What Tilers Forums Does For The Tile Industry

[Dan]

What TilersForums.co.uk does for DIY and Professional Wall and Floor Tilers in the UK
TilersForums.co.uk was setup in April 2006 and got off to a slow start considering how quickly it is growing right now. It took some time to get 50 members registered but from there-on there were no problems in that department. Now the free forum that’s built up from members such as the Wall and Floor Tilers which are a mix of mainly Professional with a few homeowners / DIY ‘weekend warriors’ has more than 8,000 members with 6,900 of them logging in within the last 12 months and 6,500 of those logging in within the last 6 months.
The Tile Industry in the UK has many groups or associations serving the industry, usually with some form of committee setup, often charging to become a member, almost always lacking members! And often they never really provide much to the Wall and Floor Tiler / Homeowner with a big tiling project coming up.
TilersForums.co.uk realised that with the backing of large numbers of people from within the tile industry projects that help the industry in some way are much easier to achieve. TilersForums.co.uk uses this theory to keep serving the industry with a really popular place to find information, products, reviews and feedback, general discussion, training advice, recommended suppliers and brands and pretty much anything else to do with tile, in the UK.
Some of the important free services we provide to the industry include (but are not limited to!!!):-
General Tiling Advice
TilersForums.co.uk hosts a section where any question can be asked regarding any area of the actual physical act of wall and / or floor tiling and can guarantee professional advice from professional wall and floor tilers and approved suppliers / distributors / manufacturers often within minutes. A topic that is interesting and has been online for just 24 hours can have 100 opinions given, often really digging into the nitty gritty of the job / project underway, and often with images and source of information provided too.
REAL Tiling Training Advice
TilersForums.co.uk support the Wall and Floor Tiling NVQ Level 2 should a person want to get into wall and floor tiling professionally, that being charging general public and tile contractors and the likes for their time installing wall and floor tile of any type. They also understand that the nation as a whole can provide many types of tiling training courses for many types of scenarios and for that reason they have created a system / process to find the right tiling course. Firstly there’s a feedback section on the forum, this is independently managed by a team of moderators to ensure to the best of their ability that all feedback left, both negative and positive, is genuine and useful. The feedback section lists feedback about all tiling training centre’s in the UK and anybody who has been on any course can leave feedback for those looking for any course to read later.
You will also find a general course discussion category where a person looking for a tiling courses can find and join-in general course and NVQ chat before committing themselves to any one course.
TilersForums.co.uk also has approved training centre’s as sponsors of the forum, and chosen by course quality and location there are several approved training centre’s spreading across the UK. The training centre’s do a mix of all course types including weekend courses, evening courses, short courses, longer courses and few of them carry out Tiling NVQ’s too.
Helping Get Work In For Tilers
TilersForums.co.uk has a number of ways they source jobs and work for their members. This includes the most popular web site of its type FindTrustedTradesmen.co.uk - Find tilers, plumbers, plasterers, electricians, builders, bathrooms specialists and more. which is free to use and register on. Not only is it free, and DOES get business in (unlike many other often even paid versions, even some of the ones training centre’s run don’t get business in for their listed tilers), but when you register a listing you get exclusive access to area’s and categories on TilersForums.co.uk which list discounts provided and processes to get the discount from many of its Approved Sponsors & Suppliers.
FindTrustedTradesmen.co.uk is advertised on and offline and people looking for all types of tradesmen hit the site every day and search through the local traders and use the web site as a first point of contact for traders that are recommended by many. On the web site you can view past work, read reviews (good or bad) and generally get to know the company a little before calling them to arrange the next step.
As well as that, TilersForums recently started a category on the forum where a customer can list physically list details of a job and allow the professional wall and floor tilers registered to the forum that are interested in the work to contact the them, the customer, for more information about the job, or to arrange the next step in their quoting / viewing process. This is a unique way to get business in for wall and floor tilers and it helps the customer and the tiler in a few ways. 1) The customer can often look through the profile of the tiler on the forum and find out if he/she thinks it’s worth getting them around to look at the job. 2) The customer knows that if the job doesn’t go well, the customer has a place to visit to get help and advice with their situation, and often no situation arises in the first place as a tiler wouldn’t try to ‘cop-out’ on a job found via the forum, knowing we know so many people within the industry they risk loosing some reputation somewhere down the line if fault of them and their work was actually found. 3) Did we mention it was free?!
Approved Suppliers, Courses and Brands etc
If there is a quality product or supplier out there, you can be sure you’ll find them on TilersForums.co.uk as an approved and trusted brand. Often sponsors will provide technical help to the forum members, and the forum provide links and information about their ranges within the forum throughout. Sponsors include some of the biggest names in the tile industry such as Mapei, CornerTape, Rubi, TradeTiler.com, UHeat, WetDecs, Schluter-Systems Ltd, 365Drills, Expotile / KBB, TileUK Magazine and Tile & Stone Journal, CTD Tiles & TileBase, and many more. We have more than 140 accounts on the forum that are members of staff from our sponsors that help provide discounts, advice, support and technical information regarding both their products and often speaking generically too. All of this advice is provided for FREE!
Elite Members
Along with the trusted advice from the suppliers and the likes, TilersForums.co.uk has around 120 members that are marked on the forum as ‘Elite Members’. These members are known and trusted for providing accurate advice to other members, and they’re the ones often helping offline too from time-to-time in many ways.
The Tile Network
TilersForums.co.uk started a Tile Business Network, a little like a Facebook for companies within the Tile Industry if you will, and that can be found at TilersTilingTiles.co.uk - remember the name by knowing we chat about Tilers, Tiling and Tiles, or perhaps imagine a picture of Tilers Tiling Tiles to a floor? The Tile Network has a few hundred members already and is growing quickly. This web site doesn’t take sponsors and is free for all companies to register on, advertise their goods and services, and provide and chat advice about all things tile. Though it’s setup in a social network-type affair including groups, forums, applications, and all things you’d expect to see on Facebook.
All Community Orientated!
The really unique thing that’s made TilersForums.co.uk such a known name on and offline in the Tile Industry is that the whole thing is run by people from within the Tile Industry. The members of the forum help in many ways by suggesting topics, products, processes and systems. Our Elite Members then get involved in working with new ideas and problem solving and often including our sponsors we’ll come up with something which can be tested and then launched. Only the sponsors pay the forum to be involved, and they’re happy paying knowing that the tile industry is getting good free advice. Everybody else gets access to all the recourses and information for free. And everybody gets involved in running the place in some way.
TilersForums.co.uk Doesn’t Sell You A Sausage!
TilersForums.co.uk doesn’t sell you a single thing. They leave that to the people that excel in their field, by getting them on-board as sponsors, or by working with them on something that benefits the members in some way. There are Google Advertisements that companies can sign-up to, and ‘click cash’ from this helps manage the running costs involved but all members have the ability to turn off the showing of these, should they not want to see them.
TilersForums.co.uk Approved & Insured Tiler
TilersForums.co.uk has a scheme setup whereby any professional tiler with a membership account on the forum can take out liability insurance (that’s discounted!) through the forum and get a set of ‘TilersForums.co.uk’ Approved and Insured Tiler’ stickers for their van(s). This gives the tiler benefits knowing their customers are aware of them being involved in the forum, and gives the customer a place to consider joining should they experience problems, and it also gives the tiler benefits by knowing they do have somewhere they can go to get any advice, hopefully leaving no room for error in their work and limiting failures in the future.

