Crafted in the USA: Patrick Warren’s Take on Beautiful Surfaces

Foreign.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Happy America 250.

This is one of those special episodes where we talk about manufacturers that are doing it right here in our own backyard.

And we've got Patrick Warren, my friend from Dow Tile.

Welcome back to around the House, brother.

Man, it's good to be here.

Thanks, Eric.

I'd love to get on your show.

Love to talk to everybody and kind of talk about the great things that are going on in our industry and with Dow Tile.

And you guys are just killing it out there and with all the stuff that's been going on in the news and we don't ever get into politics in this show, but there's always question marks when stuff's in this world economy.

And I just love that you guys are cranking out beautiful products right here in the United States.

Yeah.

I'll tell you what we have.

We've been doing our strategy and our, actually our approach to the market has not changed.

We've been manufacturing in the United states.

Yeah, we've been doing it for a long time.

And it's probably a story we need to tell a little bit better.

It is, it is heritage.

It is about American jobs.

It is about, it's localized and it's not brand new.

Right.

We've been doing it for, again, 80 years.

And our parent company, Mohawk's been doing it for 107 years, something like that.

So really good story.

That's great.

And these days too, when you're dealing with fuel surcharges and all the different stuff out there, it is so nice to have it and, and to have it in your local area as well, because you guys are well positioned across the entire United States for helping people out.

Whether it's a small build or a high rise.

We are, we have almost close to 300 locations nationwide.

And all the locations are a little bit different.

Some are strictly just for a contractor can go pick up product that was shipped.

Some have a showroom attached to it.

Some have a showroom and a slab yard attached to it.

And the whole idea is how do we bring down tile and our products to a local intimate level for that customer to select and pick up.

And this stuff is kind of delicate.

This is not something you just like put some shrink wrap around and send it ups.

You gotta be a little careful how you ship this stuff, especially when it's going in containers from overseas.

And it's nice to be able to have that consistency of product here.

Absolutely.

If it's.

The shorter the distance with tile, the better things have micro vibrations when they travel and they ship.

And the more that happens, the more you're going to get some breakage and tile.

And being domestic, we do have a lot of products we do bring in overseas.

Right.

Because there are certain designs.

We have parent company that's in Marazi, Italy.

But when it's local and it's in America, you're going to have a better chance of having a better logistic and an end result when it comes over.

Yeah.

When you want that handmade Italian tile, you kind of have to get that from Italy.

Totally get that.

You know, that's.

That's the whole thing.

Exactly.

But at the same point, I think it's a story that's so great out there, because is there a spot.

I guess my first question is, is there a spot in the US that you guys are just.

This is kind of our manufacturing core.

Are you spread out?

I would say kind of the bottom.

Here's what we call for.

For tile styling, meaning the heavier amount of tile it's sold, and then also it's easier to manufacture.

It's kind of in that bottom kind of smile, if you will, of the U.S. right.

That bottom half.

And we sell.

We sell in all 50 states.

And.

But for US manufacturing.

And we have two significant facilities in Tennessee.

We have Alabama, Texas.

It's just.

That's kind of where it is.

And those are also better hubs for shipping from those manufacturing facilities out to those 300 locations.

Yeah.

You've got one raw product that has to come in to go into tile.

Right.

All that clay and everything else that's got to go in there, and then you turn around and have to ship it out.

And.

And yeah, those are.

There's rail hubs.

There's all those great things down there that make things a lot easier.

That's exactly right.

And we're happy to work with our logistic partners.

It's.

We have a good network.

We.

We ship material well and we manufacturing material even better, and then we design it top of the food chain.

And one of the things I do love about dial tile that's just so easy from my 35 years in kitchen and bath design, is that when it's coming out of the U.S. it seems that the consistency and the product quality is just that much better.

Because if anybody out there has gotten two weird dots came off the same palette, but it looks like they were made in 22 parts of the world because Nothing matches or it's not the same size or, or there's that inconsistency.

