A profile of 1997 council members follows.

During the annual two-day session, the Contractor Council meets to evaluate products, exchange information and help TEC better match products and services with contractor needs. Members selected represent a true national cross-section of residential and commercial tile installation professionals, providing expertise and commentary on their regional installation preferences and techniques. Member businesses ranged from firms with 120 or more employees to sole proprietorships with two to three employees.

"Mud" in the Blood

Of this year's nine members, six were born into the tile business. Bob Buckley, a returning member of the council, said his first job was "taking a piece of screen and putting sand through it to make floor grout" when he was eleven years old. He's now been in the tile business for almost 30 years with one son currently working with him and (hopefully) a second son in the future. According to Bob, "Residential work is our main stay, but I love taking on an occasional restaurant kitchen because cooking is a major hobby of mine."

George Martina of Ceramic Designs Midwest, Rapid City, South Dakota said he too, was 'screening sand' at age 11. He learned tile installation from his uncle and in fact, has adopted his uncle's motto, 'Quality Prevails' for his own tile business founded in 1977.

"The age of eleven keeps popping up," chuckled Nyle Wadford of Neuse Tile Service, Raleigh, North Carolina, "and that's when I started in the tile business." His first job was breaking quarry tile for broken tile applicationsÑa job Nyle almost lost when he decided it was faster to take the hammer to the box of tiles instead of the individual tiles. Nyle now runs the business that his dad and uncle started in a garage in 1964, which has grown into a firm with 32 employees and 14 crews today.

Family business became Marc Willey's business, too. Willey runs The Willey Company of Seattle, Washington, a commercial-based firm founded by his father in 1963. Commenting on that evolution, Willey said, "It was my first job out of college with a business degree...and now I just celebrated my sixteenth year (in the industry) on March 1."

Another returning council member, Bob Fick, also has family roots in the businessÑhis father sold tile for Monarch Tile, Mosaic Tile and Stylon. After finishing grad school, Bob started work in his brother's tile business and managed over 60 tile crews until establishing his own firm, Trace Tile Company in Lorton, Virginia five years ago. Similar to Bob Buckley's comments on quality, Fick says it's important for him to be able to look his customers in the eye and say "we're doing it the right way, with the right products".

A third generation tile contractor, Gary Fischer attended his first tile convention at the age of six. Gary started out in the business by emptying garbage cans and unloading trucksÑknowing "I'd always have a job as long as I owed my dad money!" Today, Fischer Tile & Marble maintains the Northern California residential tile business founded in 1906 as well as its newer, commercially-based operations in Honolulu, Hawaii.

An Acquired Way of Life

For those council members not born into the business, whether by intention or by chance, it is now a way of life. For example, Ken Jones isn't third generation tile, but his wife is. Soon after marriage, Ken closed his own general contracting firm and began work with his father-in-law's business, Acorn Tile, the oldest tile company in Chicago. After eighteen years, Ken's seen numerous changes. "Years ago, we'd go to a house, drop off a team and they'd be gone for a month. You had a mud entry with slate. You usually had a bath-and-a-half or two-and-a-half baths where the walls were mud and the floors were mud. The kitchen splash was mud." Nowadays, Acorn is 95% commercial and, although they still use some mud, Jones says adhesives have come a long way.

Doyle Dickerson started out as a tilesetter's helper, "making mud and soaking tile." He moved on to Atlanta to become a tilesetter in the early 1960's and established his own business, Doyle Dickerson Company of Stone Mountain, Georgia in 1974. Today, in addition to running his firm of over 140 people, Dickerson remains active in NTCA (National Tile Contractors Association), currently serving as First Vice President on the Board of Directors and as a member of the NTCA Technical Committee.

Phil Koester was a self-proclaimed 'bucket and trowel' tile contractor until 1991 when he started his own firm, Phillip J. Koester Incorporated of Stafford, Texas. Currently a regional director of NTCA, Koester firmly believes the key to solving problems and increasing tile use is through improved contractor communications. "When a contractor says that in order to do a residential application (the tilework's) got to be something that's going to fall off the wall, it's misleading and it's correctable." Koester works with major builders to promote dependable, high quality tile installations (such as specification of cement board substrates), and works with manufacturers to provide homeowner warranties.

Why Do It?

Council members voiced many reasons why, after learning of their selection, they had agreed to forego two days work to participate in the meeting. Most important was to learn more about their jobs and how they could do them better by sharing ideas and questions with peers and key manufacturer personnel. Other members were eager to be among the first to test and comment on new products in development. Still others looked forward to the opportunity to talk with fellow contractors. According to Bob Fick, "We're all in the same business with many of the same challenges."

To be nominated and selected to represent fellow contractors on the Contractor Council is already evidence of their status as respected industry professionals. But even more apparent in council members is the enjoyment of their craft, pride of ownership and their high regard for the tile industry. As Nyle Wadford said, "I love the business. Walking into a job that we did makes me feel good."

All great contractors would agree.

TEC publishes the Contractor Council Newsletter, currently sent to over 17,000 tile installation professionals. The newsletter features articles contributed by past and present Contractor Council members, installation advice columns and project case studies. For a free copy, call TEC Customer Service at 1-800-TEC-9002.


Members of the 1997 TEC Contractors Council:

front row, left to right:

Bob Fick, Trace Tile Company, Lorton, VA
Bob Buckley, Robert Buckley Ceramic Tile, Somerset, NJ
Marc Willey, The Willey Company, Seattle, WA
Nyle Wadford, Neuse Tile Service, Raleigh, NC
Gary Fischer, Fischer Tile and Marble, Honolulu, HA