When the recession hit, Edward Price said he had more important things to worry about. He was confident his low prices and wide range would protect him. He seems to have been right. Last year was one of the best years yet for Price’s Paving & Tile.

It’s not what you expect to see in a tile showroom – an S&M dungeon. Even if it does have Jerusalem Grey Gold stone tiles on the walls and floors. But there’s quite a lot in the showroom of Price’s Paving & Tile in Snape, North Yorkshire, that you don’t usually expect to see in a tile showroom.

In one section there is a doorway disguised as a wardrobe. On the outside is a notice saying Price’s Paving presents The Chronicles of Narnia. There are fur coats and other clothes in the wardrobe. If you walk through them there is the Snow Queen.

The building that was previously a garage and before that a hanger where light aircraft were made is not a bad size – it has a footprint of about 700m² – but it has been divided up into corridors and rooms to maximise the amount of individual wall and floor areas that can be used to display tiles. And it is on two floors. The Narnia experience is on the first floor in an area that has been opened to the public for the first time and that has added an extra 25% to the display area.

The corridors lead to rooms such as a ‘millionaire’s bathroom’ and an ‘Egyptian tomb’ complete with golden sarcophagus, which gained Price’s quite a lot of publicity (including coverage in this magazine) when it opened in 2008.

The fetish dungeon has had the same effect, although the editor of the local newspaper was concerned when Price’s wanted to advertise it. There was some question of whether the ad would be allowed to run until the paper saw it was just a bit of fun.

The point, of course, is to attract customers – and it is working. Edward Price, the Director of Price’s Paving & Tile, says some of his neighbours have visited the showroom for the first time since he moved into the premises six years ago.

The redesigned part of the showroom containing the S&M dungeon is entered through an opening that frames a mosaic of Marilyn Munroe naked. In the room there is also a pool of polished Emperador with underwater lighting. The displays include stones pots, basins and carvings and wooden furniture that Price’s sell to complement their stone.

They have divided their showroom up into corridors because they believe the stone should be displayed on walls and floors rather than display boards so that customers can see how the tiles will look in use.

The sets have been designed by Edward Price himself and serve the added purpose of illustrating the company’s service of laying out rooms for customers, who might be developers or builders as well as homeowners.

Outside is stone for hard landscaping, which accounts for the largest square meterage of stone that Price’s sell and about half the annual turnover.

There is an enormous choice of stone on display to choose from – even more than last year. Another 50 tile ranges have been added as a result of Edward spending three months last year visiting stone producers in Vietnam, Brazil, China and India. He says: “I might take a bit of a breather this year.”

The philosophy of Price’s Paving & Tile is to pile it high and sell it cheap. Last year they not only increased the width of the ranges they stock, but also the depth in which they are stocked and they now have 300 container-loads of stone on their three-acre storage site near their showroom from where they wholesale the stone to the trade and other retailers as well as retailing it themselves from their own showroom.

With stone coming from all over the world and taking weeks to arrive, Price’s believe they need to hold stocks so their trade customers don’t have to. They believe they should have what people want available as soon as they want it if at all possible.

It was certainly bucking the trend to be increasing stock in a recession, but Edward Price says: “It was just the right time to buy, buy, buy.”

He certainly picked up some bargains last year. There were the 81 tonnes of assorted Turkish mosaics that his guys spent the snowy winter months sorting into matching piles and Price’s are now selling as a mix-’n’-match range for £25/m². Most importers could not buy them in at that price.

They bought a container of imported sandstone paving that had been rejected because of inconsistent colouring, sorted it into matching lots and sold it on almost immediately as three lots to hard landscaping contractors.

They picked up 20 containers of high quality travertine that had been destined for America. A Turkish company that did not have enough work to keep its saws busy cut it into sizes for the English market and Price’s knocked it out for £15/m² to builders.

Another 15 containers, this time of marble left over from a project in Dubai, were snapped up by Price’s. They are confident they will sell it all this year in packages of 50-60m² at a time.

But as Edward points out, stone is a good investment. The average price he is paying for stone now is more than he was paying eight months ago and shipping has trebled in price during the past year, further increasing the cost of imports.

“Yes, a lot of stock ties up a lot of money, but what else are you going to do with that money? Put it on the stock market? Put it into property? It was far better to invest it in stock than anything else.”

Most companies, of course, would be reducing debt with it, but Price’s have financed expansion out of earnings leaving themselves with minimal exposure to the banks’ debt crisis. They also have minimal overheads, with a staff of 12 and Edward the only director. “And I don’t have an expensive lifestyle,” he says.

The result is that last year Price’s enjoyed one of their most successful years to date. The recession might even have helped by making people more price conscious, so customers across the board – developers, builders, contractors and consumers – were more willing to look around for the best price.

On the retail side, being in an affluent part of the country helps. An increasing number of Price’s customers are 90-day people – those who spend most of the year abroad so they don’t have to pay taxes in the UK.

But even on this side of the business not all customers are local. “We had one person ’phone up from London. Someone had told him about us. He wanted to know if we had somewhere he could land a helicopter. We don’t. We ended up picking him up from the train station.”

After last year’s success, this year got off to a slow start. Edward reckons the ’phones start ringing when the daffodils bloom and the snow meant they were late this year.

With government spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the government deficit, it might be a harder year for everyone. But Edward is still optimistic. And now he wants to consolidate his business on one, even larger site where he can hold at least as much stock and create an even larger and more impressive showroom.