A Tile Tells Its Story Only After It Has Been Laid
The more I worked in the ceramic world, the more I understood that many collections were not being presented in the best possible way. Most showrooms contained display units filled with individual samples. Customers were expected to imagine what an entire floor would look like once it had been laid.
An architect would look at a single tile measuring about twelve inches by twelve inches, then have to imagine a living room covering hundreds of square feet in that material. I found that particularly difficult. Not for myself, but for the customer. So once again I asked myself the question that has accompanied me throughout my life:
"Can't this be done better?"
The answer came almost naturally. Instead of presenting separate samples, I began making large wooden display panels. But they could not be ordinary panels. I wanted to show complete compositions. Floor tiles combined with matching wall tiles. Decorative borders perfectly coordinated with the whole. Carefully finished grout lines. Exactly as the final result might later appear in the customer's home. It required an enormous amount of work. I personally cut every wooden panel to size.
I carefully glued every tile into place. Then I grouted everything with the same attention I would give a real floor. Sometimes I worked for hours on a single presentation. Not because anyone asked me to, but because, to me, it had to be perfect. When a panel was finally finished, I stepped back and examined it carefully. Sometimes I still replaced a tile. Or changed the grout color.
Or rearranged the decorative elements. Only when the whole composition seemed perfectly balanced was I satisfied. Some people probably thought I was too much of a perfectionist.
"All that work for a simple display panel?"
But to me, it was never a simple panel. It was a story. I did not want an architect to see only a tile. I wanted him to see a living room. A kitchen. A bathroom. A hotel. A restaurant. I wanted to help make visible what still existed only in his imagination. Then something special began to happen. Whenever I entered a showroom with one of those panels, people were almost naturally drawn to it.
They touched the tiles. They stepped back to look at the entire composition. And suddenly, conversations began that had never taken place before.
"What if we combined this floor with this wall tile?"
"Which grout color would you choose here?"
"Would this also work in an entrance hall?"
I was no longer merely selling a collection. I was helping people dream. When I look back today, I understand that perhaps something much larger was already beginning during those years. Without knowing it, I was already working with visualization. I wanted to show people something that did not yet exist. Many years later, Marco and I would try to do exactly the same thing with computers. Two-dimensional drawings. Three- dimensional visualizations. Digital presentations.
But the underlying idea remained exactly the same. People make decisions more easily when they can truly imagine the final result. Perhaps Piramedia was not really born in the Glass Pyramid in Lummen. Perhaps the idea had come into being many years earlier. On a simple workbench. With a wooden panel. A bucket of adhesive. A bag of grout. And a man who once again asked himself the same question:
"Can't this be done better?" When I think back on that time today, I have to smile. Not because those display panels were so extraordinary in themselves, but because they proved to me once again that a good idea is often born from the simplest things. We need only be willing to go a little further than what is expected of us. And perhaps that is the most important lesson I learned during all those years. Innovation is rarely born from expensive machines.
It usually begins with someone who wonders why everyone keeps doing things the same way, and who then finds the courage to try another path. That way of thinking has remained with me throughout my life. It brought me successes. It also brought me failures. And yet I would not change it for anything in the world. Without that curiosity, I would never have become the man I am today.
And without those wooden display panels... the dream of Piramedia might never have been born.