Rachiele® Custom Sink History...
Thank you for visiting my website! I love what I do and I hope it shows. I look back at the 21 years I have been in business with a great deal of pride and humility. I am acutely aware that my success has not been mine alone. Many employees and family members have been a big part of the success of my company. For that, I am eternally grateful. I am also grateful to our past clients who take time to email and call regularly to tell us how pleased they are. You are seeing about 1/2 of my artisan shop from this vantage point. As a side note, the American Flag was the first thing we set up in our artisan shop. We now have four of them and are proud to be manufacturing in the USA.
I was a full time kitchen designer in New York from 1977 through 1980. I moved to Florida and continued as a professional designer from 1980 through 1997. I designed luxury kitchens, specializing in ergonomic and timeless design. In late1997 I discovered the Internet and began selling cabinetry Online. That ended up becoming my full time job. I started a company called Luxury Home Products in late 1997. I represented and sold everything from cabinetry to lighting fixtures, sinks, faucets and ceiling fans. The company (Luxury Home Products) became wildly successful and one of the largest of its kind Online. In early 1998 decided to run my sink design ideas past some of the major sink manufacturers - as I found virtually all sinks on the market to be lacking in ergonomic design. Virtually everyone that I spoke to was uninterested. I then decided to patent some of my ideas. I was awarded quite a few patents. I started the Rachiele custom sink company in early 1999. I began to get many requests from kitchen dealers so I set the company up to sell directly to dealers and we amassed over 140 dealers across the US and Canada very quickly. After almost a decade, my designs became so intricate and custom that it became difficult to pass that information through a dealer to the end user. In 2008 I decided it would be best to sell direct to the end user. All of our dealers, thankfully, understood and we parted ways as friends. Since then I have been transitioning to only offering custom sinks. I have come to realize the only way to provide an optimum sink is to custom design the sink with each family. My goal is to provide your family with a sink (and faucet) that is as ergonomically comfortable as possible and as efficient as possible. Sink depth, drain location, overall sink design and the type and size of sink accessories vary from family to family. Therefore, I work directly with each family by phone and via email. We have no sales staff. You will work directly with me from inception to installation.
Also in 2008 I decided to drop all imported products from my Luxury Home Products company and change the name to "The USA Home". I had countless problems with faucet manufacturers and constant daily warranty claims - all except Waterstone. That decision turned my 3 million dollar a year company (Luxury Home Products) into a half million dollar a year company overnight - now called The USA Home. I have no regrets. I do everything I can to insure every thing we use is Made in the USA unless there are no domestic options at all. All of our metal is made in the USA. Even the foam packing we use to when we crate the sinks is made in the USA. Our poly boards are made in the USA (that was quite a challenge. Most are made in China). We love our country and do what we can to support it. We are also very grateful to our Military and First Responders.
I recently realized I have disrupted the entire sink industry. Before my designs, there were no companies building mainstream sinks with rear corner drains, there were no workstation sinks, no sponge caddies, no drain grids, no compost bins, no ability to put a double trash mechanism inside a sink base, no 8" deep sinks, there were no retrofit farm sinks, there were no textured stainless steel sinks, there were no Marine grade stainless sinks, there were no brass workstation sinks, and most infuriating to me - no well designed sinks for people in wheelchairs. Virtually every sink manufacturer has benefited by my designs. As of today, there are no 100% custom sink manufacturers out there, especially any where the owner designs the sink with you. I fully doubt there is any national manufacturer, of any kind, where you can call 7 days a week, 12 hours a day and get the owner on the phone.
I found one of my last design certifications showing one of many accreditations during my professional career as a kitchen and other room designer days. My years as a kitchen designer have become invaluable in designing sinks to fit cabinetry properly. I have been able to see potential installation issues and avoid them based on this knowledge along with my extensive cabinetry installation expertise.
Now on to the good stuff:
The best part of all of this is I have not worked a day since 1998. What I do on a daily basis is fun for me. In fact, I was asked what my retirement plans were and I had never thought about retiring for quite some time. Once I thought about it, I realized, there was nothing I would rather do that what I do every day. Retirement is not on the horizon.
