We recently expanded our clay tile factory in Aromas, CA. Part of the expansion project allows us to introduce new manufacturing techniques and make room for even more efforts geared at sustainability. This is our new water reclemation system, which will be used at our cutting and polishing station scheduled to be up and running soon. These water tanks and extraction system make sure that we are able to capture every last drop of used water, ensuring that we keep all water waste at an absolute minimum.
Our showroom features the very best of Fireclay Tile, including 9 panel displays of our tile, over 90 custom concept boards, all the colors available from our company, as well as walls of samples for viewing and displaying. There is plenty of room to visit with your own clients, and we have a professional designer, Wendy Ruffier, on staff to help with any and all of your design needs. Wendy can be reached at her email or by phone at 415-697-2044.
We are open Monday-Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM, and we are located at in Design Place East at 111 Rhode Island St., Suite F in the San Francisco Design District .
We are thrilled to announce our first charity partner donation from sales of our Glazed Thin Brick! As of June 30, 2012, we are able to donate over $400 to CORA, a local women’s organization we are so thrilled to support.
In March of this year, Fireclay launched our newest sustainable offering - Glazed Thin Brick (see press release here). This product is a partnership between Fireclay Tile and McNear Brick & Block, and it takes McNear’s recycled content, locally produced thin brick and pairs it with Fireclay’s all natural, lead-free glazes. The result is a fantastic new product that has been extremely well received by the design and architectural community, including making the cover of Architectural Products this past summer (Issue June 2012, page 47).
When we launched Glazed Thin Brick we committed 1% of all sales to charity. We made our first charity partner CORA, or Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse. Fireclay was first introduced to CORA when they were upgrading their San Mateo County facility and looking for tile, which at the time we were happy to donate.
When asked about why CORA was originally chosen, Fireclay’s founder Paul Burns said, “Fireclay was happy to donate tile to help transform the space they offer for people in need. Our tiles are handmade in the Bay Area so they give a personal touch to any living environment. It is most important that there is a safe place available for families if they are trapped in an abusive place.” With our new 1% of Glazed Thin Brick sales charity program, CORA was a natural fit!
CORA has been serving the San Mateo County since 1978 and is dedicated solely to those affected by domestic abuse. CORA’s mission is to end domestic abuse with intervention and prevention including: answering 5,000 hotline calls, providing over 750 counseling sessions and giving over 140 individuals emergency housing or transitional housing in the last fiscal year.
If you are interested in supporting CORA please visit: www.corasupport.org
We look forward to continuing our support of CORA through the end of 2012!
Join Fireclay Tile and Wooden Window at a Community Networking Breakfast in San Francisco
Details: Wednesday, August 1st 8:30AM to 10:30AM
Wooden Window Showroom 111 Rhode Island Street, Suite F
San Francisco, California
Don’t miss the chance to meet and hear architect Mark English at our next Community Breakfast.
When he’s not pursuing his own practice, or sitting on AIA-San Francisco’s Board of Directors, Architect Mark English coaches his peers on new strategies for social media and marketing and edits two highly respected online magazines.
Mark will be showing us how we can bypass the traditional gatekeepers of conventional media to use the web, and social media in particular, to drive traffic to our websites, become more visible in the digital world and build our businesses.
Mark English, AIA has been running his own residential design firm, Mark English Architects, since 1992. Mark’s education includes a degree in Architecture from California Polytechnic University, complemented by graduate studies at the Syracuse University campus in Florence, Italy. He has also promoted principles of energy-efficient design, particularly as it relates to compliance with California’s Title 24 energy code.
Fireclay Tile is thrilled to be sponsoring this event.
To RSVP please click here: http://www.woodenwindow.com/blog/general/communitybreakfastaugust2012/
Yes it is! We are so excited and proud to announce the arrival of our first-ever 96-page color catalog. The catalog introduces Fireclay’s new products, Glazed Thin Brick, Kelly LaPlante’s Runway Collection of speciality field tile and the new colors of our Express Series Quickship tile.
