Florim Brand Guidelines: From Floor Gres in 1962 to a Fiorano Benefit Company

An engineer’s clinker works in the Sassuolo district.

Florim’s story starts under another name. In 1962 the engineer Giovanni Lucchese founded Floor Gres in the Sassuolo ceramic district, in the province of Modena, and, by the company’s account, brought the production of extruded clinker tiles to Italy. The business magazine Pambianco Design confirmed the 1962 founding in June 2023, describing Lucchese as the founder of the Fiorano Modenese firm and his son Claudio Lucchese as its president.

The company’s own timeline lists a run of early technical steps. In 1967, it says, Floor Gres became the first Italian company to make white-body single-fired tiles; in 1976 it set up a division for swimming-pool tiles; and in 1981 it was, in its words, “among the first companies in the world” to begin producing porcelain stoneware, the dense ceramic body in which Pambianco says the group’s surfaces are made today. Claudio Lucchese took over the leadership of Floor Gres in 1984, according to the company.

The Florim name arrived with a merger. Floor Gres bought Cerim Ceramiche in 1990, and in 1992 the two companies merged to form Florim, the timeline says. The operating company today is Florim S.p.A. SB, with its registered office in Fiorano Modenese; its website describes it as a sole-shareholder company. The company says the Lucchese family has led it for more than sixty years, and it ties its working principle — “time is our ally” — to the vision of its founder.

Rex, Casa dolce casa, CEDIT and Clarksville.

Florim grew by buying established names. In 1994 it acquired Rex Ceramiche Artistiche, and in 2005 it bought Casa dolce casa together with Casamood, according to its timeline. In 1995 it set up a projects division, now called Florim Solutions. In 2016 it revived CEDIT – Ceramiche d’Italia and launched FLORIM stone, and in 2022, the timeline says, “Florim becomes a product brand.” In June 2023 Pambianco reported that the group’s sales came mainly through the Florim, Cedit and Florim stone brands. The footer of the company’s website now names Florim and CEDIT, and the site presents Elitique, a bathroom project with the furniture maker Falper that combines wood with porcelain stoneware.

Production is in Italy and the United States. The company lists a new “4.0” factory at Mordano, in the province of Bologna, in operation from 2017, and another at Fiorano from 2018; in 2014, it says, it began making large slabs up to 320 by 160 centimetres. Pambianco reported in 2023 that Florim had started a pilot using electric trucks to move slabs between Mordano and Fiorano, and had added solar panels at the Mordano factory. Pambianco also gave the workforce as more than 1,500 people, with production units, sales companies and partnerships in Europe, America and Asia.

In America the subsidiary Florim USA came from an acquisition in 2000 and runs a factory in Clarksville, Tennessee, according to both companies. Florim USA says all its products are made at that plant and sold under the MILE®stone name, and it calls the plant one of the largest porcelain tile plants in North America; that is its own description. It marked twenty-five years in Clarksville in 2025, and it began making gauged porcelain panels in 2023, it says. Its old web address, florimusa.com, now forwards to the MILE®stone site.

Retail followed production. The first Florim flagship store opened in Milan’s Brera district in 2009, the company says, followed by stores in Moscow in 2014, New York in 2015, Singapore in 2019, Frankfurt and London in 2020, Abu Dhabi in 2021, and Paris and Rome in 2022; a Los Angeles space opened in 2023, when the New York store moved to Fifth Avenue. Pambianco reported the Paris and Rome openings and the plans for Los Angeles and Fifth Avenue in June 2023.

Design and documentation.

Ceramic tile makers sell surfaces that people mostly meet as rooms, so their own material leans heavily on finished spaces. Pamesa’s website, for example, offers downloadable catalogues, moodboards, “by effect” and “by space” product searches and a BIM library for architects, and Porcelanosa’s 2026 showrooms in Vila-real presented its large-format porcelain through furnished settings, Interempresas reported. Room-set photography, in which a collection is laid across a kitchen, a bathroom or a terrace, is a common way to show a range.

Naming follows the surface. Pamesa’s 2026 ranges carry names such as Heritage, Trevi and Taj Mahal, and makers sort them by finish, format and thickness. Trade reports in 2026 described Porcelanosa adding 160 cm by 160 cm floor pieces and 3 mm slabs for furniture cladding, and Pamesa grouping its new ranges into four families, each defined by the kind of material effect it shows.

Trade fairs are the other main stage. Cersaie, held at BolognaFiere in Italy, reached its 43rd edition from 21 to 25 September 2026, according to Castellón Información. Both companies built their 2026 stands as furnished settings: Pamesa called its 2026 space The Gallery, and Porcelanosa printed a magazine to guide visitors around its stand. Pamesa’s website also keeps virtual tours of its stands at Cersaie and at Cevisama from 2017 to 2022, while Porcelanosa stages its own annual show in Vila-real, which reached its 32nd edition in 2026.

Behind the collections sit corporate pages that read quite differently. They list group companies, plants, acquisitions and leadership teams, and they are often the clearest public record of who owns which brand. This guide relies on those pages only for what the companies say about themselves, and on press reports and encyclopedias for dated facts.

“Made in Florim.”

Florim puts its legal form near the front of its story. In 2020 it changed its statute to become a Società Benefit, the Italian form of benefit company, and gained B Corp certification; Pambianco called it the first industrial company in the Italian ceramic sector to take the benefit-company form. Florim USA followed as an American benefit corporation in 2022 and gained B Corp certification in 2025, it says. In 2022 Florim took first place in “La Fabbrica nel Paesaggio,” a competition run by the UNESCO clubs of Modena for factories that meet ecological goals while respecting the landscape, Pambianco reported, and that year it joined Altagamma, the foundation of Italian high-end companies. The company launched a CarbonZero project in 2023, since renamed CarbonAction.

Art and place are part of the headquarters. The company says its Fiorano site holds works including “Il Cavallo” by Paladino and “Percorso Amoroso” by Gallo. The multifunctional Florim Gallery, a logistics centre and the Ing. Giovanni Lucchese Foundation date from 2013, it says, and a health and training centre run with the hospital of Sassuolo opened in Fiorano in 2014. Pambianco reported a collaboration with Rome’s MAXXI museum in 2023. The company’s phrase for its way of working is “Made in Florim,” and its stated aim is to create “beauty that lasts.”

Florim does not publish a brand manual on its website, and the colours and type in this guide are not taken from its marks. Its brands now sit under one company name: Florim for its main ranges, CEDIT for its revived Italian label and FLORIM stone, with Florim USA selling MILE®stone in North America.

For a design guide, Florim shows how a family clinker works can become a group of product brands, flagship stores and certified corporate forms without leaving its home district. Compare Atlas Concorde, another tile group headquartered in Fiorano Modenese, and Iris Ceramica, also based in Fiorano. For this guide we use a kiln bronze and a porcelain stone grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Florim’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.