It just seems that you guys have really got that nailed down as far as a consistent product going out that you can do an entire house in a color if you wanted to and have something that's going to look right.

You sure can.

We, we, you know, it's designed in the U.S. it's manufactured in the U.S. it's, it's delivered in the U.S. it'S the showroom design is selected within the U.S. so yeah, we spend a lot of time, obviously quality is everything.

We can talk about our two biggest strengths, I would say at Dow Tile are certainly our teammates, our people and, but, but then our product and design, like without good product and design, you don't, you're not gonna be able to sell anything.

So it's very important and I think more than just the manufacturing, which is critical, it's.

I think we have put ourselves on the map for really excellent design capabilities from the US A lot of times in the past people would think, oh, the better designs come from Europe.

And maybe that's the case in some types of products.

But we nail it.

We are, our product design is fantastic here at Daltial.

And for the people out there that haven't used Daltile, don't be surprised because so many people know your brand from maybe just the home improvement store, the big box store.

And that is just a drop of water in the ocean of what you guys offer out.

That's right.

We, we, we are partnered with every area consumer or a builder or developer will select products.

And we strategically produce products for certain segments.

We strategically market them certain ways.

But the idea is, and I'll kind of segue into we can offer bundling better than anybody.

We can offer bundling for a dealer that needs different products, maybe a home center that needs different products, kitchen and bath house.

But put it all together, and I think our industry is complex in this, in the sense that a consumer sometimes has to shop and select at multiple places and we're trying to narrow that down.

And you can come into downtown that virtually for a kitchen or bath, you can select almost everything except for the cabinets, the lighting, plumbing, things like that.

So we want to have that one stop shop.

And that's really the value of what Gal Tile does, but also being domestically produced.

Yeah, and we got to talk about slabs too because I tell you what, you guys have a beautiful slab showroom down the road from me right here.

We sure do.

Location.

And that is a Monster building with great stuff in it.

But there's such a trend too for showers and things like that of, of getting rid of those grout lines and going into the large format pie.

Whether it's a large format tile or even a slab itself, that just gives you kind of the best of all worlds.

You get that beautiful durability and then you've got a big enough piece to really show what would look like mother Nature's best work.

It's hard to even say that we can do this.

But take our quartz products which are made in Dixon, Tennessee.

We have now two manufacturing lines in Dixon, Tennessee, state of the art.

And you take what we can do with our porcelain gauge porcelain panels.

It's hard to even say.

It almost looks better than the natural actual real product.

Right.

Nothing's really better than a porcelain panel on performance and the look is off the chart.

That's really the future and the direction where selections are going.

You're seeing less and less grout lines.

And as the installing network gets better and the equipment to do so gets better, I think you'll see a lot more projects embrace that.

Yeah.

I remember when some of the, when those high performance slabs came out like that in the sintered stone, whatever you want to call it out there.

Yeah.

So many different names in the industry depending on where you're at.

But really there is nothing better for a shower.

There's nothing better for us.

A big, huge open space.

Maybe it's a great room to put that down on the floor and handful.

Years ago you would have had some tile installers kind of looking at you kind of square eyed going, I don't know if we could do that.

Yeah, it's commonplace.

I agree.

And you know what's really nice about it is and the benefit going forward.

And again we're all kind of building our way, our comfort level with it.

But it's lighter, it's easier to handle.

You can score and snap in many cases, not all, but many cases.

So it's, it's a better long term product.

We're just all getting our arms around it and what the capabilities are both for floor and wall.

It's so great exterior as well because I had it, I had it for countertop in my outdoor kitchen and I had a huge ice storm come through and I had pictures of it where it's wrapped in about an inch and a half of ice and then six months later it's 130 degrees because the sun's hitting it on a sunny day.

I had a friend do the same thing in an outdoor patio.

And he said, hey, do I have to seal the porcelain?

I said, nope, you're good to go, brother.

And I tell you what, the stuff's hard.

It's.

It is durable, and it is probably.

Well, no question.

It's the most durable surface you could have out there.

