riccobene's endless landscaping solutions
riccobene concrete masonry and design offers ingenious templates limited only by consumer’s imagination
IN AN INNOCUOUS OFFICE BUILDING IN THE NORTH VALLEY,
MAGIC HAPPENS ON A REGULAR BASIS. It is here that products are conceived, created, developed and delivered for a range of landscaping needs and functions. Riccobene Concrete Masonry and Design, which stems from the fertile and unending tinkering of brothers Tom and Sal Riccobene, has been a half century in the making.
“We do all that testing here and all that forethought here,” Tom Riccobene said on a recent tour of the facility. The son and grandson of stone masons, Riccobene originally made his mark in concrete pavers, particular edgers. “We basically reinvented flagstone,” he said. It all started from when he was a kid, watching his elders work.
planting the seed
“My grandfather, my uncles and my father were laying a patio – a stone patio,” Riccobene said. “They’re chipping like crazy. I’m watching my grandfather chip and there are chips flying everywhere. He looks up and he said, ‘It’s hard work, isn’t it Tommy?’” His grandfather then paused and pointed to his eye. ‘“That’s how this happened,’” his grandfather said. “His eye was coming out of his head, almost, because he had been injured, chipping and breaking stone,” Riccobene said.
And that was germ, the seed of Riccobene’s innovations. “So ever since then, as a kid I said, ‘I’m going to figure that out. I’m going to figure out how to make stones that already fit.’ That was the idea being born.” It wasn’t until 1989 that he really was able to buckle down and make it work and, “it and took another 10 years to work on it,” he said of the product that would become known as First Prize, and later, Grand Prize.
patents
Now, decades later, more than 220 million units have been sold and the company has updated its patents eight different times. The shelves on one wall of Riccobene’s office are filled with various, ingenious interlocking bricks, faux stones, pavers and stepping stones. Some are in the market, some are headed for the market eventually and some likely will never get beyond those shelves.
"The Cobble Systems allows a look to be achieved that would otherwise be unachievable without spending a lot of money and having trained people who understand how to lay small cobble.” tom riccobene, riccobene concrete masonry and design The laying system is so easy to install that two people can easily handle the 5 1/3 square foot sections.
Another wall is crowded with file folders bursting forth with papers and diagrams of what to most people would look like meaningless doodles. “These are my patents,” Riccobene said. “First we have to make the idea, figure out if it has value in the marketplace and all of that kind of stuff. Then we file a provisional (patent), which kind of sets our mark and then we go ahead and file, then prosecute the patent. And that can take anywhere from a year to five years.”
So just how many patents lie amidst the papers and files and folders? “I knew you were going to ask that,” he said with a smile. “I have no idea. It’s more than 50, somewhere between 50 and 150 if I include all of my provisional, filed, patented, or provisional patents.” The latest innovation, which the company is producing itself at the moment, but should be headed for a national rollout before too long is called Cobble Systems.
cobble system
Called “articulating concrete mats” in company literature, what the system does is produce a unique and easy way to install a classy, old-world-looking ground cover. “The Cobble Systems allows a look to be achieved that would otherwise be unachievable without spending a lot of money and having trained people who understand how to lay small cobble,” Riccobene said. “When we lay small cobble, most of the time what’s going to happen is we have cobbles of different thicknesses and different sizes. And in the old world, they were basically done in a sand based site and they would basically have to just hammer down into the sand base until the tops were level.”
Instead of that laborious, back-breaking, time-consuming process, the same look can be easily achieved by two people with no prior background, he said. “What we’ve done is taken all of that work out of it,” Riccobene said. “We’ve gone ahead and put a grid on the back of the cobbles that allows them to stay together. When we look at it, there’s a (plastic) grid built into the back side that allows it to be a single unit. We have something that is flexible so it will articulate over uneven surfaces.”
beauty in its ease, precision
“There is 5 1/3 square feet per drop. And that takes a very little while to put down, let’s say it takes 30 seconds for two people to go pick it up and put down. A minute to do a second one and now they’re up to 10 square feet. Before you know, it’s down pretty quick. And the other nice thing about this is the pieces have got flexibility. When you lay them in length, you can turn them and they’ll stay together. So now what ends up happening is you can put in a curved pathway without really even trying.You can begin to mix colors and put different kinds of patterns down.”
The system is water permeable, as a display in the company lab graphically shows, and it can be weaved into any number of patterns, even circles.“The grids are easily shaped so you can cut off whatever you didn’t want in that space with tin snips because you can cut through them pretty easily” said company marketing director Mary Brown-Montanez. “So if you just wanted to pull the circle out of the design, you could do that. It just depends on what your brain can think up.”
a new generation
And now venturing into a new generation, Riccobene’s son, Dominic, is adding to the production with his own, special flair as a trained film maker who at one time worked for NASA communications. The slick movie productions show, for instance, provides a range of possibilities in which the Cobble Systems can be used. “Dominic adds a whole new level to things,” Riccobene said.“We can take his movies and show them to potential new clients so they know exactly what we’re talking about.”