Introduced to the U.S. market around a decade ago, gauged porcelain tile panels have experienced consistent growth in popularity, Over time and thanks to tremendous education and training led by Crossville and the industry, architects, interior designers, and installers continuously come to better understand the material and the breadth of applications available due to the large sizing in feet instead of inches. From installations with minimal grout lines to retrofitting directly over other surface materials, the benefits of Crossville’s gauged porcelain tile panels are just as expansive as the colors and styles offered.
Get an in-depth look at this important product category in our recent episode of Tile Tech Talk. Noah Chitty, Crossville’s director of technical services, discusses a range of topics that will enhance designers’ understanding of sizes, standards, technical services and much more. (Find the full transcript for this interview at the end of this blog post.)
A great example of installing Crossville’s gauged porcelain tile panels directly over other surfaces and reducing demolition time and costs would be the recent renovation at Northwestern University’s Annenberg Hall. Check out the story here. The installation at Northwestern University’s Annennberg Hall featured Blend and I Naturali.
With outer dimensions measured in feet—not inches, a lean profile of just 3+mm, and a lighter weight than many other wall cladding materials, the Crossville tile panels offered a modern, sleek surfacing solution that was ideal for the Circle Health lobby. Learn more about the unique installation here. Crossville’s tile panel products installed at Circle Health include Oxide and Filo.
Exterior and interior wall cladding featuring beautiful styles and low maintenance can be achieved with Crossville’s gauged porcelain tile panels. Blending the beautiful neutral color tones of Calce Nero and I Naturali Pietra de Savoia Grigia, the entrance lobby at 801 South Figueroa in Los Angeles revels in a sophisticated, contemporary style. The tile panels were installed in the exterior portion of the entrance to seamlessly transition to the interior lobby area. Check out the installation here. Crossville tile panel products installed at 801 South Figueroa include Calce and I Naturali.
Video Transcript
Tile Tech Talk Episode 4
Noah Chitty, Crossville’s Director of Technical Services, Discusses Gauged Porcelain Tile Panels
Irene:
Okay. We are back for another Tile Tech Talk with Noah Chitty of Crossville, our resident guru. Today, we’re going to be talking about gauged porcelain tile panels. A continuously growing category for the tile industry. And we’re going to approach it…obviously a lot of folks will be listening to this, watching this will be familiar with gauged porcelain tile panels…but we’re going to start with the basics for anyone who might be new or not familiar. We want to cover the core bases so that everyone can be a part of the conversation, get where we’re coming from.
Irene:
Noah, could you just, straight out of the gate–I mean, this is basic question–but what is a gauged porcelain tile panel?
Noah Chitty:
Okay. Well, I guess we have to define it by the standards that we have now. According to standards, ANSI 137.3 is the standard for gauged porcelain tile and gauged porcelain tile panels/slabs. It is defined as… I mean, I could read the exact definitions, but that’s where the product standard sits for panels of porcelain that are produced to a specific thickness, and then this standard, it covers everything from three millimeters to six and a half. It’s basically a product standard for panels in the eighth inch to quarter inch range.
Noah Chitty:
It does address them in two different size range. It calls them a gauged porcelain tile if they are less than a square meter, and a gauged porcelain tile panel or slab if they are a square meter or more.
Irene:
Okay.
Noah Chitty:
That’s where the definition lies. I mean, after that it’s really just breaking strength and sizing and that kind of thing.
Irene:
Right. And obviously, when we’re talking the panels, those are very large in terms of outer dimensions.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah, for us, we’re talking about and eighth inch or a quarter inch thick panel. Ours are one meter by three meters, so basically 39 inches by 118 inches, give or take an inch. And then, we actually through the same process create our countertops too, which are bigger sized, 12 millimeters thick, but they fall outside the standard. If we’re just talking about our panels, the eighth inch and quarter inch material for us and basically a little over three foot by 10 foot. There are larger panels out there.
Irene:
Wow.
Noah Chitty:
In the quarter inch range.
Irene:
Yeah. I remember when we first introduced this category, a lot of people were calling it thin tile because it’s such a lean profile, and quickly people like intervened to change the nomenclature to reflect that they can be thicker, and something that, to this day, I do when I write about this product and share information with audiences on social media or through editorial placements is I always add somewhere very often I add it’s “tile measured in feet, not inches.”
Noah Chitty:
Right.
Irene:
When you say tile, you immediately start to think very familiar sizes, and I’m like, “No, think really big.”
Noah Chitty:
Yeah. I mean the term thin, the term thin was there for a while because they were thinner than the tile products that we had used to been using. I think for a lot of us, the big nature of it, the size was more different than the thin. But we couldn’t keep using the word thin because we knew the technology was going to allow us to make thicker and thicker and larger and larger tiles. Thin just didn’t… Plus, there were some that thought thin had a bad connotation, and some that thought it had, depending on how you were using it, look at the low profile, you can do tile over tile, thin was great. Look at the something else where somebody questioned whether it was durable enough, then thin wasn’t something they wanted to do. But it wasn’t the right term for creating standards and moving the category forward.
Irene:
Yeah. Definitely.
Noah Chitty:
But we still use it. [crosstalk 00:04:24]
Irene:
It still comes out.
Noah Chitty:
You still hear people call it thin tile.
Irene:
Right. I still hear it too. What is the history of this category? I don’t know how much you know, but I know it took a while for it to come over to the US. Could you give us a little bit of insight into the path of how this became something so prominent?
Noah Chitty:
Yeah. I would say, I mean, I guess if we wanted to start in the beginning, I think around 2000, the first machines were created that would produce a tile that was larger than ever before. And then, what happened was the manufacturers of that equipment started to sell it to other people who started to make some products. But in a lot of cases, it was such a new innovation that they couldn’t sell the equipment, which is what they wanted just to manufacturers without proving that the product that it produced was a viable product. They set up factories like the one that we use, Laminam, with the equipment so a product could be made that then the market could then start to accept and that kind of thing. And I believe the philosophy was if we create a market by showing the product that this equipment can produce, then more manufacturers will buy the manufacturing equipment. That process obviously takes a little while to create a market.
Noah Chitty:
I would say between 2000 and 2010, that was where it was. Products started to be created, getting out there in the architectural design community. Outside of the United States, I would say a lot of the beginning ones, and then more heavy in the US for probably the last 10 years. I would say where at least a mere seven or eight for us where we’ve been bringing this product in and selling it here.
Noah Chitty:
I think it’s probably the total market’s probably got almost a 20-year history now, but if you talk to people, I would say maybe 12 years if you count maybe five pretty solid in Europe before seven or eight here. You could say it’s in the 12 to 13 range. I don’t think it’s going anywhere now. I mean, now it’s a category, and we’ve got some infrastructure around it.
Irene:
Yeah. Crossville is usually relatively conservative in its approach to bringing in new things and a very measured approach to make sure the market is able to accept anything new. In light of the broader category, how did Crossville fit into the mix in bringing it over here and making it a viable option for people to specify?
Noah Chitty:
I mean, before Crossville brought in inventory and really started to push it, there were a few bringing in some inventory from overseas and that kind of thing. I would say that we decided pretty early on that it was going to be a new category of material that had real potential in the marketplace. The first thing we did was just find a partner in Laminam who we could then partner with to start to bring these materials to the US.
Noah Chitty:
But it started pretty early on with an understanding that if you just hand, and let’s take the worst case scenario, not a material, but of what you had to teach somebody, and eighth inch thick piece of 10 foot tall by three foot wide porcelain, if you didn’t start to get some training to contractors, then you weren’t going to be viable.
Noah Chitty:
I would say we did two things early on as Crossville besides just bringing inventory in the US in a pretty large quantity to have available. We thought standards developed was important to create an infrastructure to the category and we thought training of tile contractors was going to be super important. Because we could get the materials specified. That didn’t seem to be a problem. The design community loved beautifully aesthetic material with less grout joints. That wasn’t a problem. But if you got the job, you had to have somebody to put it in, and if the contractor or the installer was uncomfortable, then it was going to increase the price of installation and it was going to drive people away from the product.
Irene:
Yeah.
Noah Chitty:
Those are probably the first two things that we did from a technical services side was to really look at what standards are needed and what type of training for the installation community in order to grow the category.
Irene:
Yeah. I mean, I remember it being truly exciting to have something so innovative to bring to the market and talk about, and the potential. In terms of installation potential, how are you… did you see it being used and what has been the evolution of product application?
Noah Chitty:
I think in the beginning because we were trying to figure out where it was going to go, I think a lot of the conversation that we had was about tile over tile, because remember we started with just the three millimeter material. We didn’t have the thicker one yet, and a lot of that conversation in the early days was whether three millimeter could go on both the walls and the floor because where there were a few manufacturers who were putting three millimeter on the floor. But we quickly realized that that might be great if you have a trained installation community and a different type of construction that I think a lot of these manufacturers who are bringing the products over from Italy and other places got that different construction, don’t have wood frame construction and those kind of things.
Noah Chitty:
For us, we saw three millimeter as risky in the potential of a fledgling category as things could go wrong there. We saw the three millimeter was a wall product. We quickly within a year got a thicker product, our 5.6 that we felt was we could go on the floor if it installed correctly.
Noah Chitty:
But in the beginning, we talked about tile over tile a lot because you could go in and you could refresh a shower or an elevator lobby without adding a lot of bulk thickness to the installation or weight because the product is so lightweight.
Noah Chitty:
But since those early days, I would say it’s not just being used like that anymore. It’s in new construction, and it’s being all kinds of different things people are doing with it. One of the things that’s been interesting lately is we have so now, so gauge porcelain tile is what we’re talking about, and we’re going to talk about eighth inch and quarter inch material. But now, we have 12 millimeter that we call porcelain countertop to porcelain slabs, and there’s been an interesting thing in the last year, if you take COVID of whatever the last year means, that fabricators are looking at gauge porcelain tile, the eighth inch and quarter inch material as a way to expand their business, and tile contractors are looking at the 12 millimeter material looking to as a way to expand their business into some of that fabrication type thing.
Noah Chitty:
That evolution of who’s using the material, and what are they using it for, and what are they creating with it. Is it furniture and reception desks? Or is it walls and floors? I think it’s immensely evolved into the market in what people are doing with it, and mainly because people are getting more comfortable with the material. Nobody’s the guinea pig anymore. These installations have been done and been done successfully.
Irene:
When I share this talk, I’ll include a link to on the Crossville website we have a lot of case studies, and exterior, interior, one of my favorites that’s relatively new at the point where we were recording this is a residential high rise condo that had a long expansive wall, and they used two kinds of Crossville porcelain tile panels. But part of them it’s on a hidden door.
Noah Chitty:
Oh, nice.,
Irene:
A hidden door that leads to a master suite. And because it’s such a lean profile and so expansive in size, it looks seamless, but surprise, there’s a door there. [crosstalk 00:12:28]
Noah Chitty:
Yeah, it’s beautiful. Doors are a little bit tough because we had some of those very early pictures of doors, and there’s no real rules around doors because is it a metal door, is it a wooden door, is it a pocket door, is it a sliding door? People have called and like, “How do I do a door?” It’s like, “Let’s start with what does your door look like?”
Irene:
Yeah. Big topic.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah.
Irene:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:12:51] Yeah, some really beautiful case studies, and they keep coming in. From my vantage point, it’s interesting to see how quickly that uptick occurred because we’ve been collecting them for years now, and now it’s pretty consistent that we see a lot of those contributed.
Irene:
In terms of obviously we’re at a point where there’s market acceptance, there are educated installers who are able to work with it, how has the setting material side of the industry stepped up to support this growing category?
Noah Chitty:
I think we work with every major setting material manufacturer in the beginning to make sure that we’re recommending the right mortars and that kind of thing. I think the evolution has been that in the beginning, we were taking… We had this new piece of tile that had to have some different installation practices. And then, we can get into this in a minute, but the first thing was to create an installation standard. First, you had to have a product standard, the one we talked about, but probably as important if not more important was the installation standard, and we can kind of get into that.
Noah Chitty:
We worked with all the mortar manufacturers in the beginning to find the right materials to go with it, especially if the material has a fiberglass mesh on the back because that’s a little different than bonding to straight porcelain. I would say the way it’s evolved with a lot of the mortar manufacturers, not all, but most, they looked at the materials that we were taking off the shelf and that we were tweaking. Not really changing what they were supposed to do, but say taking it to if you have a range of water that you’re supposed to add to the material.
Noah Chitty:
What we were doing was taking that to the highest end of the range. Because we were traveling out so much inset of the back of the panel and on the sub straight at the same time, we really needed the mortar to have a long open time before it started to dry out or extend. But we didn’t have mortars specifically made to put 10 feet of tile up before. We were using the mortars that we had in order to get them to do what we wanted to do, which was basically stay open long enough for us to get the panel married to the wall or the floor, and then when we’re going to try and embed it and get all the air out, that the mortar’s still flowable and usable in order to let that happen. That was the two things that we needed.
Noah Chitty:
We used what we had in order to get there in the beginning, and I would say in the last few years, what we’ve seen mortar manufacturers do is create some materials specifically for the category that gave you those things, gave you the strength when you needed it, the extended open time when you needed it, and was made to work with the material in a different way.
Noah Chitty:
And then, the last couple of years, we’ve even seen some of the materials evolve to new technologies, maybe a hybrid technology of not a cement based mortar, but more of an adhesive type mortar, which [inaudible 00:15:47] installation and reduced weight and that kind of thing. We’ve seen a couple of the mortar manufacturer, the setting material manufacturers moves in that direction.
Noah Chitty:
Everything’s evolved, so in those early days, the tools have evolved, the setting materials have evolved, standards have evolved. It’s not a [crosstalk 00:16:06]. Yeah, go ahead.
Irene:
Yeah, speak to the standards. You mentioned that that was really a precursor to any of this is getting those standards in place. How did that happen? What associations were involved? All that good stuff.
Noah Chitty:
Oh, man. The background because it is a lot of work. What we felt was okay, one is we’ve got to make two communities comfortable with gauge porcelain tile in order for it to really grow as a category and be a solid piece of the piece. We have to create comfortability in the specification market. And the only way to create comfortability in the specification market is to create a standard and say, “Hey, we’re going to make sure that if you specify this, that you get some minimum performance criteria that you can feel comfortable about.” And I think that is absolutely necessary for somebody who says, “Well, I want to use the material, but how do I know the material’s going to be okay?” You need to be able to say, “Hey, it’s manufactured to these minimum quality standards, and we know that’s going to be successful.”
Noah Chitty:
And then, you need to have something for the installer so the installer doesn’t think, “Well, I’ve got five different manufacturers telling me to install this in five different ways. There’s no standards for how I install it, so if something happens, that sounds like it’s all on me. Because they’re going say the material was fine and you just installed it incorrectly.”
Noah Chitty:
What we really needed to do was have the this is the way you install it. If you get this material that has a minimum performance, a quality material, and you install it in this way, we can prove that it can perform in these ways. Those two things to make those two communities more comfortable for the future, the installation community and the specification, the A&D market, we had to create standards.
Noah Chitty:
The first thing we did was create a product standard. Here’s what the product is because you can’t say how to install it until you say what it is. We learned that with other standards in the past. We created ANSI 137.3. The product standard. Here’s what it must meet. Breaking strength, water absorption, all those kind of things.
Noah Chitty:
At the same time, we created ANSI A108.19. You asked who the players were and that kind of thing. In the beginning, the product standard took five years to complete. In the beginning, what Crossville did, and some of this stuff we normally don’t talk about because you do a lot of this stuff behind the scenes. What Crossville did was try to get the other manufacturers who were selling the material in the US to come together and collaborate on creating a standard. But a lot of the manufacturers were outside of your and not part of the process of the things in general where there’s less, especially installation standards in Europe. There aren’t as much. There’s product standards, but not as much installation.
Noah Chitty:
We spent a little while saying, “Hey, let’s all rally together,” because we’re a tiny little market now. But when we grow a huge market, we’re going to have all these materials coming in from places where we don’t know what the quality is, and how bad would that be for us to create a market, then others bring in inferior material in and destroy?
Noah Chitty:
We spent about a year trying to rally the troops of competitive manufacturers. And there wasn’t a lot of interest for whatever reason. After maybe a year or two, and this is before we started the five-year process, we pushed the issue a little bit by saying, “Okay, well we’re going to at last going to put on paper what our material will do, and if you guys are willing to then come to the table, then we can start to establish a baseline of what our material.” Because at that point, all the materials on the market were pretty high quality materials. There wasn’t an inferior one we were trying to weed out at that point.
Noah Chitty:
We did that. We had to invest some money to do a pretty large scale testing project to establish the first baseline of information. We did that, and that kind of started to bring some people to the table. And then, three years into that process, when we knew we were able two years left to create it, we started the installation standard because the goal was to release a product standard and an installation standard at the same time. That would have been the ideal outcome.
Noah Chitty:
Three years in, two years before we were done, we started an installation standard, and it took us two years to write ANSI A108.19, which is the interior installation standard for gauge porcelain tile using thin set cement-based mortars. And both of those standards passed.
Noah Chitty:
You asked who was involved. There was an ad hoc group of the ANSI 108 committee, which is a 65-member committee. There were 10 of us on an ad hoc group that basically draft the standard and then send it to committee. It was a completely different group of tile manufacturers working on the product standard at the same time. I was kind of uniquely, I was in both, working with the manufacturers in the product standard and trying to push the installation standard. Because I really felt like the installation standard was more important than the product standard. I knew we couldn’t have one without the other, but telling people how to install it. Because what we saw even when we started to train tile contractors was this manufacturer was telling to do it this way, and this manufacturer was… And everybody was doing the best they could with what the information they had, but it still left everybody kind of, “Well, which is the right way?”
Noah Chitty:
At year five, we had both documents created, and we sent them to committee. And I think as a sign of the really good job we did to seek consensus and be thorough about the process, both of those standards passed on their first ballot, which isn’t usually the case. Normally you’ve got to go through some process of, “I don’t like this or I don’t like that.” We’ve had that for over two years now. We’ve had 137.3 and A108.19.
Noah Chitty:
I mean, I can keep talking about it because there’s more going on [crosstalk 00:22:34].
Irene:
No, it’s so interesting. [crosstalk 00:22:35] Yeah. I mean, I think the value in what you’re sharing is for people to understand how much goes into ensuring the product and the installation process is verifiable.
Noah Chitty:
Right.
Irene:
I mean, that’s a big deal, and we appreciate what’s happening out in the marketplace and it exceeds [crosstalk 00:22:55].
Noah Chitty:
Well, do you want me to finish the story?
Irene:
Yeah, please.
Noah Chitty:
Because we’re still working on stuff. I mean, so A108.19, the interior installation standard was finished two years ago. There were no negatives at ballot, but there were affirmative with comments. There were some things that people, so it doesn’t stop a standard from getting produced. What we did was basically let that standard go out into the market for two years and let anymore things that people saw about it, so actually within the last year, we balloted a revision to A108.19. And the main two things that we changed I would say was there’s a section in A108.19 for qualified labor where it says you really need to hire somebody who’s been trained to install panels. That’s going to be the best way for you to be successful. We expanded that section a little bit because more people are starting to train. Now, that’s set.
Noah Chitty:
It used to just say from a setting material or tile manufacturer gets some training and show a certificate of completion. Or use an ACT certification, which is a skillset test, which shows that you already know how to do it. We added NTCA, National Tile Contractors Association, and the work the IMI does through the union. They’re both doing training. We added that in as to another place you could get training.
Noah Chitty:
And then, we made a non-mandatory appendix to give people a little bit of a roadmap to what you should train, what training means. That’s out now. If you have A108.19 from two years ago, you should really get A108.19 from three months ago. That book’s been republished and that new stuff is in there.
Noah Chitty:
Then we started almost the day we got published A108.19, somebody in the committee spoke up and said, “Well, why is it just interior? She may have an exterior installation standard too?” As I quietly tried to back out of the room to put five years plus two years of work.
Irene:
No kidding, yes.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah. We basically started two years ago working on an exterior installation standard just for vertical. I think it says vertical overhead , soffits, that kind of thing–not horizontal. That went to ballot two months ago. And it appears that we will pass ballot on the first shot. There were 10 of us that worked on that too. It’s probably still got a couple of months to go through the ANSI process to get approved, but it appears we will now have an interior and an exterior installation standard.
Irene:
That’s great.
Noah Chitty:
Sort of the last piece of the puzzle for gauge porcelain tile I think in my mind is handbook methods. We have TC in a handbook for installation guidelines, so it’s now kind of been decided that gauge porcelain tile should not just be shoved into the current details, which covers ceramic and glass tile. But they should maybe have their own details. Even though there’s not that much different, it’s a little weird to mash them all up together.
Irene:
Gotcha.
Noah Chitty:
The thought process is maybe we can create gauge porcelain handbook details for… that can sit with those other two installation standards, interior and exterior, maybe with product standard, and they can all sit together. We’ve been working on that for the last year trying to get some consensus behind handbook details. And that will really be, that’ll be kind of the last piece of the puzzle in my mind to an infrastructure. Product standard, installation standard, inside and out, and guidelines for TCA handbook details. That’s where we’re at with what the next step is.
Irene:
You’re so important in that process. I mean, you’re part of the industry at large. It’s a journey.
Noah Chitty:
Before I came to Crossville, I worked for another manufacturer in [inaudible 00:26:43] services, but before that, I ran the lab in standard development at Tile Council. It gives me a perspective because I knew what had to be done in order to get it done. I can at least bring that little skillset to the table when others are trying to do it.
Noah Chitty:
And now, even last week, the new thing is two centimeter pavers, which we don’t manufacture, but there are some US manufacturers, so that 137.3 standard, the product standard that covers eighth inch to quarter inch thick material, we always thought of it when we created as, well, what if things got thicker and we needed… Now we’ve got table four for thin and table five I think for eighth inch and quarter inch. Would we need a table six, seven, eight as things got thicker?
Noah Chitty:
Now, the conversation is a little bit of whether 137.3 should be expanded to include the 2 cm pavers that we use for rooftops and landscaping material. And then, that brings to the conversation of should there be a standard for 12 millimeter porcelain slabs for countertops? Should all that, do all those need a product standard or an installation standard? It appears to never stop.
Irene:
Clearly. Wow.
Noah Chitty:
There’s always something to do, but if you don’t put in the work to create those things in the background that in my mind, and I think in our company’s mind because obviously we’re spending money and time to do these things, that that’s what you’ve got to do to create longterm viability. Anybody can sell a truckload of something once, but if you want to be selling it for the next 30 years and you want growth to increase every year, these are the things that have to happen in the background, whether you do them or somebody else does them.
Irene:
So true.
Noah Chitty:
But we’re doing good. Things are progressing, and lots of people coming to the table. That’s the good and the bad about committees right, is you’ve got consensus that you have to seek, which is difficult, but it also, those committees are all making sure that it’s not just manufacturers. It’s manufacturers and installers and architects. Everybody’s viewpoint is coming to the table to make the final standard the best it can be.
Noah Chitty:
In that way, I think we create good things that are very usable for the market and do help grow the market at the end.
Irene:
Right. And what is the process with all that hard work in getting the message out? I mean, I know we’re having this conversation that hopefully some folks will watch. But how do we make sure that the market is aware of all that effort that assures them of the standards to then specify confidently?
Noah Chitty:
Probably the best way is just we try with education. We wrote a CEU to make sure that people understood what the standards were and that kind of thing. For five years, we had literature that said, “Here’s the way we think you should install it.” We had to change all of our literature to say, “You should install it per this industry standard.” That gets the information out.
Noah Chitty:
And then, I think a lot of it is just talking to people and just taking that opportunity. We need to educate our A&D reps in order to have that conversation in order to get that information put into the specification. You can create a guide spec, like a generic guide spec that somebody who is a spec writer could reference to get the right numbers into their own specification. We did a presentation for IMI a few weeks ago, and we used one of our CEUs to do that, and that contained some information. I know they’ve been a great… I’ve got a friend, Scott Conwell at IMI who’s just been a great advocate for education and training and that kind of thing. There’s a bunch of people pushing the message about how to do it right and how to do it from the top level down.
Irene:
Yeah.
Noah Chitty:
From the specification, from the initial conversation down. [inaudible 00:31:03] It takes time for anything to get traction. There’s not a doubt about that.
Irene:
Very much so.
Noah Chitty:
I think we’re doing a pretty good job at it.
Irene:
Like I said over the years, to see the actual case studies come in, which means this product is getting specified and people really understand how cool it is. Is there anything new? I know if for Crossville specifically, we’ve got some new looks coming out in the new future at the time that we’re recording this, so the beautiful tile itself is certainly great to talk about and you have addressed pavers and some things like that. Is there anything else we should be on the lookout for or?
Noah Chitty:
As far as gauge porcelain tile? Where the technology’s going? I don’t think it’ll get too much bigger. I mean, we’re at three foot by 10 foot, and others are at five foot by 10 foot. I don’t see the piece getting that much bigger. The evolution seems to be going… Right now what we do is we sell gauge porcelain tile, eighth and a quarter inch. We feel like the direction should be tile contractor, tile install. Where 12 millimeter or if you had 20 millimeter fabricator countertop furniture installed. But like I said before, those worlds are meshing a little bit.
Noah Chitty:
I think where the technology going is what can we create, what products can we create for what market, and that could possibly change. Some of the panels I would say the direction is can we put veins through the body, that’s for sure a technology that’s starting to emerge. Some are doing it in this way, some are doing it in that way. I would say it’s still somewhat in the beginning stages of what it can be. But when you want to compete, it’s not so much I think for the thinner materials where that’s important, but for the thicker materials where you want to compete against natural stone and quartz, where they’re thicker and you can just profile the edge, that could be something that could help grow the market. Although, we’re pushing the 12 millimeter. The market’s going minimalistic. And at 12 millimeter, I think the technology through body veining is less important. But I think that’s one of the place it’s going.
Noah Chitty:
And then, they just keep getting better at inkjet printing and manufacturing. I mean, the looks are just unbelievable.
Irene:
Beautiful.
Noah Chitty:
Sometimes you don’t even know if they’re not… You got to walk around them and see if there’s a back pattern to see if it’s not natural stone.
Irene:
Isn’t that wild?
Noah Chitty:
I think you’ll see that with the new looks that we’re coming out with. And then, we’re also exploring some of those technologies of where does the veining go or what kind of body look are you going to have? That seems to be the next evolution for the moment.
Irene:
Right.
Noah Chitty:
But every two years, they bring something new to the equipment fair. And we see where it goes.
Irene:
How does this product category speak to issues of sustainability? Is this a good option for those specifying where sustainability is a priority?
Noah Chitty:
Yeah, probably not. In the beginning, we talked about sustainability from the standpoint of hey, this material’s lighter. Normal tile’s about four to five pounds per square foot. Our thinnest panel at eighth inch is 1.7 pounds per square foot, and the thick one’s 2.9. You’re cutting weight by somewhere between 50% and 60, 70%. Just the amount of material you could get on a truck could help with those kind of sustainability questions of just environmental impact. Plus the actual, these new presses that they’ve created, they’re actually more energy efficient too. And when you fire something thinner, you’re using less energy in the [inaudible 00:35:12]. We kind of looked at those as sustainability messages. Then we took kind of look at tile over tile as also a sustainability message because if you didn’t have to rip any existing installations, if we could give you a thin enough profile to not rip out existing installations, and not have to put that material in landfill, there’s a sustainability message there for sure.
Noah Chitty:
I would say it’s evolved from lightweight, efficient manufacturing, and none of the original goes away. You just add onto it, to the sustainability message of not land filling tile over tile. And now, the market’s asking for new things with new versions of lead and other building rating systems.
Noah Chitty:
For our panels specifically, we now have an EPD, an environmental product declaration, and HPD, a health product declaration, and a declare label from the living building challenge institute things. And all of those show, what really a lot of tile will show in general, which is not hazardous materials, we can be very transparent about what’s in it for the end user, and then our environmental impact. Because some people really want to understand greenhouse gases and carbon footprint and those kind of things. I think we have evolved the message of sustainability, and we’ve got a pretty good message with the panels for the marketplace. Whatever path of sustainability they’re looking for, I think we have something to offer there.
Irene:
Yeah, and those selling points for sustainability translate the installation efficiency of tile over tile. I mean, somebody doing a renovation where time is key and-
Noah Chitty:
Yeah, when you can turn a hotel room or a hospital room back over faster, the cost of material and install is really not the deciding factor. Getting somebody into that room, whether it’s a hotel room or a hospital room, is worth way more money than a couple of dollars per square foot in tile.
Irene:
Absolutely. Yeah, we see a lot of that in our case studies, that it was selected because of that tile over tile capability. Pretty impressive.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah. Yeah. But we see more and more of it in new construction now, and more and more floors. Definitely people doing all kinds of different things with it.
Irene:
Do you have a sense between residential and commercial for the panel category?
Noah Chitty:
I don’t really have a sense. I mean, I would say as Crossville, I think we use the numbers of we’re 80% commercial, 20% residential. But then we have a distribution over to the Crossville studios, and I don’t think those numbers are the same there as far as 80/20. I think there’s a lot more residential sales going on with that part of the company.
Noah Chitty:
The other thing that I would… We used to spend a lot of time training tile contractors. And I felt like we concentrated on commercial.
Irene:
Sure. Yeah, that [crosstalk 00:38:15].
Noah Chitty:
This database of 2000 people that us and our setting material partners had trained. I think they were mostly commercial. Now it’s interesting that five years into it, we’re seeing more of a push into residential. Whereas two years ago, we said, “Okay, we’re going to ramp down this training effort because it was a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year to keep going on with the effort.” We still get people coming who want to get training, even seven years, because we did it for five years pretty solid. Somewhere between 10 and 25 classes a year in Crossville or other places.
