why free shipping is a very big deal
by clé tile | published: Nov 18, 2025
once a year, as the world prepares for the magic of the holidays, clé shares a little magic of our own: cyber monday. for one merry, magical day — december 1 — we say ‘thank you’ by offering free shipping sitewide, on all orders over $1,250. this means all of our most liked, pinned and saved tiles, like lapidary, zellige, clé guild and ophelia, plus tile from our exclusive collaborations such as fornace brioni + cristina celestino. oh, and every tile from our trailblazing maison clé curation.
shop more, save more
why? this is a heavy question, literally speaking. it’s all about weight: there’s a big difference between shipping a pair of shoes, for example, and shipping artisan tile. here’s why our free shipping offer tips the scales on value.
we ship our tile — even small quantities — on well-packaged pallets to ensure that it arrives in the best condition. and many tiles weigh several pounds each. consider the very popular cement tile (at the top end of the heft spectrum): if your bathroom project comes in at (let’s say) 50 square feet of the stuff, your cement tile shipment can weigh almost 400 lbs. that’s a lot of shoes.
if you score free shipping this cyber monday, there will be a truck headed your way soon. if you have a potential second project in the offing — an entryway in need of a more welcoming look or a mudroom that begs for, well, less mud — you have a prime chance to save hundreds on that future project before you’ve even budgeted for it.
simply, shipping is a significant line item in overall design budget, and one most people don’t consider until the very end. this is why we say that free shipping on tile is a big deal.
why is shipping tile so expensive?
if you’ve ordered before, you may have been surprised that the cost of shipping can actually exceed the cost of the tile. this can happen with small orders, as well as lower-priced tile (smaller price, same weight).
in a world where anything can arrive overnight from amazon (seemingly) for free, we have come to look for an offer of free shipping — even expect it. but tile is heavy, much more so than almost anything else we purchase with free shipping.
now here comes a hard truth: “free” shipping isn't really free: when companies offer you free shipping, they’re burying the cost of shipping somewhere else — meaning you end up paying for that “free” shipping — you just don’t know that you are.
we prefer a more direct approach.
what free shipping has to do with clé’s mission
clé has always been committed to making handcrafted tile more accessible. as part of that, we were the first tile company to sell artisan tile online directly to consumers, without the markups associated with showrooms and selling through others.
on cyber monday, we happily pick up the tab for thousands in free shipping on behalf of our customers. paying for shipping is a heavy cost to absorb as a small business, but it’s how we invest in a mission we believe in: bringing the history, heritage and beauty of artisan tile to more people.
shop cyber monday, the clé way, on december 1, 2025. not only will you save a ton (on a ton, perhaps), but you will be bringing centuries-old traditions into your project. we call that a win-win.