That's enjoyable.

And it looks like stone or metal or whatever you want it to look like.

The design capabilities are off the chart.

It's really fantastic.

And we're able to actually do things mixed.

Mixed media, if you will.

That'll.

That'll take different.

Actually, it's.

You can take different types of stone and blend them together for a unique look that you would never get out of the natural resource of the mountain or the quarry man.

And that is great.

And for you guys, that's gotta be interesting as well, because not only are you.

Are you.

You've got distribution centers across the United States for these products, but you've got big slabs, you've got small pieces of tile.

It's an interesting mix.

When you have products of such different scale and size.

It is.

And you have to.

We have a fantastic team that handles moving all that product around.

And we kind of remind everybody that the consumer doesn't care when they select a product.

Let's just use a kitchen.

When they select a product, if it's coming from California, that's what he or she wants.

Doesn't matter to them.

Like, they want that what they want, and they're going to figure out a way to get it there.

So that's our job, is to figure out how to bring them all together.

And we try to spread our design and our inventory mix throughout the US So that we can satisfy that.

That need and that desire.

Yeah, because there are different trends.

You'll see something that's happening in South Florida that's maybe way different than what's happening on the other side of the country in Seattle.

That's exactly right.

And I will say there, it's funny, some.

A lot of our reps, our team will say, you know, my market's unique.

I say there's only about two or three truly unique markets.

Miami would absolutely be one of them.

Yep.

It's just a little different down there.

It's gorgeous, fantastic.

But it is a different world.

And that's the cool thing.

And so you guys can serve as both of those, which you guys put a lot of effort and time into trends out there, because it seems that you guys are always on that leading edge, which I guess that's one of the nice things about manufacturing here is you guys can kind of pivot pretty quickly.

We're like, oh, this is going to be hot for next year.

Let's get this put out there and your team can get it done.

And we can also do that, we do that strategically with brands as well.

Our core brand to go to market is our, We're Dal Tile.

We also have the Dalta brand and we also have Marazzi and we have the American Olean brand.

And between those three, we kind of specifically, let's just take Marazi and Dow Tile.

You know, Marazzi we kind of created into our edgier, stronger colors.

Maybe a little riskier, that we can cycle out those products a little bit more, but it taps into that, maybe higher style products.

We have a lot of that in Dal Tile, but we kind of balance those so we're able to offer again what that consumer or that selector, that specifier, if you will, is looking for.

So it's kind of almost like what you'd call fast fashion right now, that it's, it's changing and you guys are on it with that brand.

We try to be, it's, it's, we have, it's a large machine to fill here at Dowtile and our, all of our manufacturing facilities.

So fast fashion can get you in trouble too, because you put a lot into it, make some inventory and it crashes.

So you kind of want to be on the front edge, but maybe not the very, very front edge, but you want to, you want to have those products that'll last and people hit that design trend that they're looking for.

Yeah, it makes good sense because, yeah, you get out there too far and all of a sudden you're like, oh, we made a right and they made a left.

Yeah, yeah, that's happens a lot.

But I'm okay actually having high style products because if they get tired of them after two years, they'll get new products and put them in there, hopefully like Del Tile.

So, yeah, yeah, if it's so good, if it's so timeless for 30 years, that's not the best business plan.

Yeah, disposable design.

That's what we need.

That is awesome.

And that's the cool thing too, is that I really like the people in your showrooms.

And I think this is where people maybe miss out a little bit on and they should really pay attention to because if you're that confused homeowner, you can walk in and go, oh my gosh, I need help.

And there's people in there with the skills to help.

Everybody is confused.

And we've, we do that because we, we have just a lot of product, right.

A tremendous amount of SKUs and design capability, everything that you can do.

And we, we, we throw a lot at the community, if you will.

And they see it online and they don't know what can go with what.

They don't know how it should work.

What are the rules?

What are the rules?

They're scared.

What if I get it wrong?

And look, getting it wrong with tile can be kind of expensive.

So that's exactly where our 110 or 11 showrooms can help because they can go in.

