Ciciliot & Son, Schnecksville, Pa.

   With a background of 30+ years in the stone business, Ciciliot – along with his son – serves this north-of-Philadelphia community with customized creations and installs of mostly marble and granite.
   “I started in 1974, and in all those years have done residential and commercial installations, with a little fabrication,” he says. “Not a lot of fabrication; but it’s necessary for some jobs.”
   Those jobs include high-end demanding customers; a clientele that Ciciliot says reflects the migration of moneyed New Yorkers moving into his state – along with other high-profile customers.
   “A lot of our customers are celebrities, like Mario and Michael Andretti,” Ciciliot says, “and most of the others are high-end as well. Actually, that’s most of our business. Ninety percent of our work is residential, and almost all of the clients are upscale.
   “We do a lot of floors, countertops, and a lot of wall areas, mostly in marble, granite and porcelain tile. More people are moving into Pennsylvania, especially into this area, than ever before.
   “And, these clients demand a lot. Back in the day, clients were old-fashioned people, but now New York is moving here – so we do a lot more exclusive work.”
   That isn’t the way it looked back in the days of the late 1960s when Ciciliot & Son first opened – a moniker that, at that time, referred to Henry and Henry’s father.
    “Dad started the business in ’69,” he says. “In ’74 I went with him. At that time, I’d been working for an architect; my degree is in architecture. A lot of my creativity in my business comes from my architectural background.”
   Since he joined the company, Ciciliot has kept the business thoughtful and small. He works out of his home, and maintains a storage area separate from his office.
   Over time, he’s also come to realize his business isn’t about picking out a marble floor and installing it. Instead, it’s a creative process that Ciciliot says most installers haven’t a clue about.
   “We’re a small, family-owned company,” he says. “There are just three of us: my son, Enrico, who is the general manager and who runs the product sales division, and my brother, who installs.
   “We had five employees once,” he adds, “but a lot of the exclusive work we’ve done demands my expertise, so you really can’t grow that much because clients expect me to be there and to supervise and to do the installation.
   “It’s hard to grow in that way unless you’re looking to go toward mass production, but we’re not heading that way. We’re very exacting in the types of jobs we do. Ninety percent of our work is referral.
   “You might be able to grow larger,” he adds, “but what happens is that you’re not the exclusive installer you want to be. That’s what I want to be.”
   Ciciliot drives his customized, hands-on approach to his work even further, insisting upon a creative mind-set – a work of art, if you will – in the end. It’s how Ciciliot feels his company distinguishes itself in the stone trade.
   “We install mostly natural stone; the beauty of natural stone portrays better,” he says “I enjoy the look; each piece is made by God. And, I actually push that because each piece is different.
   “There are a lot of people who install marble and granite. If you look around, you can see, or not see, the expertise within each job. You can see a quality job just by how an installer lays the product.
   “Like laying a marble floor—I take the hour or two or whatever it takes to open the material and see the type of graining that’s portrayed and try to lay the floor like it is its own piece of art.”
   Far beyond installing stone, Ciciliot envisions the end result and crafts his installation process to meet that vision.
   “I’ll run a stone a certain way; I pay attention to that, and show the customer what it is I want to do,” he says. “Most installers don’t do that. They lay it like it comes out of the box. That’s the difference between a professional and just an installer.
   “It has a lot to do with self pride. You have to like what you’re doing. I personally work each job like it is my own home; I respect that job like the end result would end up in be my own home.”
   You don’t install and create works of art in the stone business world for more than three decades without seeing plenty of change – change that doesn’t just speak to product and technology developments and equipment evolution, but also in the clientele’s ability to distinguish premium end results.
   “When we first started, there was a very limited availability of materials,” says Ciciliot. “Then European products came to the market and now there is a plethora of stone products: marble, granite, rich stone.
   “But maybe what we’ve really seen in the evolutionary process is the demand for perfection from our clients,” he says. “What I’ve found is that there are many people in the tile and marble industry, but very few that are good. Our work is in exclusive homes and they demand the best, so they research companies on the quality of work they do. It’s an educated client that you first meet. For us, our referral base just keeps getting larger.”
   But technology also made its inevitable impact on how different Ciciliot’s work life is today than it was in the 1970s. “This is a much-more-technical job than it used to be,” he says. “There are a lot of new products out there, like backerboard and WonderBoard® products. Those didn’t exist 30 years ago. The products like sealers, polishers and cleaners have dramatically improved as well.”
   Today’s products are so advanced and effective, says Ciciliot, that he and his son decided to expand the Ciciliot & Son products and service line by becoming distributors of TENAX products.
   “We’re looking to expand our product sales,” he says. “My son has a business degree and we’ve watched so many fabricating shops evolve in the last 10 years.”
   Henry and Enrico Ciciliot spend little effort, time or money on advertising, due in large part to their reputation preceding them. However, even the well-respected Ciciliots know that the Internet and the expectation of an online presence can’t be escaped.
   “We’ve never really had to advertise,” says Ciciliot. “Though we are looking into doing some advertising with TENEX, right now we’re focused on our Website development, which will be dedicated to both installation and sales.”
   And since taking a 2006 Best of Home Award from Stone Business – somewhat unexpected – Ciciliot has come to appreciate the positive benefits of recognition for one’s work.
   “The Best of Home Award application was the first application for a competition or an award that I’d ever turned in,” he says. “I knew that I’d done some extraordinary projects in the last few years and I saw the application and thought, ‘Why don’t I try that?’ And, of course, now we’re glad we did.”
   Ciciliot keeps a mental list of jobs that he considers to be in that “extraordinary projects” category. “The Michael Andretti job is one of my favorites,” he says. “I had a lot of flexibility of throwing my design into it.
   “But honestly? The jobs that are most memorable are those where the client leaves me freedom to express myself completely. Because of my design background, I can give a lot more; I feel I have good taste and can offer a lot more to the client. When they want creativity – when I can even do woodwork that accompanies it – those are the memorable jobs.”
   And when Ciciliot and his family have had enough of clients and creative products, they return to their origins, where Henry says he gets a lot of inspiration for the creative projects he dreams up and executes on behalf of his sophisticated clientele.
   “We generally go back to Italy every August for a couple of weeks,” he says. “I have lots of cousins back in Italy, so it can be a bit chaotic.
   “But it’s really perfect for my work,” he adds. “Naturally, I’m interested in Italian architecture and there’s nothing like what you see there. It all works together, the art, the architecture, the type of jobs we do and the type of clients we service. It all works very well together.”
    Cathie Beck is a freelance writer and author based in Denver.
  
   This article first appeared in the March 2007 print edition of Stone Business. ©2007 Western Business Media Inc.