Memphis Small Business Spotlight
TOM WILEMON | The Daily News
David Gicking, a tile setter, opened Venice Tile & Marble Showroom in 1988 because he was bored with the bland, generic materials available at most local stores.
Today, his store offers about 260 lines.
“I used to install and had like 12 crews of guys,” Gicking said. “The tile industry wasn’t very good in Memphis. you didn’t have much to select from. I just opened up my own place so I could bring in what I wanted.”
Whereas big-box retailers concentrate on volume, Gicking said he focuses on variety.
Meeting requests
The store at 3665 S. Perkins Road offers glass, porcelain, ceramic and stone tiles. it has decorative medallions, onyx vessel sinks and basins carved from mesquite.
But one recent customer wasn’t shopping for anything fancy or exotic. John Padavic simply needed some extra pieces of tile that he had bought from another store three years earlier.
“I took some of the leftover tile to the store where I bought it,” Padavic said. “The salesperson looked at what I had and said it came from a company they no longer do business with. another tile store I went to could not identify the manufacturer.”
Venice Tile located the manufacturer and specially ordered it. Padavic had the matching tile five days later.
However, matching tiles can be a tricky task, said Steve Limberg, a Venice Tile salesman and designer.
“If a customer comes by with a 4-by-4 inch pink tile from a bathroom that was done 40 years ago and they need three to patch, the chances of matching that are slim,” Limberg said. “Tiles are just like wallpaper or fabric. every time they run it, it has a run number or a color. you have to make sure you get it out of the same run. That’s what you run into when you try to patch.”
Limberg is one of three full-time employees at the store, which also has one part-time sales person.
Silver lining
The slump in new construction has hurt sales, Gicking said, but that partially has been balanced out by an uptick in sales as more people remodel their homes.
The staff advises do-it-yourselfers on how to avoid pitfalls. Sometimes, that advice is to hire a professional.
“People who have done it for years know the tricks and can do it so much faster and more efficiently than someone who is going to learn off the cuff as they go,” Limberg said.
Even if someone has worked with tile before, some of the more popular materials require a different installation.
“Every material has certain rules,” he said. “With glass, you need to use a thin set that has lot of latex on it. if you don’t, you can get cracking from expansion and contraction.”
Venice Tile does not do installations, but the store will provide the names and numbers of installers.
Stone is the best-selling material at the store, which offers slate, limestone, travertine, marble, granite and onyx.
Although granite has become an expected surface for modern kitchens, Limberg said many designers like the idea of doing something different.
“We don’t deal in slabs,” he said. “Granite countertops are usually a slab product. We’re only tile. But there are different finishes you can do to granite to kind of charge it up. you can get a flamed finish or a honed finish. It’s just a different texture than the shiny granite.”
The materials offered at the store come from all over the world. Venice Marble also offers the organically inspired new creations by Ann Sacks as well as traditional decorative tiles.
“A lot of unique tiles, more like the cottage-industry kind of thing – that’s what we’re really good at grabbing,” Limberg said.
Venice Tile Founder Emphasizes Variety, Selection
