Nemo Tile Showroom Open To The Public

One of the biggest challenges for anyone building or renovating a home is making the right design choices, especially for features that are costly to install and difficult to replace.

When it comes to surfacing materials, there is a new showroom in Southampton that gives customers and clients not only plenty of options, but expert guidance along the way.

Nemo Tile + Stone recently debuted a new showroom on Flying Point Road, giving clients access to a reputable purveyor of tile, stone, and other materials that’s been in the business for a century.

The 5,700-square-foot showroom is the first in the area for the New York City-based company. While it is not the only surfacing materials showroom in the Hamptons, it boasts a unique design that’s all about collaboration. The workshop-style layout, conceptualized by Nemo’s design director, Katie Michael-Battaglia, has worktables set up for laying out plans and making tough choices, and part of the space features 50 large-format porcelain and stone slabs, which help clients better visualize how their fireplace surround, pool wall, or large countertop will look on a grander scale, in a way a smaller sample cannot.

Nemo Tile + Stone is run by third-generation CEO Matt Karlin. The company had humble beginnings in Queens and in more recent years has opened showrooms not only in Manhattan but in Boston and Philadelphia as well. The Southampton showroom represents a continuation of that expansion, and was a natural fit for the next grand opening, explained showroom manager Herb Crestani.

“They’ve had distributors out here but never had a showroom,” he said, while giving the tour of the expansive space, which was flooded with natural light on a quiet Thursday last week thanks to the large windows. “They want to broaden their reach on the East Coast, and this area was one of their targets.”

Mr. Crestani explained that because the clientele in the area expects a certain level of service, the showroom is different than its counterparts. In addition to selling a wide range of Nemo-specific products, materials from many other vendors are available as well. Giving clients choice is something that matters a lot, he said.

“My whole goal in this business is that I want a client to be able to do one-stop shopping,” he said. “I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t have that.’”

The layout of the showroom fosters collaboration between clients, builders, home designers, and the Nemo employees on hand to help guide clients.

“It’s very hands-on, and I think that’s important,” Mr. Crestani said. “A client likes to touch and feel the product.”

An expansive and diverse array of materials is on display at the showroom, in a user-friendly way, with pull-out walls that turn to display different colors, patterns and materials clients can choose from, for everything from kitchen counters to back splashes, pool copings, and outdoor barbecues, the latter of which have become very popular in pandemic times, Mr. Crestani said. Porcelain pavers with UV ratings that mean they’re durable for outdoors have become even more popular in recent years as many homeowners and builders have started to realize that bluestone isn’t always ideal since it becomes very hot in the sun and can also stain, two issues that are not present with porcelain.

The area of the showroom with the large-scale porcelain slabs is impressive and gives clients a great sense of what a particular selection will look like when it’s used expansively. Several collaborations with slab yards made putting that unique feature together possible, Mr. Crestani said.

“That’s never been done in a Nemo showroom. It’s important to see it on a big scale like that, so you can really envision what it will be like in the space. It just makes it so much more dynamic.”

The new showroom not only offers innovative ways of displaying the samples, but also features plenty of variety, from easily mass-produced patterns to custom mosaics, in both man-made and natural materials. There are plenty of price points as well. And if all those choices are overwhelming to some, the Nemo designers are on hand, ready to help pull samples for clients based on their budget and design preferences.

The showroom in currently open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays at 56 Flying Point Road, Suite 3, Water Mill.