The business may have expanded over the years, but tiling remains George’s love and joy – like father-like son. Inheriting his father’s 40-year-old business, Assaly Tiles was a natural progression for George, who has been surrounded by tiling his whole life.
“My dad pretty much taught me everything I know. Today, we do tiling, but we’re also renovators, so we do bathrooms, kitchens and laundries. Growing the business has been good – it’s been really steady”, he says.
We had a quick chat with George to hear what he had to say..
The most rewarding part of his job?
“I like seeing the finished product. I like it when our customers see the end result, and they’re happy – seeing their faces in the end is what we’re in it for. They have a vision or a dream, and we carry it out, execute it, and make sure it happens for them! Money comes and goes, but your job satisfaction comes from the people around you who are happy with the work that you do.”
ServiceSeeking.com.au as a way to meet customers?
“ServiceSeeking.com.au has played a big part in trying to get more work, leads, and people coming through.”
Dodgy tradies?
“Generally, we don’t like fixing up other people’s dodgy work because it enables inferior trades to continue working. Many years ago, we decided not to – we get calls every week saying that someone’s messed their job up. Can you come and fix it? But we realised by doing that, we’re enabling them to continue working. So we just decided, as a general rule, to stop doing that.”
Getting creative with design choices?
“I just love working with designers. Mia Lake from Vic Architects is one of our designers. We did her splashback for her, and it recently featured in the Realestate.com.au.
We have quite a bit of creative input with our work. We have a lot of influence – we give our clients a lot of opinions and ideas. They often follow it, and from time to time, they don’t. I always try to give them a couple of options. I like black, but you might like white!”
How to prepare for a bathroom or kitchen reno?
“Find yourself a good licensed tradesman with the right qualifications. Do everything in terms of timeframes. A lot of the time, people see these shows like The Block, which are great, but at the same time, they set really unrealistic expectations in terms of time frames. We often get a lot of people that ask us to do a bunch of renovation work in under a week, and they don’t realise the amount of work and what’s involved with doing a bathroom renovation.”
How to find a good tradie?
“Do your research, and make sure the person knows what they’re talking about. Usually, a bathroom reno takes about four weeks as a general time frame. So when you get started, do a bit of background search on the people you’re working with.”
Check out George’s profile page Assaly Tiles here.