And we have people come in all the time with a giant pillow, a piece of fabric, a couch, cover, something and say, hey, I want to design my room around this.

And that's what our team is specifically designed to help build that dream, what that image is in their head.

We'll put that into product.

Then it comes into education as well.

Maybe you're talking about a microband product or the stepwise for slip resistant stuff.

That's where that really can come in.

And people go, I had no idea that even existed.

They don't.

And it's funny, I tell my friends all the time about it.

My two favorite things to talk about.

And we actually have three now.

So our proprietary technologies, we have more than three.

But the ones that I love to talk about the most are we have microban, defend by microban.

Fueled by microban, which is eliminates 99% of the mold, mildew and bacterial growth.

Awesome story, right?

So you got two products.

Likewise, you throw that in there and someone's going to say absolutely.

Then you have our reveal 3D sync, which is, it's porcelain that actually feels and it's textured like natural stone.

It is second to none.

But then my last one is my favorite which is stepwise, which is a product that we, we build into the manufacturing process makes the product 50% more resist slip resistant than any of the competition out there.

You don't have, you can't feel it.

You can't.

If you wipe a paper towel over, it's not going to fall apart.

And it's just, it's.

Those are three value add items that Dow tile has that nobody else has.

And that's what we need to be telling our story more often about.

Man, I can't tell you as a designer how many bathrooms I have walked in with polished marble on the floor because somebody thought that was a brilliant idea.

And to me it's like walking out with tennis shoes on after the Zamboni on the aisle.

It's insane how slippery that can be and the damage that does to people out there.

Having that product just seems to be common sense to me.

Yeah.

And all they have to do is ask, hey, are you concerned about slipping?

Because they are.

We've got the product for them.

Plus we can take certain products that are inside.

That's a big trend for us over the last.

Not even a trend.

It's really a new.

It's a new part of the home that we're doing.

But when you take it outdoors, you can have a product that doesn't have stepwise.

Maybe you don't need it in the kitchen.

You can take that exact product and install it on a patio outside with stepwise.

Same product, same look, same feel, but you have a slip resistant property on the outside.

On the exterior.

That is one of my favorite tricks.

When you have that big glass door, whether it's that nanowall type system that opens up and you've got a 20 foot opening and you can take that flooring in the kitchen and draw it right out into the patio seamless.

See as a little black line of the frame of the door.

Money where I think it is such money.

And especially down here in that.

Like I mentioned earlier, that smile, that bottom kind of half of the country where we live out, we're outside more than inside now.

This time of year it's going to get a little hot down here in Texas.

We're probably going to be going back inside soon.

But.

Yeah, that's a good point.

That is the thing too that I love that you guys are Texas based.

You're just right there in the middle of manufacturing and everything else.

And that's the hometown.

We sure are.

I'll just throw it out there.

I'm going to get some frowns.

But America's team.

Dallas Cowboys a little bit.

Then we have my Seattle Seahawks which is the super bowl champions.

So they are.

I teed you up on that one.

Listen, the Cowboys deserve all the abuse that we get.

It's okay.

But I'm still.

That's all good.

I can make fun of every team out there, as could you.

So that's the fun part of sports.

I agree totally.

That is the fun part.

And the thing is that I like to is that contractor wise you guys are really contractor friendly because you have these big distribution warehouses.

You have these locations that a contractor can pop in and pop out of one of your design centers, get the stuff and get Moving because there is nothing like wasting an hour and a half trying to pick material up at another store.

Yeah.

And we, we spend a lot of time trying to make sure we have the right items, products, installation components that a contractor is going to need for that project.

And if not, we can get them there for that.

We can get to that location.

Some stuff's on, some is on hand, some stuff's available from our distribution center in one to three days and then some stuff from our facility which could be seven to 10 days, but we can get it to them when they need it.

Yeah.

When you consider so many other products, especially when they're coming from overseas, it's, it's going to be four weeks plus however long it takes for the container to get on the ship.