Update October, 2022
Well, Jessica did have her baby girl - a total doll. Jessica decided to be a stay at home mom and is not returning. We wish her the best in life. She was a great contributor to our business family. Mataya has taken her place and is doing an amazing job at it. Jessica's shoes were not easy to fill, however Mataya was up to the challenge.
We all just went through hurricane Ian. Thankfully, all of us were spared other than about half of us were without power for a few days. I forgot to mention that we invested in a state of the art Fiber Laser back in December. It has been quite the workhorse. We have been able
to cut our scrap metal by at least 40% and the precision is nothing less than stunning.
We have been innovating constantly and have improved our metal accessories in both design and function. We have come up with new sink designs - Harmony... which is a large single bowl sink with two disposals (drains) for use by two persons at a time. All in all, this has been a very fun year for all of us.
Update April 7, 2022
Oh boy, it has been a while since I updated this page! We have been super busy and have a great deal of news. First off, Jessica just left on maternity leave. Her baby is due any day now.
Update July 2020
We sure have had some scary days lately with this Covid 19 virus. Thankfully, we were able to work every day and keep our employees fully compensated. In February we hired a gem! Her name is Jessica. She has been my assistant and is nothing short of amazing. She was up to par within two weeks and thereafter doing things far beyond what I could have wished for. Back in late June she came to work and said she had a sink design idea for me. She said "Why don't you combine your Signature Series step and the NexGen ledge and make a two tier sink that recovers the lost width that your dual tier Evolution sink looses?" The ideas was brilliant. I stopped everyone at the shop and we built one in two days and it is now on display in our showroom. We just shipped the first one, of many sold, today (7/21/2020). The men in the shop are also brilliant. Hardly a day goes by where they don't come up with a great idea. I was recently asked why we don't have printed literature. My answer was simple. If we printed literature, it would be outdated before the ink was dry. We are all innovators that think outside the box. I am surrounded by brilliant innovators, from Lisa and Jessica to the team in the shop. Every day is exciting here!
Update January 28, 2020
We are producing more precision than ever - and with a quality that has surpassed anything we have done in the past. The CAD work and fabrication precision has become amazing thanks to our Foreman. His work has allowed our sinks to be welded 100% faster than in the past. We are looking forward to another wonderful year!
Our precision Micro-weld technique along with our 1/8" radius corners on our hand finished stainless have been quite a hit. Our welders have constantly improved their skills to a level I have never seen anywhere. Our almost complete showroom demonstrates the amazing quality along with a nice array of Waterstone faucets. Several faucets are working faucets, as are the sinks. Shortly we will be having cooking demonstrations on video along with the recipes so you can make these favorites at home. If you are ever in the Central Florida area, feel free to visit and tour our showroom of ideas and our shop.
Update January 15, 2020 
Update September 1, 2019
Up until today, we were in the direct path of the Hurricane Dorian. Fingers crossed... It appears it is going to veer to the East. If so, we will be out of the scary zone! If not, we are going to have to hunker down. Our office and shop are in good areas. We should not have any damage or fear of flooding. We have been through far worse with no damage. The image below was yesterdays prediction!
Update July 2019
We have been on a mad innovative streak this year! The men in the shop have come up with significant improvements over how we used to build our sinks. We are now offering, as an option, 1/8" radius corners in our hand finished matte stainless sinks. We recently introduced Brass sinks to our lineup. We have improved, what was already good, the drainage on all of our sinks. We have improved the way we reinforce the aprons on our sinks to insure they travel well in shipping. We have changed the pattern of holes on our accessories to a more luxurious look. We have sped up the finishing process on our matte stainless sinks by over 50%.We have sped up the finishing process on our copper sinks by over 50%. You would think a huge increase in speed would offer some sacrifice in quality. Actually, the reverse is true. We have never produced sinks of the quality we have put out this year. I inspect every sink before it goes to patina or, if stainless, before it is crated. I let nothing through unless it meets my high standards. I am pleased daily by the, almost robotic, perfection offered by my great team. This is an example of the fine welding and finishing we are now able to accomplish on stainless sinks.