[Dan]

More Help Provided
TilersForums.co.uk also hosts discussion on all types of other things to do with wall and floor tiling, even down to accountancy and printing advice for businesses. In fact, anything you’ll hear being discussed on a building site, you’ll find discussed on a much larger scale on the forum. So you can imagine the amount of recommendations for cheaper supplies, service providers and the likes. TilersForums.co.uk have never worked the figures out fully, but say a wall and floor tiler going his own route around the industry will often pay lots more to get by than those on TilersForums.co.uk due to the amount of discounts setup from known trusted suppliers (often ones used anyway) and chat between professional tilers about other deals going on within the industry.
Who TilersForums.co.uk Need More Of
TilersForums.co.uk could quite easily provide all the above to 10 times the people we currently do. They’re always looking for more homeowners carrying out tiling projects, and established or new professional wall and floor tilers, and even people looking to get into the industry or those already in who want to get trained. Spread the word of the free community that could be seen to be providing more than any paid group or association by quite a lot of those important people in the tile industry, the ones buying the goods, the tilers and homeowners.
New Projects!
TilersForums.co.uk has a whole range of new projects being discussed, tested and launched. They can’t give details of these un till they’ve tested them out fully but they’ll all be just successful as the rest of the projects, and you can bet they’ll be free too.
They’re looking for all sorts of help from companies and associations within the tile industry and are constantly trying to get more backing from TTA (never with any joy!) and other associations from within the industry. If anybody can help, or thinks they have an idea, then please share it with the community and lets stop talking about it and start doing it.

[Dan]

I thought I'd post this here too. Needless to say, Dave and I to say the least will continue to work on unique projects serving the tile industry, SPECIFICALLY SERVING THE TILERS, THE GUYS THAT MAKE IT WORK!!!! unlike lots of trade organisations and associations who seem to serve the big firms, who also serve the tilers.

We do have several things we're working on right now! Though if you see a problem in the industry somewhere, or can recommend a project to try and tackle, then we're always up for a challenge.

The way we work it is the most impressive. ALL OUR SERVICES ARE FREE OF CHARGE TO THE TILER - AND HAVE FINANCIAL BACKING FROM THE 'BIG BOYS'.

I see no reason to not be part of anything we do, and that's why they have lots of backing, and members / users. I feel anyway.