-: My name's Don Cella,
and I have a custom ceramic tile
manufacturing business in Pittsburgh.
We're actually right in the Strip District,
and the kinda rundown of what we do
is make tiles specifically for customers.
Typically someone would come in,
or call, email, whatever would be the case,
and they'd say, "I really like this tile,
"I'd like to put this trim with it,
"and I'm looking at these couple of glazes,
"and I do have an exposed edge,
"so I'd like some of the edges to be glazed,
"and this is how many feet I need
of that glazed edge, et cetera, et cetera."
and then we also have couple of lines
that are a little more streamlined
that are even less customer service forward, if you will,
they're easier for the homeowner, or architect, designer,
or whatever would be the case,
to figure all that out on their own,
and then we also have done projects that are 110% custom.
Murals, one mural we did, was a map of Pittsburgh,
that all the grout lines
were actually the roadways throughout Pittsburgh,
and we even color-matched and texture-matched
the glaze to that person's countertop.
So, things have kinda gone, that can go any direction,
from ridiculously customized to pretty cut and dry,
and eight to 10 projects going on at once,
but they might all be fireplace hearths for residences
which are not big projects for us.
So they just kinda get tossed in the schedule
where they can fit,
and, as long as they're done in time, great,
where, well then we have other commercial projects,
or just very large residential projects,
that we'll work on them for a couple of weeks at a time.
And we'll squeeze in other projects when we need to if,
okay, well, we've been working on this for two weeks,
and we're still not gonna be done for another week,
but that other, the small project's coming up,
let's get that over Monday, Tuesday,
we'll get them into the kilns,
and then we can know that it's not weighing down on us.
I would say that there's at least one or two days a week.
Changes week by week naturally.
One or two days a week
that I'm in the production room the entire time,
and probably one or two days a week
that I'm in the showroom for most of the day.
And then the other one or two days in the week,
kind of back and forth, jumping all over the place,
making sure everything's going smoothly
in the production room,
putting out fires, not literally, I know we work with kilns,
and then getting drug into the showroom
to go over an invoice or something.