Meet the smiles behind your tiles

The first step of any cement tile is the pattern, which comes to life through the design of a mold. Meet Hoanh, our talented molds designer. He takes each of our pattern drawings & crafts them into cement tile molds by welding individual pieces of brass together. This is a very intricate job and must be done precisely, which is why he’s one of the best in the business. This job enables Hoanh to support his family while putting his creative skills to work. His favorite part of the cement tile process is tracing the designs and testing out the molds to make sure each pattern is sharp as can be! He loves all the LiLi tiles but his favorites are our fun new Adam Trest Collection patterns - available soon!

At LiLi we always strive to push creative boundaries, which is why some of our tiles have metal accents. This is a fairly new collection and it’s made possible by our laser wiz Quan. Quan is an expert at programming the cutting machine which precisely laser-cuts our metallic inserts into a variety of shapes & sizes. You can usually find him feeding various sheets of metal into the machine and closely inspecting the cuts to make sure they are all sharp and ready to be inserted into the cement tiles. Quan is grateful for his position as it allows him to support his family while helping create some of the most beautiful tiles in the LiLi collection. He may be biased, but his favorites are our brass cement tiles.

At LiLi we pride ourselves on our large variety of different kinds of cement tiles. One of those collections is our Mother of Pearl series, which features little pieces of mother of pearl from the inside of an oyster shell that shimmer wildly in the light. These tiles would not be possible without Hoang, the best at making our Mother of Pearl Scale tiles. These tiles are usually quite tricky to make as they are extra delicate and there’s often a high rejection rate. Not on Hoang’s watch! He’s not only the expert of mother of pearl tiles but also all tiles that are oddly shaped like our arabesque & puzzle series.

Our metal insert tiles sure are beautiful, but they’re among the toughest to make. It takes serious precision to place the metal pieces in just the right spot and make sure they don’t move when pigmented cement is poured on top. Luckily we have Thuong, a certified expert in metal insert cement tiles. Thuong carefully inserts the brass pieces and crafts the rest of the tile with pride. When she removes a metal insert tile from the mold perfectly, you can catch her gorgeous smile beaming brighter than the brass itself.

Once the tiles have been pressed & cured on the racks, it’s time for quality control. Meet Tho, the head of our Quality Control team. When he’s not rinsing off tiles, you can find him overseeing the QC team and inspecting finished pieces to remove any tiles with defects. Tho makes sure that imperfect tiles are removed from the lot and that tiles heading off to the packing department all pass his strict quality standards. His favorite part of the entire cement tile process is checking the finished tiles and giving them his seal of approval. He’s grateful to be able to provide his family with a high quality of life while making sure LiLi customers receive the highest quality of tiles.