Most companies in this industry begin with a factory and look for a market. Cladrok started the other way round, on the floor of a bathroom and kitchen showroom, listening to the pattern of customers' conversations.
Two brothers and a showroom
Between them, Imad and Max Ferzoli have spent decades in bathroom and kitchen retail. Imad runs a showroom. He has spent years seeing the exact moment people choose the surface for a room they will use every day for the next fifteen years.
Over enough of those conversations, a pattern becomes obvious. Customers would come in wanting stone. They liked the look of it, they liked what it said about the room, and they liked that it was real. Then they would find out what fitting stone involves.
The problem with wanting a stone bathroom
Solid stone is heavy, which affects what a wall can carry and how many people are needed to install it. It is expensive, both to buy and to fit. And in tile form it requires grout, which nobody thinks about at the point of choosing and everybody thinks about three years later, when the sealant has started to peel.
The alternatives are not much better. Printed panels and laminates solve the practical problems by taking away the thing customers wanted in the first place, the real material. Nobody had made the panel that kept the real stone and dropped the weight and costs.
What they built
Cladrok is a thin layer of genuine natural stone bonded to a watertight backing board. The stone gives the wall its character and the board makes it waterproof, and because the stone no longer has to hold itself up, the whole thing weighs a fraction of what solid stone would. A full panel measures 2400 by 1200 by 10 millimetres and weighs twelve kilograms. Light enough for one person to carry up a staircase.
It arrives as one piece. A shower wall can be covered in a single sheet with no joints and no grout anywhere. It fits onto sound existing surfaces, meaning renovations don’t need demolition.
There are four finishes, all natural stone, all different from one another in the way that only a natural material is.
Why a family business does this differently
A larger manufacturer would have optimised the product towards whatever was cheapest to produce at volume. Two brothers who still sell bathrooms for a living optimised it towards the complaints they were tired of hearing. Rather than developing a panel for commercial success, they have created a surface they know their customers want.
It also means the people who designed the panel are the people who answer for it. If a finish does not perform, or an installer finds a detail awkward, that feedback goes straight to someone who can change it.
Where we are now
Cladrok is an independent British business, and the panels are sold directly to homeowners as well as through trades. We are a small company, which shows in the personality of the product.
If you want to understand the difference, the most useful thing we can send you is a sample. Order one at cladrok.com and it will tell you more in ten seconds than this page can.
