Driving a forklift in the dusty yard of a Long Branch masonry supply company, Anthony Damiano couldn’t really imagine where he is now, in the midst of a third renovation of his Broadway showroom, building relationships from here to Wisconsin to Turkey, and playing a role in seeing multimillion dollar homes being built up and down the Monmouth County coastline.
“I was a yard guy, a helper at a small, family business that started here back in the 1930s,” Damiano, owner of The Stone Gallery, said. In the early 1980s, he was working there when the Clayton Company purchased the business he was working at. Damiano had finished his associate's degree at Brookdale and was planning to enroll at the University of Arizona to finish his education and earn a business degree.
“But the Clayton Company just bought out the company I was working at, they offered me a managerial position to run the location that I was working in. I was like ‘Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.’ I come from a working-class family. It was a calculated risk to not finish my education, but it panned out. I’m not going to say it was easy.”
Ultimately, after working his way up through the Clayton Company, Damiano wanted to get back to something with more of a "small-town feel" and in 1991 he opened his business, which began as a full-service masonry supply company but has evolved into its current iteration, focusing on high-end finish products for everything from kitchens and bathrooms to outdoor spaces and wine cellars.
The role he's in now, with help from Chrissy Ferrigno and Anthony Rescigno, is to take a customer's vision and bring it to life.
"I probably have 10,000 samples here. We start putting everything together like a puzzle. We start putting things together with proportional shapes for the right size rooms. It’s design-eye coordination. It’s shape, it’s color and it’s proportion. It looks like it’s flawlessly natural. You’re looking for something that isn’t forced."
Damiano hails both Ferrigno and Rescigno for their knowledge about the products they sell and also for their tact with clients. His wife, Frances, is also in the business. "I like to say that I make the mess in the front and she cleans it up in the back," he says of her role handling accounts.
Other than countertops, the team there doesn't handle installation but is heavily involved with bringing the style a client wants into their homes. It's something Damiano laughs about. He was never formally trained but sometimes gets asked by architects for his opinion as "the old professional."
While he recalls the start of the business as being difficult, there were lessons learned along the way, specifically in terms of how the business runs. But a lot of the key elements come from what he calls "innate experience." Damiano, Ferrigno and Rescigno are all personable, which certainly helps when it comes to engaging with a customer. But they also have something else.
"You have taste, but everyone has different taste," he said. "There were good lessons learned that came from the early days of the business, but creativity, you either have it or you don’t. Why? I can’t answer that question."
They've got it, and would love to show it to you.
Editor's note: Photos are not representations of work done by The Stone Gallery
"It’s shape, it’s color and it’s proportion. It looks like it’s flawlessly natural. You’re looking for something that isn’t forced."