East Coast Tile and D&B Tile, two of the largest distributors in the eastern U.S., recently announced that each is reporting higher than projected profits in the first year

Harold Yarborough, President of D&B Tile (left) announces success its of Q-Seal permanent stone tile sealing business.

of their Q-Seal permanent stone tile sealing businesses. “Pre-sealing stone with the Q-Seal process has developed a brand new business for us,” said Florida-based D&B Tile President Harold Yarborough. “It’s re-energized our people, and our stone sales have increased more than 30% — and we did all of this during the worst recession in my lifetime.”

“We just added a second machine in our New Jersey location to keep up with demand,” said Bob Rose, President of the East Coast Tile Group. Despite challenging market conditions, within a year of installing the Q-Seal system in their Syracuse, NY, headquarters, the company has paid for the system and increased their stone sales significantly. “Q-Seal gave us everything we needed to launch successfully. It was all first class and it works. We’ve attracted a whole new base of customers who wouldn’t consider stone in the past due to maintenance concerns.”

Barry Culkin, President & CEO of Questech Corporation, Q-Seal’s parent company, calls this “an overnight success that’s been 15 years in the making.” The patented permanent stone sealing process was originally developed to protect Questech’s proprietary metal tile line, which launched in 1997. Since then, the company has evolved the Q-Seal process to protect all of its cast metal, cast stone and natural stone tiles and accessories produced in the company’s Vermont manufacturing facility. The company is preparing to expand Q-Seal distribution throughout the U.S. during 2011.