Tile shop closes after years of struggling

NORTH CANAAN — One of the town’s longstanding family-owned businesses has closed as of Aug. 14.

Canaan Tile and Stone, formerly S.J. Masters, is no more, despite efforts by a second-generation to keep it going against the odds.

Kellee Mastroianni has been part of the business her parents, Steve and Carol Mastroianni, started more than 30 years ago. She took over after her father died in October 2012. She responded to questions from The Lakeville Journal, but asked that she have a chance to write a Facebook post first. She did so quickly to be accommodating, and used it as a chance to thank customers and express her frustration at the issues so many independent businesses currently face.

Their attempts at competitive pricing for product and installation, paired with personalized service and experience, were not enough in the face of a recession and the way people shop these days.

Mastroianni called it the end of an era, and listed challenges that seem to face small businesses all across the country. 

“Our family business has been struggling for so long against a slow economy. We’ve been hit with high taxes and rising costs. We’ve been beaten down by a breed of consumer that is increasingly unreasonable,” she wrote. “We’ve been fighting the big box stores and the Internet. My family and I are tired. I’ve spent the last six years or so in business feeling like I’m the mole in the game Whack a Mole. Every time I manage to peek my head above ground, something whacks me back down again.”

Within the last several years, the family closed their Avon location and sold and turned to leasing their two buildings: the showroom on Church Street (Route 44) and the warehouse on West Main Street, to raise capital to invest in the business. 

Mastroianni went on to pay tribute to her parents, who moved the business here from Monroe, Conn., in 1961 and became a valuable resource, with her dad, “S.J.,” bringing his years of tiling experience.

“There is hardly a house in the area that he did not work in, and he is responsible for training almost all of the local tile installers. His work will withstand the test of time and outlast the end of the world.”

While the slow economy can be blamed, Mastroianni also expressed a basic issue for small towns, where people often don’t see that the overall deal, which includes the time and fuel spent to shop out-of-town, shortchanges everyone in the end.

“One of the big problems is that people don’t really understand the concept of shopping locally. Everyone seems to think it’s a good idea, but then they go shopping at Wal-Mart or Home Depot or on Amazon. Meanwhile, their next-door neighbor, who owns the little shop in town, is wondering how he is even going to put food on the table because his whole life is wrapped up in his shop and he has no customers. People don’t understand the repercussions of choices they make every day.”