And can you imagine if you, if you miss and it happens, people mismeasure or they want to do an extra part of it, all of a sudden they need another 25 cartons and they can't, it's not going to match, first of all.

And second of all, they don't know when it's going to come in on the container where we've got it right here.

I will say as a designer that is one of my biggest fears on projects.

When I was doing stuff, maybe it was a budget project.

So you're in another store, another location, maybe it's kind of an off brand situation if it's not on the shelf there.

I, between the time that we selected and installation, my heart rate always went up on those projects because do we have enough, did somebody make a mistake where they got to put some more in and are we up a creek without a tile?

And that could be a problem.

And if you're in, if you're, you go too high and you're tight on, it's a tight margin project for you and you have too much product, then you're out too because you've already spent money on eight extra cartons you don't know what to do with.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So there's just such a, it's, it's.

As a designer, it was always nice to have something that was made in USA that I could just go here it is, this is a standard item and guess what?

It's going to show up.

And I don't have to sweat the details on that going, oh, did we get enough?

And I hope the installer doesn't make a bunch of bad cuts because we're in trouble.

Yeah, completely agreed.

And that's awesome.

So Patrick, what else is going on with you guys out there, you guys are just bringing out new products all the time.

I love the stuff that we were sitting there taking a look at at the dowel tile booth there at the kitchen and bath industry show in Florida.

That was a ton of fun.

And you guys have been rolling out new products all year round.

We spend a lot of time on new product, and obviously that's the lifeblood of our future and where we go with it.

And it's.

And right now, the kind of.

Our big push is to.

Not necessarily a big push, but the direction we're heading is all the products need to work.

You need to fill in the gaps where we have holes from a design price value point of view, but also, how do they all work together?

Our.

Our quartz countertop business out of Dixon, Tennessee, is incredibly important.

We have a tile plant literally across the highway.

How do they all work together?

So that when you select a countertop or you select a tile, you have the opposite to work with it.

So we spend a lot of time with that design capability.

And what.

What can we do?

What should we do?

And look, we also benefit from having our.

Our sister company, Global Ceramic, based in Italy, where we can get.

Hey, these are the trends we're kind of seeing in Italy because a lot of times the European trends do lead and allows us to kind of get in early on what those designs are going to be.

But we'll always be pushing the envelope more product.

But in the past, I think we would launch.

Let's say we launched a new series that had 18 colors, and we knew that about 10 to 12 would be good.

Now we're coming out, we're saying, let's just do eight to 10 colors.

Let's do the right colors so it's a little more strategic and easier to select.

And there's not so much dropping and churning a product at a dealer's location, for a example.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And.

And st.

It's funny, I was talking to another designer the other day, and styles change so quickly now than when I entered this design career 35 years ago.

Back then, a project would get selected, built, and then it ended up in a magazine.

And from the time that you kind of selected that tile to the time that the ended up in a magazine, could be 18 to 24 months.

And now that style's out there.

Yeah.

Nowadays, my client could have it up on her, on her Pinterest account in 15 minutes or by the time she's left the parking lot.

And things happen a lot quicker now with all this digital age because now it's not a two year turn, it's a 15 minute turn.

Yeah, you kind of talked about that fast fashion, but it's that it's the availability of what is out there that consumers and selector specifiers are all able to see instantly.

It's almost some of the trade shows almost kind of become obsolete in the sense that people are seeing all the products ahead of time.

It's not.

Trade shows were designed to present products to a group of like kind and quality type of companies, whether it's contractors or dealers or builders, whoever.

But now that technology rolls so quickly, so we're kind of shifting our way.

Not only we designing amazing products, we're trying to make sure we have ways for people to design our with our products easier.

We have our Daltile Stylizer.

Our Daltile websites off the chart has all the tools that you need to help put all of these products in a simplistic and organized fashion.

Yeah, you guys own it on the website.

That thing is a mile deep with some great stuff that you can do on there that really takes some of the confusion and some of the pain points for people whether you're a remodeling contractor, a homeowner or even an interior designer.

