Ceramic house numbers are hot

Orders are coming in from around the world.

Newsday

LONG BEACH, N.Y. – Mona Bergin has your number. Or rather, she does if you live in one of the thousands of homes bearing her hand-painted ceramic house number plaques.

The 48-year-old mother of three says the best aspect of her business, Ceramic House Number, is that she can do it all from her own home.

“I’ve done over 4,000 house number plaques, and I don’t have to leave the house,” Bergin says. “All I do is go to the post office once a day, and I’m done.”

It all began about 18 years ago with the birth of her first daughter. Bergin knew she wanted to begin a home-based business, so she left her job at Siemens Communications, where her husband, Joe, 51, still works as a salesman.

She tried making stained-glass windows but stopped after finding her baby daughter eating a piece of lead.

She tried a custom curtain business, but taking measurements meant leaving the house too often.

Her hand-painted greeting card business just never took off.

But after a home renovation project led Bergin to create her own painted-tile backsplash, the path opened for a successful business. Too successful, in fact. The day she came home from the hospital after delivering twins 13 years ago, she was at her studio table finishing an order.

Then she learned how to create a Web site and came up with the idea for her ceramic tile plaques. She put some designs on www.ceramichousenumber.com, and her business was born.

“I launched it all by myself, and I waited. All of a sudden, I get an order. I said, ‘Oh my God, I’m rich,’” Bergin recounts. “The next week I get seven orders, the week after that more. I said, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s going on?’”

By the second year, business had doubled, and it kept doubling year after year.

Now she’s receiving orders for her designs, which have names such as Toscana, Milan and Villa Roma, from all over the world.

“I get such beautiful thank-you letters,” she says, recalling one from a client who said she thought of her grandmother in Italy every time she saw the plaque. “I get a lot of that, and I save them.”

She also does custom designs, based on clients’ specifications, including variations on the standard 8-by-16-inch tile size.

“I say two weeks because I get busy, but they usually get it within a week,” she says.

“I like to fire it a couple of times, hang out with it to make sure I like it.

“It’s always painted with love.”

Bergin still fires her plaques in the kiln that she bought used years ago for $300 and learned to use by trial and error.

“It’s my good-luck kiln,” she says.