Pearse Named Woman Of Distinction

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. – Karen Pearse, founder & CEO of The Innovative Companies, was named a “Woman of Distinction” in the March 2005 issue of Distinction.
The honor was given to 11 outstanding area women who have, as the award noted, “all made positive contributions to their local communities and to Long Island.”
“I’ve always innately understood business,” Pearse noted in a Distinction interview. At the very young age of 19, she traveled throughout Europe learning about stone, and joined her family’s tile-and-stone retail business in 1980.
“I decided at that time I wanted to concentrate on the commercial sector – projects of 200,000 ft² as opposed to 200,” said Pearse. “My father gave me a telephone, a desk and one employee. Soon we were supplying stone for the interiors of department stores all over the country. It just grew.”
Innovative has grown so much that the company supplied more than 65 million ft² of stone since 1981, including 100 tons of rare green marble to Manhattan’s Time Warner Center, stone to the Bloomingdale’s in New York’s Soho, and the “Freedom Stone” for the Freedom Tower now being built on the site of New York’s World Trade Center.
The Innovative Companies, a WBE (Woman-owned Business Enterprise), is headquartered in Hauppauge, N.Y.