Well, I'm glad you said that.

Our team works hard on the whole spectrum.

Right.

You need to have a lot of technical information when somebody needs it, but you also need to have what's the design, what's the trend look like.

If you're on a social media site and you hashtag Dall Tile, it'll.

It'll go through a vetting process.

It'll drop into our website.

You go down and see actual room scenes that people installed in their home and people get a real feeling for what that's going to look like.

And if that doesn't work, they can go to our dial tile stylizer, upload a picture, change anything they want to and see exactly what that's going to look like if they select those tile products.

That is awesome.

And I have an idea I want to start out and you'll probably laugh with this.

I want to start a Facebook group for AI Design fails because people are out there trying to say I want to do this together and they ask AI to do it.

It's not there yet.

No, that's actually a pretty good idea actually.

It's kind of like you see all those AI things where they say she had the sunglasses on and didn't have the sunglasses on or whatever.

Yeah, it's Funny.

I was talking.

I was.

I got back from a trip my brother and I were talking about.

I said, I think the two things right now that everybody's talking about is, is if you lose a bunch of weight, someone says, are you on a GLP1?

And then the most important thing is if you write something that's really well done or you design something, someone says, hey, was that AI?

No, that was me.

It was me.

Yeah, exactly.

But I like the AI fails.

That could be actually kind of interesting.

There's a lot of them out there.

Something.

Oh yeah, interesting.

Yeah.

The trust of AI is a little bit.

A little bit strong right now.

You gotta, you gotta trust and validate.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And that's the thing.

And I think that's where bringing the professional in just to kind of wrap a bow around that, of going into your stores and really having someone with the knowledge of the product line because you guys have such a depth, if you just jump on the website and go, bam, bam, bam.

This is what I want.

Probably missing a few things.

Yeah.

There is so much product out there and there's.

There's kind of ideas in people's heads or mis.

Misconstruedions at what they can and can't do.

Listen, sky's the limit.

We'll tell you what you can't do.

You really can get.

Gets a little bit unique when you start getting into the true natural stone on what you can actually install.

But the rest of it, if you come in and work with our team, we'll set you in the right direction.

I love it.

Patrick, Warren, Dal Tile.

Thanks, brother.

I love what you guys are doing.

I love that all of this stuff that we were talking about today that's made in America that you guys have such a history here in the United States of, Of making stuff.

Of course the Italian tile has to come from Italy, but at the same time, you guys are really US based and really supporting the American worker and a beautiful projects around the globe.

There's a lot of American.

I appreciate that.

There's a lot of American pride right now.

And I'm, I'm.

I grew up playing soccer, but I wouldn't say that I'm like hardcore World cup fan until World cup comes around and I'm like, I'm glued to it.

And America did a really good job and is currently doing a good job of hosting in all these cities and every.

It's a.

It is a very happy time right now.

We're celebrating our 250th year and I think There's a lot of pride that when we talk about Dowel tiles specifically or other companies in our space that are made in America, consumers are gravitating toward that.

And I think that's important for contractors and dealers and kitchen and bath houses to all embrace because it's an important time in our.

In our existence.

And look, nothing's better right now than America, and we're going to capitalize on it at Dow Tile.

I love it, brother.

Thanks for coming on the show today.

Everybody out there, make sure you support Dow Tile, what they're doing because they're supporting you as well.

And just head over to deltile.com Patrick Warren, again, thanks for coming on the show today, man.

I appreciate it, man.

Thanks for having me.

Eric, be well.

Say hi to William.

I love it.

We got to get William in here.

We're gonna do that.

All right.

Take care.

Be well.

And, Chip, have a good day.

Thanks, brother.

You, too.

You've been listening to around the House.

Yeah.

If we wake up in the morning and we can't remember where she lived.

That said, no one ever, no one ever talks about the nights they went to bed counting them she catching seas, getting beauty rest, Acting your age to make for good story Knock one back, no bug, no worry.

No one ever talks about the shots they didn't take drinks.