John Krause, the Managing Director of London stone and terrazzo specialist Diespeker, celebrated his 55th birthday this year by running his fastest ever London Marathon – 3hrs 8mins. He is feeling good.

John Krause is at the top of his game. He ran his 116th marathon shortly before his 55th birthday in June and is now running faster than at any time since he started running marathons in 2000. He achieved a London Marathon personal best in April of 3hrs 08mins. It is the same in the family business, Diespeker Marble & Terrazzo Ltd, in south-east London of which he is now the sole Director.

“There are windows in life and my window is here and now,” says John.

“Thirtyseven years I’ve been here at Diespeker. Thirtyseven years I’ve been doing the same job; I’ve had the same wife; I’ve lived in the same city. After 37 years it’s looking good. I couldn’t be happier. It suddenly seems as if I’m fulfilling a dream – everything seems quite easy.”

Everything? 

Not quite. John admits his ambitions for this year include touching his toes while keeping his legs straight. It is a disappointment to him he can’t do it but he plans to have achieved it by the end of the year.

Apart from that he is generally contented and particularly pleased to be welcoming the next generation of his family into the business, with his eldest daughter’s partner, Kevin Maynard, having just joined as Business Development Manager.

Being content does not mean easing back, but it does mean getting better – like John’s PBs in his running. “It was difficult in the recession, but because I’m ridiculously positive about everything I just decided to fight for my share. We’re in a business where you can be proactive. Now we’re motoring at quite a fast rate and sales have almost trebled in the past four years.”

Diespeker was originally a German / Italian company that came to Islington in London in 1881 to make and sell terrazzo, which it still does, although these days 90% of its sales are of granite, marble and natural and engineered stone. It has made a concerted effort to grow that side of the business since the turn of the millennium, when it was clear stone had greater potential for growth than terrazzo. One of its recent stone projects involved supplying £400,000 worth of marble for a £50million private house in Notting Hill Gate. That is the sort of project it is feasible to concentrate on in London.

Nevertheless, Diespeker did not turn its back on terrazzo, especially bespoke terrazzo for high value projects such as its short-listed entry in the Tile Awards this year at the Soho restaurant of Bob Bob Ricard.

Bob Bob Ricard was opening up a basement and wanted the floor to match the floor in the restaurant above, which is terrazzo with an inlaid darker geometric pattern spelling out the name of Bob Bob Ricard.

The recess for the darker pattern was cut into the lighter slabs on Diespeker’s Breton NC250 CNC workcenter, although all the inside corners had to be squared by hand before the darker inlay could be added (also by hand). It then all had to be polished on the jenny linds before going to Bob Bob’s to be installed.

John Krause said it was an intricate and time consuming project that Diespeker had had only five weeks to complete after being awarded the contract. “It was tight, but we did it,” says John, which he doubts many others could have done.

An increasing amount of the terrazzo produced by Diespeker now is resin-based, which gives it greater versatility and means it can be used for horizontal surfaces as well as vertical surfaces. “There are very few other people who can do it or want to do it,” says John, “but it ties in nicely with our terrazzo business.”

One of the attractions of resin terrazzo to architects is that it does not need expansion joints in the surface. And for Diespeker it means it can be laid 10mm thick straight on to boards. “It’s a different game,” says John.

Terrazzo has gained Diespeker work for artist Damien Hurst and the quirky Paul Smith retail outlet in London’s Notting Hill Gate this summer, as well as what John Krause describes as “a really interesting job” at an ice cream parlour in Cambridge Circus that involved bespoke countertops and a 2m diameter fountain in four tiers of terrazzo made using glass and metal chippings and a bright blue pigment.

Another new venture is making terrazzo garden furniture. It came about as a result of a chance visit to the Diespeker & Co factory by Scott Maddux of Maddux Creative. The result is a collaborative initiative between the two companies.

The process is based on traditional manufacture with chippings added to a cement mix, coloured with pigments, cast into moulds, rolled, trowelled, hardened and polished. They attracted a lot of appreciative attention from design creatives when they were exhibited at Clerkenwell Design Week earlier this year.

John Krause likes such projects. The better margins are attractive, of course, but the projects are also more interesting and generally less time sensitive. And it all helps Diespeker grow its reputation for such work, which leads to more of it.

The company’s location – its 1,700m2 factory, yard, offices and showroom are just two miles from Tower Bridge – in one of the world’s richest cities, is no handicap, either. The company’s provenance and the fact that it is manufacturing in the UK using British labour (it employs 30 people) and supplying exceptionally environmentally friendly, low carbon products also contribute to creating a message customers want to hear.

The factory is equipped with Terzago and Cobalm saws, a Montresor edge polisher, various jenny lind polishers and handling equipment, including a new gantry that has just been installed in the yard. The showroom below offices emblazoned with the company name on the outside has walls lined with 700 samples of natural stone, engineered quartz and terrazzo, while the terrazzo floor shows what can be achieved with the material. When people visit the premises and see the operation they usually buy from Diespeker.

The package adds up to a pretty impressive message that Diespeker is now using a marketing company, Terra Ferma Media, to get out to a wider audience. John: “We can generate our own level of sales but if you want to go forward you have to pay someone to put your name out there.”