We are a privately-owned, local company with about 20 employees. Most of us live in or near Berkeley, and do our shopping and banking with local businesses. We purchase supplies from community resources like Truitt & White, and Ashby Lumber.
We not only import; we stock locally-manufactured tile, and tile made from pre- and post-consumer materials. These products can help you obtain LEED and other green building certification for your projects.
We actively recycle all possible materials, including glass, cardboard and plastic. Look for the bin outside the back entrance to find free tile and stone products that we cannot use, and don't want to throw away.
Part of every sale goes to directly support our employees.
A 197-panel solar power plant is installed on the roof of our main building,, and we generate 100 to 200 Kilowatt-hours of power on an average day.
We run all our trucks (and many of our personal vehicles!) on B100 biodiesel.
A Little History
Our founder, Bill De Carion, has lived in Berkeley since 1963, and got his education at Cal, the University of California. After establishing a plumbing business in the early '70's, Bill started doing complete remodeling projects and fell in love with tile. Before long, he was renting a warehouse store front on San Pablo Avenue from a friend, and filling the need for high-quality imported tile throughout the bay area.
The company was born when Bill moved his business to our current quarters on Hearst Avenue in 1978. It has steadily grown ever since, with major improvements to our building, expansion of warehouse space, installation of a large solar power array in 2005, and ongoing renovation of the showroom.
Bill is a very active owner and manager of the business, and can be found in and around the showroom most days.
We directly support non-profit organizations like Rubicon Programs, helping people in need.
We also donate our spare computer time to scientific research projects using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. Check out their website if you want to help! Here are our current statistics:
