Radke Tile and Marble, Carson City, Nev.

March 4, 2003

CARSON CITY, Nev. – If ever there’s a cliché that misses the mark, it’s about the better mousetrap and the path that forms in front of the door. What you may get, instead, is a persistent competitor – or at least that’s how Fred Radtke Jr., explains his company’s expansion into the natural-stone fabrication and installation business 15 years ago.
At that time, only one company in the Carson City, Nev., area, worked in stone. It seemed a natural area to expand for Radtke Tile; because of the quality work the other company was doing, Radtke says his company had to hit the ground doing a first-rate job, as well.
It was a good decision all around. Since that time, the firm grew from a rather modest setting to occupying its own 37,000-ft² building. The space became a real necessity when what’s now Radtke Tile and Marble began investing in some major machinery.
Today, with two CNC machines and more than 70 employees, the company stands as the largest stone slab fabricator and installer in northern Nevada. And, with a new Website up and running to let people see its calibre of work, Radtke believes his firm can only grow larger.

FERTILE SPOT
When Fred Radtke Sr., moved from the San Francisco area to northern Nevada in the early 1970s and opened his own tile company, he was looking for a better place to raise his family. However, it’s also proven to be a fruitful locale for business.
As his only son explains it, the senior Radtke started in the tile business in the Bay Area in the 1960s. When he chose to move to a less-urban setting to raise his three children, he decided on Carson City, Nev., the state’s capital and a community of approximately 50,000.
Although considerably smaller than San Francisco, the area does offer more than just Carson City as a potential market.
“We’re about 30 miles south of Reno, which has a quarter of a million people,” says the younger Radtke. “Lake Tahoe is about 24 miles from here. Generally everyone recognizes Reno and Lake Tahoe, although we serve Gardnerville and some other outlying areas as well.”
Radtke Tile was successful if small, operating out of 1,200 ft² of space in a strip warehouse that it shared with a carpet company. As time went by, his son says the senior Radtke grew bored with the tile business and began to see the potential in the slab industry.
“Like a lot of other people in the industry, he decided to give it a shot,” says Radtke Jr.
He adds that, at the time, only one other company in the area offered natural stonework. And, Radtke says his father appreciated the fact that his soon-to-be competitor did nice work. It also made the senior Radtke aware he would have to match that level of competence.
“We knew we had to do everything first class and get into it in the right way,” says Radtke Jr. “We started small by buying the stone tile. Of course, all the tools that are designed for tile setters also work with slabs, so we got into it with very little investment.”
However, they soon realized that to do the level of work they felt they needed to turn out, they would have to get into stone in a bigger way.
“We quickly got discouraged, as I think many people do,” the younger Radtke says. “The equipment is hard to work with. You can do a good job with it, but it’s difficult and time-consuming. Our only alternative was to start investing in machinery.”
The younger man uses the word, “we,” because he joined the company just as his father began seriously moving into the natural-stone business. That was some 15 years ago, and Fred Radtke Jr., says one of the things that most interested him in joining his dad was that he got in on the ground floor.
“I like to think we built the company together,” says the son. “It’s not really a deal where I followed in his footsteps; we kind of made these footsteps together.”
The company’s first major equipment purchase for the stone side of the operation was a Johnson bridge saw. Next to the company’s commitment to excellence, Radtke Jr., attributes both the current size of Radtke Tile and Marble and its success to that one purchase.
“It was basically jumping in with both feet,” he says. “Once we did that, we were on our way.”
He’s quick to add that the purchase was a good one. The bridge saw cost approximately $22,000 – a fairly modest amount by today’s standards. However, it remained in production in the shop until about 18 months ago, and Radtke finally sold it in 2002.

SERIOUS COMMITMENT
Radtke’s continued his commitment to buying equipment, although the path to success hasn’t always been a smooth one. In fact, the company’s next purchase – a used machine for doing edge detailing – proved to be a good thing only in retrospect.
Radtke describes the equipment as a radial-arm profiler; its purchase was a “good deal,” but trying to fit it and the bridge saw into the space occupied by the tile company was not.
“We were operating in 1,200 ft² and we had our slabs stored outside in the back,” he says. “The carpet company would use the back area to lay out their carpets. We got a little messy – as stone shops do – and the carpet company got us evicted.”
While a larger facility had been in the company’s long-term plans, the eviction really forced an immediate relocation. The end result was a move into a portion of the 37,000-ft² building the firm currently occupies.
“At first, we leased the smaller section,” Radtke explains. “Then, the other people left and we acquired the larger portion of the lease. They came back for awhile, and then we purchased the building from them, so they’ve left again and we have the entire space.”
If buying the bridge saw represents jumping into the stone business with both feet, Radtke says the move into so large a space was really heading into the deep end of the pool. However, he now says it’s been one of the key steps in the company’s growth.
“It really kick-started us,” he says.
Although he doesn’t say as much, the ultimate purchase of the building also marked a turning point in the company’s structure. It was at that point that the younger man purchased Radtke Tile and Marble from the father, becoming its sole owner and president.
“My dad is still in the area and he assists us when and where he can,” says the son. “He’d just reached a point where he didn’t feel he was giving the company the attention it needed.”
At this point, Radtke Jr. admits that his company probably doesn’t need the entire building, and some of the space is used inefficiently just because it’s available. However, he says his father purchased the building mainly as an investment
It’s also allowed the company to become a bit more technology-heavy. Radtke says the company’s first major equipment purchase after its saws for the stone department was a straight-line polisher.
“We were doing a lot of casino work at the time, and it was pretty repetitive,” he says. “We thought our future was going to be in doing a couple hundred vanities for a casino hotel or a lot of other repetitive things, and that’s what it’s made for.”
While the business hasn’t grown in quite that direction, its president says it’s still a useful machine given that just about every kitchen job involves pieces with a straight edge on them. However, the firm has subsequently added two CNC machines to its 15,000-ft² shop.
“We bought our first one used,” he says. “It was used and abused, and my shop foreman went in and rebuilt it. He liked it so much that when we purchased a new CNC machine a year-and-a-half ago, we purchased the same machine. We’re running two Intermac Stone Master machines side-by-side.”
Rather than those repetitive casino jobs, Radtke says much of the work the company is doing today is residential – fueled by the same demand for custom kitchens and baths as much of the rest of the country. However, because of its location, the actual work is a mix of what he describes as, “run-of-the-mill residential,” and some very high-end estates in the Lake Tahoe area.
“I’m talking about the top 10 percent here,” he says. “These are the people who build a mountain cabin or a ski cabin after they’ve finished building the beach house in Hawaii.”
For instance, he cites one job the company did involving all the stonework for a residential property with 60,000 ft² of living space – and 25,000 ft² of it in the main house.
Radtke also continues to do some work for the casinos, but it’s more custom than repetitive.
“We’re willing to do just about anything, including change counters and the trims around the slot machines,” he says. “However, they put stone in a lot of other places. We’ve done some presidential or super suites that rent for $5,000-$6,000 a night, and designed for the high rollers and celebrities who come to town.”
In fact, he says getting the more-repetitive types of work for the casinos is extremely difficult right now. Not only is competition tough, but many of the contractors buy the stone overseas and have it fabricated there.

PLENTY OF PRIDE
Despite his company’s size and emphasis on technology, Radtke Tile and Marble Co. remains pretty much a Nevada-based operation. Sales are still driven mainly by word-of-mouth, although the business placed some newspaper advertising and recently developed a presence on the Web.
“We’re fairly new to advertising,” Radtke Jr. admits. “We’ve only had our Website up for a couple months now. We’ve found our strongest sales point is to get people to see who we are, and compare us to our competitors.”
Since it’s difficult to get people to make the drive from Reno to visit the company’s showroom, Radtke says the Internet offers a viable option for those people to not only see the firm’s facilities, but also view some of its better work.
The showroom itself isn’t all that old, either. Up until about three years ago, the public had no place to see the selection of materials, as well as how they could be installed. Now, the emphasis of the showroom is on installation options, Radtke says.
“We felt it was easier to build a showroom to demonstrate what we can do,” he says. “It’s designed to sell design and skills and labor, as opposed to the stone itself. We’re tried to design it with different ideas in mind, rather than just hanging a bunch of stone and tile on the walls.”
Not surprisingly, design is an important part of the Radtke Tile experience. The firm has an on-staff designer and a design department to make sure each project is exactly what the client wants.
“We find that if we focus primarily on satisfying each customer, the money takes care of itself,” he says.
Interestingly, Radtke believes working with stone is more of a cerebral exercise than working in tile. While the two products compliment each other, working with them involves different philosophies.
With tile, he says that once you’ve figured out your layout, the harder you work and the more gets done. That isn’t always the case with stone.
“Whether it’s installing the slabs or working on the machines in the shop, it’s a constant mental battle with stone,” he says. “You don’t do anything in a hurry. The trick is working smart, as opposed to working hard.”
And, while Radtke says he’s happy to buy and sell any slab as long as it’s good quality, the real pride comes from the challenges and joys of working with each customer, and then fabricating and installing a quality job.
Pride is a word that Radtke uses frequently, and he says it permeates the entire company. For instance, while a small Nevada city wouldn’t seem the most likely place to find first-rate stonemasons, Radtke believes he has them. It didn’t start out that way, but today just about all of them are company-trained and oriented toward careers in stone.
“We’ve made these people ourselves,” he says. “We have machines that only one other company in the area has, and the guys put in a lot of time into training and learning how to operate the machines. Of course, we take care of them, but they’ve dedicated themselves to something very specialized.”
The same holds true with Radtke’s management team, many of whom also joined the company when it first expanded into stone.
“We all feel this great sense of pride in having built the company,” he says. “The majority of the people who work here have dedicated their lives to it, they see it as a career and it’s something they’ve worked hard to build themselves, so of course they take a lot of pride in it.”
Their other secret: “We all have a passion for the stone itself,” Radtke says, adding that’s a key ingredient in what keeps him going, even when business is a little slow.
There isn’t a lot of that lately, either. While the stampede to legalize gambling outside Nevada took away a lot of his commercial work in recent years, there’s been an absolute boom in residential jobs, fueled by stone’s popularity. It’s also due to a large influx of people moving into northern Nevada, for the same reason that Radtke’s family relocated to the area.
“This is a nice place to live, and people are moving in at a rapid rate,” he says. “It’s one of the fastest growing places in the country and that, coupled with the popularity of stone and people becoming educated about stone, seems to predict a great future.”