Noah Chitty:
But now I think there’s a lot more residential people wanting to get into it. We decided last year that we would use the national tile contractors association is actually before COVID, was doing in-person training session around the country using the standards as the basis for training. And that way, the message and the training can spread a lot faster than just the small technical services team in Crossville doing something in Crossville.
Irene:
Right.
Noah Chitty:
Not only did it decrease what we had to spend, but it got us where we needed to go. I think what we’ll see is a lot of that will focus on the residential. It’ll be the guys that weren’t doing it, and were watching it, and see where it goes that now see the potential in it going in, especially if they’re competing in really hard markets where the labor costs are low and everybody can put in 12 by 24s for something that barely gets them by. They can become niche and they can become, it can be something better that they can offer that the competitors aren’t. I think we’ll see [crosstalk 00:39:57] to residential.
Irene:
Right. Right. Yeah. I know in some of our show house opportunities, we’ve seen designers use the panels on fireplace surrounds so beautiful and shower walls. That efficiency that works for commercial often works for residential too.
Noah Chitty:
And we also tell people for residential, don’t always assume that you’ve got to use a full-sized panel. Why not cut it in half? Make it easier to get in your house and up the stairs, or I mean, really [crosstalk 00:40:26] joints. You can be okay with one now.
Irene:
Right.
Noah Chitty:
We do say don’t have an expectation that it has to be this huge thing. It can easily be and it’s easily cut in the field, [inaudible 00:40:39] and snap. I think we can utilize some of that for residential, which is think beyond.
Irene:
Right. That’s the new opportunity, yeah, even for back splashes in the kitchen, that kind of thing. Yeah, so it’s just a matter of having that capability, having a great product, and then getting creative about where it goes, and that’s part of the fun of our industry is getting this new innovation.
Noah Chitty:
And the tools and the skillsets out there are evolving incredibly fast too. If somebody wants to learn, they can learn.
Irene:
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, awesome. Well, this has been some fabulous information, Noah, as usual.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah. Hope it wasn’t too much. I mean, I know [crosstalk 00:41:22] standard stuff is-
Irene:
This is the chance to go deep. I think that’s the good part about our Tile Tech Talk is because we have our talking points, and we share a lot of this information elsewhere, and certainly those CEUs are out there, but to have a true conversation where you, who live and breathe this, and have been so vital to the progression, can give us the scoop. I love it. I love it.
Noah Chitty:
I’m ready for a new subject. I mean, we’re going to keep working on this one, but you know what I mean?
Irene:
Yeah.
Noah Chitty:
I mean, we still have people say, “Well, I’ve just been introduced to this product.” Even today.
Irene:
I know.
Noah Chitty:
[crosstalk 00:42:02] Eight years I’ve been, eight years we’ve been working on things. [crosstalk 00:42:08]
Irene:
And that’s why I wanted to start at base level with this conversation because there are going to be people who are newly interior designers, they haven’t been introduced, whatever their story, there are always going to be people out there that are new to this. Certainly that’s why I always mention measured in feet, not inches. When I say tile, don’t limit what you’re picturing in your mind. This is the big stuff.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah. I appreciate the opportunity to have the conversation about it because I don’t think… We do all this stuff in the background as Crossville. And we don’t scream about it from the mountain tops. It’s not what we do. But we do a lot to try and make sure, and I hope that the customers come to us not only find that we have… I honestly believe the highest quality product in the market, but we can bring knowledge of all of this other information to bear and to make their project successful, and we do that from a place of understanding of a lot of the background and how things got to where they are. I hope that provides value to our customers.
Irene:
I would imagine it will.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah. Hope so.
Irene:
For me, I manage the PR and social media, and I always feel so good about the messages I’m bring out to the marketplace because it’s legit. The root system is there.
Noah Chitty:
Yeah, for sure. Everybody’s working hard for that part, so yeah, I think we do a good job at it.
Irene:
Well, awesome. Well, we will share a transcript of this conversation, and I’ll provide links to our case studies, and even the product pages. We will make sure people have every opportunity to get the scoop. Once again, so grateful for your time and all the good scoop.
Noah Chitty:
All right. Sounds good. Thanks so much.
Irene:
Alrighty.
Noah Chitty:
Talk to you soon . Have a great day.
Irene:
All right. Thanks.
