MEET THE FOUNDER
“G’day, I’m Robbie.”
You’ve heard that voice on TV for years. Here’s the story behind it, and behind every slab in our showrooms.
Visit a Showroom
If you live anywhere near the Monterey Peninsula, chances are you’ve heard Robbie Robinson before you ever met him. That unmistakable Aussie greeting has opened Carmel Stone Imports’ commercials for years, and it tends to stick with people. But the accent is only the first clue that Robbie’s path to the stone business was anything but ordinary.
Before there were showrooms in Carmel, Sand City, and Palo Alto, before the 500-plus shipping containers and the quarry visits on four continents, there was a beach in Hawaii, a small tile shop for sale, and a hunch.
Before the Stone
Robbie's story doesn't start in a warehouse. It starts on the North Shore of Kauai, where he owned and ran a watersports business right on the beach at Hanalei Bay. Ocean life wasn't a hobby. It was the whole lifestyle, and it's the reason he's spent his life in small beach towns.
When Robbie and his wife decided to leave the islands and move to Northern California, where she's from, they packed up with their two toddler boys and went looking for a new home base. The destination was never really in question. Carmel offered the beauty and laid-back pace of the beach towns he'd always called home, with the Pacific right there whenever he needed it. The watersports business stayed behind in Hanalei Bay. What came next would look very different.
“I’ve always lived in small beach towns due to the myriad of ocean activities I’ve been involved with.”
A Showroom, a Warehouse, and Six Months
Newly settled in Carmel and looking for something a little more mainstream than renting boards on a beach, Robbie purchased a small tile and stone showroom called Carmel Tile & Marble in early 2000. It didn't stay small for long.
Within six months he had leased a warehouse, started importing stone tile directly, and begun building a dealer network to support the volume of material coming in. Carmel Stone Imports was born, and the direct-import model that still defines the company today was in place before the first year was out.
Twelve Countries, One Standard
Today, Carmel Stone Imports brings in material from 12 countries, including Italy, Brazil, Turkey, and Morocco. But “importing” undersells what actually happens.
Robbie found his original quarries and factories at international trade shows like Marmomacc in Verona, Italy, and Coverings here in the US. Then comes the part most stone suppliers skip: he travels to personally inspect every quarry and factory being considered, and works directly with each one, teaching them to produce the exact colors and finishes he’s decided belong in the collection.
That’s why the showrooms don’t look like anyone else’s. The materials aren’t picked from a catalog. They’re developed.
“I go to inspect each quarry and factory, and teach them how to produce the colors and finishes we want in our collections.”
Growing Along the Coast
Carmel
Where it all began. Robbie purchases Carmel Tile & Marble, and Carmel Stone Imports is born.
Room to Grow
Born out of necessity: imported stone has to live somewhere. What started as a small leased warehouse grew through bigger and bigger facilities until CSI purchased a 20,000-square-foot building, big enough to properly display natural stone and engineered slabs.
Palo Alto
A 60,000-square-foot expansion driven by the South Bay’s high-end market and proximity to the Port of Oakland, where CSI’s more than 500 containers arrive. Palo Alto is also home to the distribution operation that supplies 200 stone and tile showrooms across the western United States and the Midwest.
San Francisco Design Center
The newest addition: a 3,600-square-foot space putting CSI’s collections within easy reach of the architects and designers of San Francisco, the East Bay, and the North Bay.
Carmel Stone Imports
By the Numbers
The People of Carmel Stone
Ask customers what keeps them coming back and the answer is usually a name: Spencer, David, Jake, Bryce, Kinsey, Bryan, Megan, Jeff, Reba, and the warehouse crew who keep hundreds of containers’ worth of material moving.
Robbie’s hiring philosophy is deliberately unconventional. In sales, he looks for personality and work ethic, and he often hires from outside the industry entirely, so new team members can be trained the Carmel Stone way without old habits to unlearn. In the warehouse, work ethic rules again, and Robbie backs it up with industry-leading pay and benefits.
The result speaks for itself. Three out of four employees have been with the company for 15 years or more, some for over 20. The people who helped you pick your kitchen slab will likely still be here when you come back for the bathroom.
Ask Robbie
What he wishes everyone knew about stone
“Isn’t natural stone hard to maintain?”
This is the number-one concern Robbie hears from homeowners: etching and staining. His answer: sealers and cleaners have improved dramatically over the years and now do an excellent job resisting both. And here’s the part almost nobody knows. Whatever a homeowner does to natural stone, it can be fixed. Etch it, stain it, scratch it: natural stone can be restored. Engineered products can’t say the same.
“What’s in style right now?”
Stone and tile move in cycles, a lot like fashion. In the early 2000s, antiqued and tumbled finishes were king in California’s high-end markets. Around 2013, everything shifted toward straight-edge modern finishes, monochromatic colors, and manmade slabs, and CSI pivoted to import them. Since 2020, the pendulum has swung back: natural stone is leading again, with warmer colors and antiqued finishes making a strong return. Robbie’s seen every cycle, and the showrooms are stocked for where the market actually is.
“What makes a project successful?”
For Robbie, it starts with the vision: the architect’s, the designer’s, the owner’s. The sales team’s job is to guide them to the slabs and tile that bring that vision to life, from the first showroom visit to the finished space. The best part, he says, is standing in the completed project and feeling the satisfaction of a beautiful, affordable result alongside the people who imagined it.
The Next Chapter
Here’s a detail that says a lot about Robbie: he actively discouraged his sons from coming to work with Dad. Jake and Bryce went off on their own adventures for years, exactly as he hoped they would.
But the industry pulled them back. Both found the work more satisfying than anything else they’d tried, and both have now spent years in the business. Today they’re not just part of the team. They’re driving the company’s future, as excited as Robbie is to grow Carmel Stone Imports to its full potential.
“I’m very proud to have my sons taking over my legacy and putting their stamp on the company.”
A quarter century after a watersports guy from Hanalei Bay bought a little tile shop in Carmel, the company he built is a family legacy in motion, with the next generation already putting its stamp on it.
Come Say G’day
Visit any of our showrooms in Carmel, Sand City, or Palo Alto and see the collections Robbie has spent 25 years building, slab by slab and quarry by quarry. Bring your vision. We’ll help you find the stone that brings it to life.
