Diving Into the Details: Tile
At California Pools & Landscape, we’ve been building dream backyards in the valley of the sun for more than 34 years. Over that time, we’ve continued to refine our quality building practices and maintain relationships with our stellar trade partners and vendors. Our commitment to delivering a high quality project as quickly and efficiently as possible has always been a driving force at CPL.
As material shortages continue to plague the construction industry and the demand for swimming pools continues to rise, building times are longer than we’ve seen in our history. Due to these delays and our consistent commitment of transparency to our valued customers, we strive to communicate project details more than ever before. Our ‘Diving Into The Details’ series will take you behind the curtain at CPL, to get an inside look at how we are navigating these unchartered waters.
In this installment of Diving Into The Details, CPL’s President Jeremy Smith explains how tile shortages have affected the building process and the creative solution that has been put into place to ensure that your backyard project gets completed as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Pool Tile
As we dive into the details a bit to try to keep our clients up to date on pool construction in 2021, we must talk about tile. Tile is such an important component of every job that we complete. Whether it’s used on your waterline, as an accent or on the face of a spa, tile is a vital piece of the design and look of your project.
As the demand for pools and home improvements skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic, tile became a scarce product affected by supply chain problems. The world wide shortage of shipping containers, available ships and the limited number of ships US harbors will unload as well as insufficient availability of freight trucks all contribute to the lack of product that is available.
Over our 34 years of business, we developed a method of ordering tile from the manufacturer about 30 days before installation that would be stored in their warehouse until it was time to be brought to the job site. We take great pride in our selection of materials that we have been able to offer our clients. Unfortunately, that system is broken in today’s building environment. We are still able to offer you a great tile for your pool, but the system looks different than ever before in our history.
CPL Tile Options
Diving deeper, we needed to get creative to fix the problem of tile being out of stock. No one can predict how long tile shortages will plague the pool building industry. In order to ensure that tile would be available for our customers, we’ve gotten into the tile business.
We now have a new tile warehouse and new employees to manage the inventory so we can stock our most popular tiles. This gives the confidence that there will always be some tile ready for every pool when that phase of construction is underway. If your original tile is out of stock when the time comes, we will have a solution in place to keep your project moving forward towards completion.
Our Commitment To CPL Clients
At California Pools & Landscape, we saw a lot of this developing and due to our friends in the industry we have managed to secure as much material as possible. For months we’ve been notified weekly about what piece of equipment is going to be out of stock soon and we work to source it. We pay higher prices and bear these freight and warehousing costs without affecting the customer. Often we commit to air freight and other solutions. Our industry partners support our efforts because we have supported them.
We have a back up plan. We keep pools moving any way we can. It costs more to buy, store and develop a process for tile than our previous process, but no California Pools & Landscape customer will pay extra. We will bear the cost. We think you are worth it, our customers.
Every day we go home tired and frankly, a bit beat up by the challenges we face in trying to serve our customers. What keeps us going though is knowing that our customers, their families and friends are gracing us with amazing patience and understanding as we work through all of the challenges. We are so grateful to our trade partners and our clients. We are in this together and doing our best every day.
