Kim Hauner is the guy you see on his bike during rush hour summiting the hill straight up from the ferry without a struggle. He gets up that hill with the same determination that it’s taken for the 60-yearold to ride that bike 52 km each way to and from his business in Burnaby, and his home in Sealeigh Park every day. It’s the same kind of drive that has gotten Hauner to the top of his game in his professional life as well.
Hauner is an eclectic mix of entrepreneur, artist, scientist and inventor with the passionate personality influenced perhaps, by his Brazilian and Italian bloodlines.
Hauner invented the glass tiles that have become so popular in interior design. He had started out making tile for home and industrial use, but Hauner is one to always want to try something new. “Inventing a glass tile,“ says Hauner, “was a process of being prodded by a friend and not knowing that you couldn’t do things the way we did it.”
Hauner says that initially they used wasted pieces of glass from windows. Though he is very conscientious about how he runs his business with regard to water usage and re-purposing machines or packaging, he says, “We weren’t thinking of recycling waste glass; we were just experimenting.”
Hauner would cut the glass, coat it and bond it to regular tile in a kiln. “The colour comes out much more pure; more vibrant,” says the inventor.
Hauner’s company, Interstyle, has since become the world leader for custom glass tile. His custom designed glass has been commissioned for Richard Branson’s personal jet, and for a massive project for the owner of the Seattle Seahawks. Interstyle tiles are on the floors and walls at the Vancouver airport and the main concourse of the Convention Centre. The Vancouver Aquarium asked Hauner to create tiles with glow-in-the dark fish for a bioluminescence exhibit and he was able to fulfill the request. Compared to other requests, glow-in–the-dark tiles sound easy.
“One time a couple wanted matching bathroom tiles, except she wanted gold tile on floors, walls and ceiling, and he wanted platinum for his bathroom.“ Kim figured out how to make the tiles and, because he was using real gold and platinum, he had to hire a guard for the factory and then move the tiles to the location in an armored truck.
He experiments with textures, colours, always coming up with a new approach to an ancient idea.
In the factory, two men are sitting at what could be a giant glass jigsaw puzzle. They are carefully placing pieces of shattered glass into place within a large frame. The delicate effect is one of scattered light. The panel then gets sandwiched between sheets of clear solid glass and is rebaked before being carefully packaged for a trip halfway round the world.
At another station a man is ready to silk-screen glass. Further along a chemist analyzes the components of each of the pigments that sit in plastic jars on a shelf. The pigments come from minerals and maintaining consistency is both tricky and important in their work. Astonishingly, another area is busy with a team who take cooled cut glass and, one by one place each tile on mesh to make a sheet of glass tile.
Before the glass gets to them it comes out of a giant kiln in slabs, they cool and go to a cutter. With a machine Hauner invented, the sheets of glass get singularly cut. Once cut, they are placed on the mesh, the placers creating patterns as they go.
In one corner of the factory there is a lounge chair, made entirely of one piece of glass, bent into shape when it was warm. There are sheets of glass with colours of ribbon running through them, and boxes of tiles with varying degrees of clarity, texture, reflectiveness and even a variety of shapes colours and sizes, from pebble-like to large dimpled rectangles that look like tropical water. Glass may end up as a solid countertop or as small tiles.
Interstyle reflects Hauner’s inventiveness beyond the realm of tile and glass. Due to the factory’s proximity to a big box store, Hauner has gone across the street and asked for the boxes that were headed to recycling. Kim took them and invented a machine to punch a netting shape into the cardboard. The result is a lighter material he can use to package his glass, but it also has the stretchiness of netting. He uses this to package his panels of glass.
As CEO of the company, Hauner also makes the effort to capture and redirect the overflow heat from the kiln, and catches rainwater off the roof to use in the factory. All this, and he bikes to work from Bowen.
Hauner says that keeping the business in Burnaby and his home on Bowen gives him two advantages. “I create separation between work and business by living on Bowen,” he says, “and by keeping the business in Burnaby I am going counter to what everyone else in the business is doing.”
Hauner is referring to how tile companies outsource the work to China. “If we did it like everyone else, we’d lose our edge. Instead we can do custom work, last minute work and we can benefit from laws in the states that protect North American content.”
Hauner is acutely aware of what his business needs to do to maintain its prestigious position and he says, because of that he is using creativity in every part of the business. “Everyone thinks of me as “The Tile Guy,“ says Hauner, “but in this business I have to be CEO, CFO, do ads and branding, create equipment. Tile is just a part of what I do.”
The businessman juggles all the demands of the work with time for family and friends and community. He explains his thoughts on business as he walks up from the beach having spent the afternoon pitching in with equipment maintenance for the sailing school on the island.
“Innovation. Innovation in everything and creativity in all parts of business” is part of what Hauner feels sets his company apart. More specifically, it’s this man’s passion for innovation, and his commitment to pushing into new territory that keep this product in demand the world over.
