PROFILE – JULY 2008

By Joshua Bodwell

Photography Darren Setlow

One Portland family’s three decades and three generations of tile

At the age of ten, a time when many boys are still messing about in the mud of the school yard, young Joseph Capozza was already working beside his father and learning to mix “mud,” or masonry mortar, and set tile flooring.

Today, the 51-year-old Capozza sits at the helm of Capozza Tile Co., the business his father founded in 1974. He credits the company’s longevity and success in part to the folksy advice his parents instilled in him, counsel like “treat everyone the way you want to be treated,” and “you’ve got to walk before you run.” Though Capozza has seen a sea change in the world of tile and flooring over his three decades in the business, he has kept these familial ideals close to heart.

From the moment Capozza Tile Co. opened, it was the quintessential family business. Set up in the Capozza’s modest home in the North Deering neighborhood of Portland, the garage was the warehouse, and the basement den—which was outfitted with a single filing cabinet, a borrowed desk, a manual typewriter, and a heavy, antiquated adding machine—became the office. Mrs. Capozza, or Doris, brewed coffee and fixed breakfast as the small crew gathered each morning in the little kitchen. After the men left for the job site, Doris handled the phones and paperwork, and unloaded many a tractor-trailer truck full of tile deliveries. The company’s secret weapon, however, was Mr. Capozza—by 1974, he’d already been in the tile trade for eighteen years.

When he was 19 years old, Capozza joined the family business full time; it was 1976. Though he had worked closely beside his father through the summers and weekends of his youth, the owner’s son wasn’t given special treatment. “My father told me right from the start, ‘You’ve got to work twice as hard as everyone else,’” he remembers with a grin.

In mid-1970s, residential tile use was almost entirely relegated to bathrooms, so commercial work made up the lion’s share of their business—Capozza estimates that it still comprises as much as 60 percent of their work. The company quickly built a niche laying tile in office buildings, health-care facilities, commercial kitchens, and locker rooms. Today, the company still works with many of the same businesses and organizations as it did more than a quarter century ago. “I take a lot of pride in the relationships we’ve maintained over so many years,” says Capozza.

By the 1980s, a growing appreciation for the functionality and beauty of tile in kitchens, entryways, and other areas of the home was taking hold among Maine homeowners. In 1982, Capozza Tile Co. expanded to a new location and opened its first showroom. Just four years later, the company’s rapid growth forced it to trade up once again, this time to its current location on Warren Avenue.

As might be surmised from the current location’s name—Capozza Tile & Floor Covering Center—the business also expanded to sell and install all types of flooring, including carpet, wood, laminates, and linoleum. The countless options cover a showroom encompassing over 5,000 square feet.

Many would be content with such success: the company now has over forty employees—including Capozza’s wife, Jeanne, who joined in 1988 and manages the administrative duties—with roughly half of the staff in-house and half in the field. But the idea of gradual growth, that “walk before you run” principle he gleaned from his father, has always stuck with Capozza. In 2000, Capozza purchased a languishing custom-tile and design business on Portland’s waterfront and renamed it Old Port Specialty Tile. The acquisition has allowed Capozza to delve deeply into highly customized, one-of-a-kind projects, such as a bathroom renovation that included a band of 3-by-6-inch tiles, all produced by a local artisan, portraying every lighthouse in Maine as well as the homeowner’s sailboat. Capozza’s 22-year-old daughter, Katie, recently joined the business as an assistant to the lead designer, Brady-Anne Cushing. This year, Old Port Specialty Tile has already doubled in size and relocated to Middle Street.

When the talk turns to the intricate tile-design work being produced today and the new layout capabilities using computers and high-end software, Capozza says, with a laugh and a shake of the head, “Yes, things have changed. In the 1970s, my dad and I had some samples and a couple catalogs. But our values haven’t changed today, and our staff shares the same values as my father and me. It’s about doing quality work and getting it right the first time.”

Like the rest of the building trade, flooring materials and application techniques have evolved rapidly. Capozza says that staying abreast of these changes is vital. He has adopted what he calls an “L.L. Bean mentality”; he is constantly testing new products and sending his crew out for the latest training. “Flooring is a big-ticket item for most people, so we take it seriously,” he says. “If we recommend a product, then we’ve used it, we know how it will last.”

Today, Mr. Capozza, the 75-year-old business founder and family patriarch, still has a mezzanine office overlooking the warehouse. The younger Capozza says the opportunity for the new staff—including his own daughter—to mix with the older, experienced crew has been “tremendous and very encouraging.”

“I’m excited about the infusion of young talent we have right now. You can’t stand still, not in any business—not if you want to grow,” he says, seeming to channel some of his father’s talent for aphorisms that capture a lifetime of hard-earned wisdom.