Bedrosians Tile & Stone got its start in 1948 by providing tile to contractors and builders in Central California.
About 70 years later, the company has become one of the largest independent porcelain tile and stone importers and distributors in the U.S.—and it continues to evolve.
“We’re adapting,” said Gary Bedrosian, the son of company founders, Ed and Alice Bedrosian. Gary Bedrosian serves as vice president for the Anaheim-based firm, one of Orange County’s oldest companies.
The company was honored by the Business Journal’s 20th annual Family-Owned Business Awards held on June 4 at Hotel Irvine. It received the Longevity Award (see other profiles, pages 1, 14, 16, and 19).
Adaptation over the years has resulted in the company and its family members expanding business lines from manufacturing operations to growing retail locations—it now has close to 50 stores over 12 states, including distribution centers in Anaheim, San Jose, Seattle and Jacksonville, Fla.
The family’s members—including Gary and his brother Larry, who serves as chief executive, and sisters Janice and Linda—also over that time have built one of the larger privately held portfolios of industrial properties in the region—one estimated by the Business Journal to be in the 3 million square foot range.
Some of those facilities are used for Bedrosians’ local operations, while other large-area buildings are leased out to a variety of big-name tenants.
Tariff Troubles
More recently, adaptation has come in the form of managing the results of the ongoing tariff war with China—the effects of which have major impacts on its business.
“I don’t agree with it at all,” Gary said of the tariffs. “But we just work hard when it becomes tough like this.”
“That’s what I tell my children, we’re digging in and we’re going to make it work.”
Bedrosians doesn’t disclose sales figures. “Bedrosians has many different aspects of its business from real estate, manufacturing, retail and wholesale sales. Though one area may not make money, as a whole, Bedrosians has always been profitable,” Gary said.
Anaheim Glut
It’s been a difficult year for the stone and tile industry as the U.S.-China trade war continues to play itself out.
Last September, the Trump administration followed through on threats to raise tariffs on upwards of $200 billion worth of Chinese imports—including tile, stone, cement, and similar products.
The tariffs have since hiked from 10% to 25%.
Prior to the tariffs taking effect, Bedrosians worked overtime to bring as much of their goods from China into the U.S.
That ultimately led to extra fees at the Port of Long Beach, retroactive tariffs on some of those products from the government, and a glut of product at the company’s nearly 400,000-square-foot Anaheim distribution facility.
Marisa Bedrosian Kosters, one of Ed’s granddaughters, who serves as legal counsel and handles process improvement for the company, told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month that the company has thousands of pallets of stone outside its packed Anaheim facility, with nowhere else to store it.
What’s more, “we’re having to bring in more because there’s so much uncertainty about what country is being hit next,” she said.
Uncertainty also has been seen on the manufacturing side of business.
In 2000, the Bedrosians acquired a tile factory in China and converted the facility to make ceramic tile and other similar products for the U.S. market.
Tariffs have forced the company to change strategy with its foreign plant.
“As of June 9, we can’t bring any more products in to the U.S.,” Gary said.
“We’ve totally stopped shipping here, so we’ve changed the whole dynamic of the factory, to make products for other countries like China, Singapore, and other areas like that.
“We’ve had to dig in and do something [different] because the U.S. market dried up overnight. I’m just happy [the facility] is operating.
“We’re making positive changes in our company that adapt to what we consider unfriendly and unfair, coming out with products that we can sell under the current structures.”
Staying Together
It was Ed and Alice’s dream when they began their tile contracting business to provide for their family for generations to come, and more importantly to them, to keep them together.
“It was always their idea that if we work together, we would stay together,” Gary said.
“We fight just as much as other families do [but] at night when we go to bed, because we’re blood, we get along and we all love each other because of that.”
Along with 1,000 employees in the U.S., it now has nearly another 1,000 overseas.
“Our key is that we can keep the focus in many different areas,” Gary said of the company’s diverse workforce.
“We’ll have people that focus just on the internet or on products that have tariffs, as well as people that focus on slab or in pricing throughout the world.”
The business recently grew its operations in the Pacific Northwest after its acquisition of Oregon Tile & Marble in Medford, Ore., in 2016.
It occupies nearly 500,000 square feet in OC including a main showroom and distribution center in Anaheim, and a building that houses a slab yard in Orange.
Notable local real estate properties that Larry owns in OC, but doesn’t occupy, includes a nearly 500,000-square-foot industrial building in Tustin just off the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway, long used by Ricoh Electronics.
Passing the Torch
Carrying on the company was always something that Gary and his siblings knew they wanted to do.
“We grew up in the tile business and that’s what we knew, the difference was my dad was a contractor and when we got into it, we took [on] sales and distribution and manufacturing,” Gary said.
The third generation of the family is beginning to make their presence felt.
They include Marisa, Eddie, who is the marketing director, and Sabrina, who Gary says has helped develop relations for the company with the Los Angeles Angels and others.
The company is not averse to bringing on leadership from outside the family.
About a year ago, it named Diana Kelly president and chief operating officer.
She was previously regional vice president at Home Depot Inc., where she led a team of more than 16,000 associates in 82 stores across Southern California, Hawaii and Guam, with sales in the billions.
“It’s a new and exciting chapter for our family company,” Larry said at the time the hiring was announced.
Angels Ties
The Bedrosians are one of the local baseball team’s neighbors, with Angel Stadium just a Mike Trout throw away from the Anaheim showroom at 1235 S. State College Blvd.
For the company’s 70th anniversary celebration last year, it fielded Angels reliever Cam Bedrosian—no relation—to kick off the event with an autograph signing.
“We turned into Angels fans when we started to get involved with them,” Gary said. “It’s been a good thing for both of us. We’ve met some of the ballplayers, learned a little bit about them and we have built a good relationship.”
