Random Thoughts on the tile industry by Dave Yarborough, President, D&B Tile Distributors
If you have been in any of our nine stores, you will notice an effort to foster one-stop shopping for our customers. Regardless of whether we are dealing with an architect, general contractor or specifier planning a major commercial project or a housewife looking to remodel her bathroom, the job always involves much more than just tile. For that reason, we are working toward offering all our customers the opportunity to see complementary items such as shower doors, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, and much more. The Galleria of Plumbing has set up displays in many stores featuring their products; Frameless Shower Doors is working out of all nine stores; and, our Hollywood and Pompano stores have specific vendors working in-house.] As always, we continue to carefully screen our vendors and prospective vendors for the best possible products. As the largest tile distributor in Florida, we are constantly approached by potential vendors looking for us to carry their products. We consider each proposal and carry only those lines where we feel comfortable with quality control at the plant, service after the sale, price, availability, delivery time, variety and available sizes. When you walk into any of our stores, you will be greeted by a bilingual staff offering a wide selection of tiles from around the world and new products to complete your renovation or new building project. Continuing with our long-time commitment to education in the industry, we are proud to partner with Schluter Systems in a series of workshops coming in 2012. Monitor our website at
https://www.dbtile.com/ for details, times and dates for these seminars. We are also refining our efforts to use the internet more efficiently in our marketing program. In an effort to capitalize on our position in the industry, we have retained a firm that is directing our efforts to track our progress in this exciting medium and tweak it to make maximum use of our advertising dollars. We have partnered with many of our long-time vendors to reach a commercial and residential market that we feel is beginning to feel some new life. Through our association with the design community, we believe there is sufficient reason to hope that the worst is behind us in these difficult economic times. More work is trickling into the design firms, which bodes well for actual construction/remodeling in the not-to-distant future. Finally, in these difficult times, the charitable organizations serving our community need our help. There are a number of organizations and all are worthy of our attention. D&B specifically focuses on the James Jr. Fund at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital and The Prestige Club which helps children in need.
