“People think it’s a restaurant, especially the ones who are from out of town. They also think that because it’s ‘Casa Mexicana’ we only carry Mexican tile, while in fact most of it is Italian and Spanish.”
Martha Orta knows her family business. Built one tile at a time right here in the Mesilla Valley, Casa Mexicana is more than just the largest tile distributor in New Mexico. Casa Mexicana is the patchwork legacy woven with care by her father, Isidro Peña, A Mexican immigrant who came to New Mexico as a migrant farm worker in the 1960’s.Twenty-five years and millions of tiles later, Isidro Peña is still operating his family legacy on that “one at a time” philosophy. Martha remembers the tedious process well, as she walks past the crude tile press that her family used before they ventured into the wholesale tile business. “We used to make about 150 tiles a day,” she says, picking up a heavy tile press by its handles. “You would pour the paint in first, and then the concrete. After it was pressed, it would be laid out to dry for a day, and then submerged in water to cure for another two days. The entire process took about three days.”
They’ve come a long way since the days of the old tile press. As Martha remembers, a Spaniard selling space in a container made a sales call at their old four-points warehouse, and the business took off from there. Gone were the days of pressing out tiles one at a time. Now, Casa Mexicana was venturing into the business of importing tile from leading manufacturers around the globe. “Everything you could possible want is right here in our warehouse,” explains Martha, whose massive warehouse on South Main Street stocks over one million square feet of tile from nine different countries in more than 250 designs. There are traditional floor tiles, mosaics, custom kitchen tile and granite. “That’s our most expensive tile,” Martha says of the special order granite. “It sells between $8.00 and $22.00 a square foot, but our most popular tiles cost anywhere from 69 to $2.95.” And because Casa Mexicana leaves out the middle man, you’re able to get the best tile at warehouse prices. “We want to cater to the people here who work hard for their money and want it to reflect in their home,” says Martha. “We want to provide them with a nice product at the lowest possible cost, so we operate on low profit margins. The way we make the business work is by buying in bulk and selling in large quantities.”
Although Martha and her brother, Isidro Peña Junior are able to keep the business running six days a week on their own, it’s not without the watchful eye of their father. And when Isidro Senior speaks, it’s no hard to hear in his voice the sincerity he has for his business and his enterprising children. He’s definitely a man who loves his family and loves his work, and not necessarily his tile empire. When you talk to Isidro, he doesn’t want to talk about tile. He wants to talk about his real passion—his trees.
Before Casa Mexicana, Isidro mastered the care and nurturing of pecan trees as a hired hand at Stahmann Farms. “I learned a lot there,” Isidro says of his tenure at Stahmann’s. “When I first learned how to graft trees, I decided I would rent some land and plant some trees of my own.” And the tree business grew from there. Today, the famous Casa Mexicana warehouse south of town is surrounded by hundreds of pecan and palm trees. Tucked behind those trees is a garage that houses a half-dozen of Isidro’s other passion…….Cadillacs.
But you can interrupt the Peña family only a few times to get them to talk about the roots of their business. Casa Mexicana is a constant buzz of activity, from people looking for the perfect floor covering (some regular customers come all the way from Wisconsin just to get the Peña family treatment) to folks looking for landscaping. No was good to him. He’s never forgotten that.” matter what they’re looking for, they’ll always find it here. “My Dad is truly a good person,” Martha says with admiration. “And he wants to be a good businessman. He came to this country with a dream, and this country
