Florida Tile

The Sikes years

Florida Tile was established in Lakeland, Florida when Leon Sikes Sr. and his sons James "Jimmie" Sikes and Leon Sikes Jr. purchased a run-down tile plant for $8,000 in March 1954. At the time the company produced one specialty trim shape of tile that was difficult to find. As the industry grew away from small format, extruded, and two-tone effect floor tiles, Florida Tile began to adopt new technology to manufacture the increasingly complex products the market demanded.

Within 20 years it became the U.S.'s second-largest manufacturer of ceramic tile, and the company changed its name to Sikes Corporation in 1972 to reflect the addition of a carpet manufacturing plant in Lawrenceburg. Jimmie Sikes became the Chairman of the Board during this time.

However, the venture into carpet manufacturing proved to be ill-advised for the company. Changes in the carpet business left the Sikes Corporation with new plants and old technology. By the mid-1970s, it had suffered a $13 million loss and was close to having a negative net worth. Kelly Norton, Florida Tile's VP of Marketing at the time, speculated that, "The only reason the banks didn't foreclose on us was because they didn't know what to do with an old tile plant."

The company began to again thrive by the late 1970s, and would do so for many years, even after the death of Sikes from a massive heart attack in 1982. The 1980s were a good time for Florida Tile - several times it was named on the Forbes list of best small businesses, and twice listed by USA Today as one of the best performing stocks of the decade.

Shifting ownership

As the 1980s wound down, much of the original leadership began to retire. By 1990, Florida Tile was sold to Premark International Inc. for $201 million.

In 1999, Illinois Tool Works bought Premark with a stock purchase. ITW later identified Florida Tile as a non-core business and hired CS First Boston to sell the company in March 2002. The auction was unsuccessful as Florida Tile was underperforming at the time.

By November 2003, Florida Tile was purchased by Milestone Merchant Partners' investment fund, MMP Capital Partners. This was followed by an announcement in early 2004 that the Lakeland tile plant was to be shut down. Then-CEO Matt Galvez cited a shift in consumer preference from basic wall tile to designer products manufactured by the company's facilities in Kentucky and Georgia.

In 2006, Florida Tile was sold to the Panariagroup of Italy in a deal brokered by Murry Gunty of Blackstreet Capital. The result was a $25 million investment in Florida Tile, resulting in the opening of a state-of-the-art production line in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, in September 2007. Through continued investments, this facility now has the technology to produce large sized, through-body porcelain and uses high-speed printers to create tile patterns.