Stone People: Back Again (and Again and …)
By K. Schipper
YORBA LINDA, Calif. – For Tony Beber, his theme song for the past decade is an easy choice: “That’s Life.”
In less than a decade he’s been “…up and down and over and out” as he sold one stone shop, got the boot from another, and now operates RCS Custom Stoneworks in shared space in Orange, Calif., as well as from an office in Yorba Linda.
And, just like in the song, after each obstacle, “I picked myself up and got back in the race.”
Or, as Beber says, “I’m still excited about the stone industry; I don’t want to do anything else.”
SURVIVOR – ORANGE COUNTY
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It’d be understandable if, after the way his working life evolved over the last few years, Beber just decided to curl up in a ball in some corner. However, he’s a survivor – “What choice do I have?” he asks – and a born entrepreneur taught by his father to give his all.
“As long as I can remember, he used to say, ‘You had better do it right or don’t do it at all. Give 100 percent in whatever you do, because that’s how you’re going to feel right about what you did,’” Beber relates.
For more than 20 years, Beber devoted 100 percent to developing and growing Anaheim Centsible Tile Inc. (Stone Business, August 2003) Armed with a college degree in marketing and real-world experience helping to set tile, Beber opened the business in a 90-ft² office space in a carpet store on Anaheim, Calif.’s “Tile Mile,” South State College Blvd.
Unique at the time for not only selling the tile but also installing it, the company developed a reputation for doing first-rate work while slowly adding other products – including stone tile and eventually stone countertops – to its business mix.
At its peak, Anaheim Centsible Tile offered everything from ceramic and stone tile, carpet and wood flooring to stone bathrooms and kitchens, and employed almost 50 people, (including 18 in the stone shop), all from a 12,000-ft² showroom and 5,000-ft² fabrication shop – just a few doors down from where the business started in the same strip center.
Beber was also wearing out, and in May 2006 he chose to sell the business. The sale came after almost 10 months of negotiations, and Beber then went to work doing sales for the company.
That arrangement lasted less than six months. The new owners began out-sourcing fabrication work to keep down the costs. At the same time, Beber hadn’t received a check for his sales work, even though he estimated he was doing about 70 percent of the sales.
Matters came to a head when his wife, Candice, said, “’You’re even working harder for them than you ever worked for yourself, and I never thought that was possible,’” Beber relates. “That was when I said, ‘It’s time for me to get things settled and get paid.’ They didn’t even give me 15 minutes to get all my stuff.”
After two years in court, Beber won the battle but lost the war. Although a judge found for him on every complaint and imposed a financial judgment, the company closed and filed for bankruptcy.
Beber then went into a partnership and opened a new stone-fabrication shop. Three years later, he found himself locked out of that shop and back in court. (The matter is still under litigation.)
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While Beber did have a run of phenomenally bad luck, he still had some friends, which proved to be a blessing, since he said the lock-out left him “a man without a country.”
“I had a lot of clients that had been all referral work to me over the years – California Pizza Kitchen, Tiffany & Co., high-end residential contractors – and they all said, ‘What are we going to do?’” Beber says. “I have a very good friend named Cedric Graham that I’d known for years. He has a really nice shop – Royal Marble and Granite.
