus on saving my step-fathers legacy.   I chose to save my step-fathers legacy at the cost of Stone Caster Studio's reputation.

After having a new baby, a death in the family and being thrown into this mess, I wish I had the energy and support to be able to handle both situations, but I didn't...so I couldn't.  

I knew not answering phones and emails would drive the Stone Caster Studio customers crazy but I had to do it.  I continued to ship out the orders for my Stone Caster Studio customers but I wasn't sending updates or answering phones.  I didn't take a new order during that time and I let the StoneCasterStudio.com website even die out.

After a few months of court battles and heated business meetings I was able to get everything back on track with my step-fathers company.  Then, I took a deep breath and started the march foward in the process of cleaning up Stone Caster Studio's reputation.

It took me over 1 year to get things squared away but the damage caused by the angry customers that posted on Ripoffreport.com was already done and could not be removed.  Even though some of the customers who posted on Ripoffreport.com came back as repeat customers, they could not remove their reports due to the business practices of Ripoffreport.com's founder Ed Madgeson.  

If you want to learn more about Ripoffreport.com and what that site is really about, just do a google search on them and their founder Ed Madgeson and you will see for yourself.

The BBB was also used to report my company and I foolishly refused to solve the complaints through the BBB after my experience with Ripoffreport.com.  In my point of view, the BBB is not that much better than Ripoffreport.com, but in hindsight I have to say that I should have taken care of the complaints through the BBB and not outside of the BBB since the BBB will only remove negative feedback if you settle disputes through the BBB.   Oh well,  a good learning experience.

I could have easily chose to change my companies name and start again but I decided to take this challenge head-on.  To my surprise customers kept coming and Stone Caster Studio kept growing.  When a huge majority of companies were being destroyed on Ripoffreport.com, StoneCasterStudio.com was growing because of it.  

I'm not sure how it happened to work out in Stone Caster Studio's favor but I have opened my stats and data to an Online Reputation Management firm to study and implement for their own clients.  

I really do not know what to say except that I never ran away and made sure to face my responsibilities as a business owner.  Maybe the formula for online reputation management is as simple as that, never run away and make sure to face whatever comes your way. "

StoneCasterStudio.com is currently in top 100,000 websites in the USA and the in the top 500,000 worldwide.

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Stone Caster Studio is a stone veneer design, molding and fabrication studio that has served over 500 clients over the last 5 years. Over 1,000,000 square feet of stone veneer has been made in Stone Caster Studio molds.