Rubicon Group Takes Stake in Tile Town

St. Louis, MO, March 14--According to the St. Louis Business Journal, The Rubicon Group, a real estate company founded 10 months ago by Robert Ciralsky and Avi Kaufman, acquired the majority ownership stake in Tile Town last month for about $350,000. That amount includes taking over debt that Tile Town had accumulated, Ciralsky said. Tile Town, which was started in 1962 by Martin Spizman and his father, was once the carpet king in the St. Louis area. At its peak, the company operated six stores in the St. Louis area, Kansas City and Springfield, Mo. Martin Spizman, 65, was in control at Tile Town until the late 1980s. He sold the company's assets to New York Carpet World, a big retailer formerly based in Detroit and owned by Spizman's friend, the late Marvin Berlin. New York Carpet World was later acquired by Dalton, Ga.-based Shaw Industries, the nation's largest carpet maker. According to Martin Spizman's wife, Cathy, Shaw Industries closed all the original Tile Town stores in the region in the early 1990s, including its largest location in Bridgeton. In 2002, her husband decided to reopen Tile Town because he hadn't sold the name of the company, Cathy Spizman said. The carpet and flooring materials world that Martin Spizman returned to had changed dramatically from the 1980s. Competition was fiercer and pricing was brutal, especially because of the emergence of stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's, Cathy Spizman said. Last year, facing financial pressure, Martin Spizman sought help from Rubicon, which put some money in the company by buying a minority stake. "It was a bailout," Ciralsky said. Early this year, Tile Town still faced financial difficulties, and that prompted Martin Spizman to sell the majority stake to Ciralsky and Kaufman, who then removed him from management. Rubicon retained six employees at Tile Town, including Cathy Spizman as sales director. Ciralsky said Tile Town, with only one store now located at 8680 Olive Blvd. in University City, had sales of about $1 million in 2004. Owning Tile Town also allows Rubicon to buy flooring for its residential and commercial real estate construction projects at a wholesale price, he said. Ciralsky, a Chicago native, previously worked as a broker at the American Mortgage Co. in St. Louis, and Kaufman operated a laser printer business, before they founded Rubicon. Ciralsky said Rubicon manages about 150,000 square feet of commercial space for a number of clients, and helps sell and develop residential and commercial properties in the St. Louis area.

Related Topics:Shaw Industries Group, Inc.

Print the Article