Corcon’s Post

Yesterday marked a big day at Fireclay Tile. We opened the doors to our very first east coast showroom in NYC. This project was hard. There was a steep learning curve as we built the foundation for what will become a bigger showroom rollout in 2024 and beyond. It came with all the expected New York challenges of old buildings, post demo surprises, delivery challenges and more. But we made it, and while it feels so good to start focusing on the next finish line, I can finally take a deep breath and reflect with gratitude on the hard work of so many people that brought this vision to life. To say it takes a village would be an understatement. I want to say a special thank you to Kali Gibson who truly acted as my wing woman through this process providing so much support on the merchandising side. To Kevin Nolen who helped to drive this project to completion ahead of schedule so that we could be open for NYCxDESIGN week. A big thank you to Pei-Yu Lin, RA and the team at O'Neil Langan Architects for leading design development and helping to manage the nuance of all the city requirements. Our contractor, Corcon who worked hard to make sure we hit our timelines, our exceptional fixture partner Boden Alexander for helping us to design and build a fixture package to serve many locations to come and last but certainly not least, a big thank you to my phone a friend and original creative co-conspirator Terry Tebeau for keeping my north arrow pointing in the right direction. I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in many showroom buildouts over the years but this is the first time the stakes were quite this big and the first time I’ve lead the entire process which I am grateful that Eric Edelson trusted me with. I’m so thankful to for the brand relationships that we’ve built over the years that allowed us to elevate this and future spaces in a way that budgets otherwise wouldn’t have allowed. A special thanks to Hennepin Made (insanely beautiful handmade decorative lighting), Room & Board (American made furniture), Semihandmade (American made cabinets), Caesarstone US (countertops) and Zephyr Electrical Products (appliances) for their contributions to the space. We would have never gotten the doors open on time without the ganas of our sales team who worked long hours schlepping tile up and down stairs and loading up sample walls to greet customers this week. A big thank you to Caitlyn Child, Noela Mbulle, Unha Kim and Minna Etters for all their work pushing us over the finish line. The tile ship has landed NYC, Santa Monica - get ready!