Table of Contents in new Fireclay catalog
A page with some Specialty Field
Of course, we didn’t forget our Debris, Vitrail, Crush, Claymonde and Cuerda Seca lines. There are beautiful photographs of all of the product lines including a couple showing the components that make our tile.
Page with "How It's Made" for Crush
The catalog also lists, with photographs, all of the trims and moldings available as well as photographs of most of our raised and relief decorative tiles.
Page with Moldings and Ropes
This resource book/catalog lists information regarding ordering, the dimensions of our moldings and ropes, glaze details (variation grades and crazing) and pieces per square foot. The catalog is available for purchase for $15 (including shipping) on-line or from the link below. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
2011 was an incredible year for Fireclay Tile and our team. We thought we'd take a moment to remember some of our accomplishments
- Customers: We added 20 new dealers to the Fireclay Tile family. From Boston to Florida to Texas to Washington, these included both some amazing new tile showrooms as well as some great green building supply stores. And we were able to increase our sales to our dealers by 73% in 2011 over 2010, something we are extremely proud of and worked hard to achieve.
- Orders: We completed over 1400 orders this year, ranging in size from one piece to over 5,000 square feet. We completed 208 Crush glass tile orders, and 1,217 ceramic tile orders. Out of all of these orders, over 85% were completed on time (a 15% improvement over 2010)
- Employees: We started the year with 27 full-time employees and are ending the year with 33 full-time employees. We added 5 FTE's to our San Jose team, and 1 to our Aromas team. We hope to hire even more in 2012! In addition, for the first time in 2 years we were able to offer raises to our production team and small holiday bonuses to everyone.
- Customer Service: Over 90% of our customers had an excellent experience with Fireclay Tile in 2011. Our goal is 100%, so we have some work to do!
- BBQs: We take our BBQ very seriously at Fireclay, and in 2011 we celebrated good times with 4 BBQs. This was flat to 2010, and one stat we want to improve!
- Sales: For any business, sales are extremely important. We ended 2011 with a 5% increase in sales. Most exciting is that in Q4 we saw a 2-3x increase in order volume, and we are starting 2012 off with a healthy pipeline.
- Product Launches: We launched our new Crush 100% Recycled Glass tile line in May 2011. We surpassed our sales expectations, and have a production team in place that is making absolutely beautiful glass tile. We are aiming to double our sales in 2012.
- Press: We had some unbelievable press this year, capping the year off with an Honorable Mention for Crush in Interiors & Sources. We had over 32 press mentions, not counting the numerous blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts.
- Samples: We shipped out over 1,222 samples to various customers throughout the country. That's almost 6 samples each and every day!
- Email List: We grew our email list by 25% in 2011.
- Web Traffic: Our web traffic increased almost 2x in 2011 over 2010. We are planning for similar growth in 2012, with many new website updates already in the works!
- Social Media: We are ending the year with 462 Fireclay Facebook fans and over 600 Fireclay Twitter followers. We are planning some great social media campaigns in 2012, and our goal is to see these numbers each hit over 10,000 in 2012.
We have so much planned for 2012, including new products, new marketing ideas, and new sales and customer service initiatives. We can't thank you, our customers, enough for your commitment to Fireclay Tile and all that we do. You make work fun each and every day!
For those who have been following the Fireclay Tile story for the past few years, you'd know that we rely on Salesforce.com's software to help run our company and ensure we do our very best to satisfy our customers. Beyond just using the product, though, we are always talking about its advantages and trying to educate other small businesses about how they can improve their business with enhanced software and better use of technology infrastructure.
This week Salesforce.com unveiled a new video featuring our company, our employees, and some amazing images of our factory and workers. Though the video is focused on how Salesforce.com has helped transform our company, one can't help but notice how beautiful the videography is.
A big thank you to Salesforce.com for so effectively capturing the spirit of Fireclay Tile. And for those with any questions about how we use Salesforce.com, email me with questions.
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