MEET our MEMBER
Chester County Tile By Betsy Brewer Brantner Contributing Writer
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n 2002, Larry Phillips founded Chester County Tile Supply. His mission was to provide quality tile products and installation to Chester, Montgomery, Delaware and Philadelphia counties. “They get the whole package with us,” Phillips explained. “We provide design, tile products and installation. That was very important to me. I have always been focused on customer service, so it seemed only natural to do it all. In other businesses I’ve seen where those things may be done by three different people, and I feel it works much better for the customer if they have one person that does it all.” Larry Phillips has a lot of experience with customer service and logistics, having worked with big names like QVC and Amazon throughout his career. These days he will say he is semi-retired, and his son Jason has stepped up to the plate, but it doesn’t really sound as if he will ever completely step away. The pandemic did momentarily stop the business, as he explained. “During COVID, it was a little scary at first. We had to shut down for 12 weeks. We were not allowed to work, and actually would have been fined if we did. So, we took that as an opportunity to clean up and organize our showroom. When we did go back to work, you would have never known there was a pandemic. I was really surprised to see how quickly work picked up,” he explained.
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Evidently, now that people weren’t working, or working from home more, they decided it was the right time to fix up their homes. “People had more expendable cash. They were working from home. They weren’t going out to eat or do things with the family,” Phillips explained. “Right now we have work lined up until the end of the year.” Chester County Tile has many happy customers, because Larry and his son Jason put people first. “I learned so much from my eight years at QVC. My background was in logistics, and as such planning and preparation were a big part of my background,” he said. Larry got recruited away from QVC by Amazon and he actually set up the first Amazon distribution center in New Castle, Del. as the distribution manager. After he left there, he decided he wanted to start his own company. “I have worked ever since,” he said. He decided he wanted to do it all in the business. “I had the background to sell product, and then I decided to move product. After the first year I went into installation. I had done a few summers doing tile setting. I knew the mechanics of it. I realized I knew everything to do with tile,” Phillips said. Phillips said what really sets them apart from others is that they stand behind everything they do. “We provide design, tile products and installation, and that does really make a difference. You don’t have to coordinate a job between three different businesses. We do that for you,” he said “We are continuing to grow and
2022 • Volume 11——