Update February 1 2019
We always look forward to December as our slowest month. That is a time when we can relax a bit and catch up on year-end tasks. Not last year. I did some quick math and discovered our sales were up by 292% of the previous December. Yikes! January was another record month. All of this without spending money on advertising. In fact, we stopped advertising about a decade ago. We are now fairly well known and most of our business comes from referrals from past clients, repeat business and referrals from architects and builders who have seen our work. For most companies, advertising is the biggest budget item for overhead other than payroll. Having no advertising budget expenses means we can run lean and mean and pass those savings on to you!
Update October 1 2018
We could not possibly be busier! Lead times are leaking well into Mid November and December. Almost all of our business is referral, or repeat business. For those reasons, we only spend a few hundred dollars a year advertising. There is no real need to advertise. My parents always said, "if you do a great job, people might just refer you to their friends. If you do a bad job, people will definitely go out of their way to tell their friends to stay away." You might see companies that have been in business a long time "price matching" or even "Will Beat all Prices". That is a sign that perhaps something is wrong. Those of us who know the scent of desperation, know what to do when we confront it. We are not ashamed of our prices and have never "price matched" for that reason. Our prices have always been the best we can offer and still give world class customer service and quality products.
Update July 24 2018
We have had more local business this summer than in all the years we have been in business. We have been fortunate that most of our business comes from referrals and repeat customers. The few seeds we have planted in Florida have grown. It has always amazed me that we have done so little in Florida compared to just about any other State. Well, that has changed!
Update April 6, 2018
We have been quite busy lately. That being said, there is always time for innovation and testing. My NexGen design was recently rolled out. We thoroughly tested the design and made some alterations to the apron of the sink as well. The alteration offers even more ergonomic advantages than our prior design. We built the first NexGen Evolution sink. That was truly an engineering marvel. We are still working on tweaking the design a bit before we roll it out to the public.
Update January 21, 2018
A belated Happy New Year to everyone. Last year was one for the record books. We are so grateful for all of the referral and repeat business. The vast majority of our business is generated that way.
One of the wonderful values of owning a shop and having such a talented team is that we are constantly evolving our product offerings and even our basic designs. 90% of our sinks have new design improvements and more are coming very soon. Always blazing a path far ahead of the pack has been, and continues to be, a fun adventure. Many of you may not be aware, but I was the first to introduce a rear corner drain to the industry as a standard. Many of my friends in the industry have followed with that offering. The workstation sink was also my original design as well. Many companies have followed with their similar designs and I am flattered that we have been leading the industry in sink design.
Update November 27, 2017
It sure has been a long time since I updated this page! Whew, time flies when you are having fun - and fun it has been! We have been growing at a fast pace, however quite manageable. We have added workers in the shop and we have upgraded our apron front top coat finishing significantly this year. Theme park work in Orlando is around the corner. They have reached out to us due to a dissatisfaction of the workmanship they have been receiving lately and are very aware of our high quality standards and know some of our employees quite well from past work they have done.
Update September 27, 2016
We are creeping up on our 200th sink made in the new shop since mid June and we have been able to easily keep up with production. Business is booming and we are so grateful for the wonderful employees that allow me to offer the best of the best to you!
Update October 17, 2016
Now that everything is running smoothly at the shop and lead times are very short, we will be venturing out into other local sheet metal project opportunities. These projects, in no way, will increase the sink production time. Custom sinks will always be our primary focus. (Update: We quickly decided not to venture into other avenues. We want our focus to be only on custom sinks. Watering down what we do best is not in our best interest.)
Update December 27, 2016
What a year we had! Sales soared beyond my wildest dreams. Our new shop has enabled us to produce a higher quality product while speeding up lead times.
It is that time of year to be thankful and to pay it forward. This year we brought donuts and bagels for 50 fine Apopka Police department workers. We also left paid gift cards at the local Race Trac gas station and instructed the workers to use them for anything police officers would like during the holiday. We hope this inspires you to do a little something for those who do so much for us. We have a show for you courtesy of Elon Musk of Tesla.