History

It all started in the beginning of 1985 when a small familly company called Merilly d.o.o. (Merilly) entered the world of ceramic tiles. From the very beginning, Merilly acted as an agent/representative for different companies that were producing ceramic tiles of different qualities and styles. Merilly promoted their products to different shops in different cities, creating a strong sales network that enabled it to become one of the biggest wholesalers in South-East Europe.

The origin of the company is in Slovenia, from where network expanded to territory of current Croatia in 1986. Before that market was fully covered Merilly created first connections in territories of Serbia and Bosnia and sold first few trucks to that market in 1987. Business path then led Merilly to Macedonia in 1988 and current Montenegro in 1989.

Then hard times came for market of Balcan and growth slowed down alot. Luckly nature of business as a wholesaler enabled Merilly to survive the period of disintegration of Yugoslavia without any big loses in investments since Merilly did not own any shops at that time. Then still very small company managed to survive of Slovenian market, which was not hit by any real wars.

As this area has stabilized Merilly was already there with its network of stores and producers of ceramic tiles to satisfy different needs. This was the age of prosperity for Merilly and in 1997 it opened its first retail shop in Slovenia. However very soon after that that shop was closed due to ROI being much lower that ROI was in Merilly’s core business (representing different producers as an agent). That is why Merilly focused its time and money back to conquering new markets.

In 2005 first connections were made in Slovakia and Czech Republic in 2006. 2005 was not important only for entering Slovakia, but also for entering the World Wide Web. On 4th of April 2005, Merilly registered domain name Keramika.si . Actually the goal of Keramika.si was very much similar to the one of CeramicTiles.Net only it was ment for territory of Slovenia. The response of the market was very nice and traffic of the site grew every day. But due to lack of experiences online Merilly did not manage to monetize this story of success and therefore Keramika.si was changed from a directory of information into a first online shop of ceramic tiles. This online shop was soon expanded to KeramicnePloscice.com which means ceramic tiles in Slovene language. This shop of ceramic tiles was then followed with KeramickePlocice.net, which is an online shop of ceramic tiles for whole Balcan.

In this era of online growth new name was introduced to producers and stores cooperating with Merilly. That name was e-Ceramica. e-Ceramica is now the name of Merilly’s projects online and offline. It is the name that represents joined network of producers, stores, fitters and architects. It is also the foundation of this project, CeramicTiles.Net.

e-Ceramica is now present in 11 countries in Europe and it joins together over 500 physical stores. 25 years of experiences enable Merilly to successfully run many online and offline projects including CeramicTiles.Net, the biggest database of information about ceramic tiles in the world!