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Studios owner Craig Smith does product fabrication while Interior
Designer and wife Lauriel designs products for clients.
Their Atlanta operation offers a line of furniture that includes
benches and assorted sizes of round and rectangular tabletops
(designed for mounting on wrought-iron bases). The benches
make a bold design statement in my foyer or entrance. They
feature an integrated planter that can be filled with accents
such as wheat grass, floating flower petals, or river pebbles.
Customers can choose the planter size, shape, and position
desired.
Originally a potter, Buddy Rhodes was
immediately drawn to concrete because it offered more variety
and the work wasn't as monotonous as toiling over clay.
He now has 25 employees scurrying about
his San Francisco studio and has to take it in slowly. "Sometimes
I still  can't
believe it," Rhodes said when asked if he had ever imagined
the degree of success he has experienced over the past two
decades. His work has evolved into the quintessential model
for many in the industry and has been showcased in the nation's
top home and design publications, including Architectural
Digest, Home, Metropolitan Home Kitchen and Bath, Sunset,
Fine Homebuilding Luxury Kitchens and Baths, Beautiful Baths,
and Home Remodeling, among others.
Kelley Firmin, a former chemist and
owner of Minds in Motion Contractors , has taken everything
he learned about acid and is applying it literally - to concrete
as his young company makes a great first impression on the
Houston market.
During his years as a degreed chemist,
Firmin always filled his free time with unrelated work on
the side. He's the  first
to admit that he gets bored easily, which is one of the reasons
concrete fascinated him so much when he was introduced to
acid staining less than three years ago. I love concrete because
it's so diverse", Firmin said.
The above are just a few of the
examples of people from different places with different skills
and experiences entering the decorative concrete market. I
think we can expect and look forward to a lot more of this
in the future. Like this great country itself, the concrete
industry has its very own "melting pot."
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