Ceramic Harmony is observing 25 years of old world ambiance in tile and stone

Twenty-five years in business. Twenty-five years of selling tile and stone for bathrooms, kitchens and other rooms.

In the beginning, Ceramic Harmony was a small tile-setting shop at the corner of Airport Road and South Parkway in southeast Huntsville.

Today, it's in a 12,000-square-foot facility at 11317 S. Parkway. Out front, the marquee proclaims, "Old world ambiance in tile and stone.''

There's a large showroom and a fabrication shop, where upscale installations - including a stone hood that's 62 inches long - are made for kitchens, bathrooms and floors.

"It used to be, when we first started, there was hardly any tile 25 years ago," said Werner Stark, Ceramic Harmony's owner and president. "There was standard tile.

"When we came in town, we brought in materials and stone from Italy, Germany and Spain.''

By and by, there was "a lot of ceramic tile in the early 1990s,'' Stark said. In the last 10 or 15 years, he said, the trend was more marble, granite and stone.

"Nowadays," he said, "our business consists of 50 percent stone and 50 percent tile."

Nowadays, Ceramic Harmony is observing its 25-year anniversary in business.

It was started in 1986 by Dr. Klaus and Leka Medenbach. Stark's involvement in the business began that year, after he responded to Medenbach's ad in a tile magazine.

Medenbach was looking for a master craftsman, as Stark recalled. He was plenty qualified, having completed four years of training in Europe.

His roots in the business were deep. Stark's father had operated a similar business in southern Germany, near Stuttgart, and Werner had risen to become its chief executive officer.

But he had always wanted to come to America.

Ultimately, he left the family business to move to Florida. After four weeks there, he returned to Germany, uncertain of where his career was headed.

"You have to have a dream, and it will come true if you stick to it," Stark said.

In his case, it was realized after he saw Medenbach's ad in the tile magazine. He responded to the ad and joined the company within a couple of weeks.

There have been challenges in the company's 25 years.

In November 1989, for instance, the showroom had recently been remodeled when a tornado barreled down Airport Road, destroying the showroom and office.

By 1998, though, Ceramic Harmony's business was such that it needed a larger location. The opening of the company's first fabrication shop on Triana Boulevard in the early 1990s had helped expand operations.

Today, many of Ceramic Harmony's customers are seeking the "wow effect," as Stark calls it. An example is one customer who told him, "I want a (master) bathroom where people come in and just go 'wow.' "

Price of that master bathroom: $80,000, said Stark's brother, Jim, who handles business operations.

"That's top of the line," Werner Stark said. "$60,000 to $70,000 is common."

But there are also the more moderately priced projects.

"Over the years, the customer base is people can't afford $80,000 (bathrooms), but they save up their money and they want something nice,'' Stark said. "They come to us. They know it's done right and ever-lasting, and it looks beautiful."