Ira (right) and Brian Goldberg, the father-and-son team that run Beyond Concrete, at a job site in New York City.

Hand-crafted compass rose set in an imprinted, slate-patterned concrete driveway at a residence in Holmdel Township, New Jersey.

In 1984, Ira Goldberg was working as a general contractor when a friend and neighbor asked Ira to build him a backyard pool deck using architectural concrete he had seen advertised called Bomanite. The product, which was used for decorative purposes, was patented and required a licensed contractor to install it.

Ira had previously contacted Bomanite Corp., the product manufacturer and distributor, regarding a project where the product had been specified for the patios of a 12-garden apartment renovation in East Brunswick, New Jersey. The company had connected him with the two closest Bomanite-approved contractors, but neither were willing to take on that job.

Undeterred, he called back and asked if he could become one of Bomanite Corp.’s licensed contractors. Ira’s friend and neighbor, who worked in the garment industry, was inspired to be involved in this startup venture—even offering to provide the capital to form a new company with Ira.

The two men flew to Los Angeles for a six-hour meeting with the president and vice president of Bomanite at that time. The meeting ended with Ira and his new business partner signing a licensing agreement allowing them to install Bomanite products in three counties in the state of New Jersey. Their company, known today as Beyond Concrete, was born.

The Adventure Begins

The new partners left the meeting and went straight to the nearest Walmart store to buy construction clothes, then spent the next two weeks training with a company in Los Angeles already approved to use Bomanite. When they flew back to New Jersey, they enlisted Ira’s young son, Brian Goldberg, to help them pour the decorative concrete for Ira’s partner’s pool deck. Their first attempt proved difficult.

“We had to rip the whole thing out and start again because the first time was not as easy as it looked,” Brian recalls. “The second one came out OK.”

From there they started to grow the business through word of mouth and through some of Ira’s contacts in the construction industry. By 1988, Ira had bought out his partner’s share of the company and negotiated with Bomanite Corp. to extend Beyond Concrete’s license to cover nearly all of New Jersey. A couple of years later, he added the five boroughs of New York City and two counties in Long Island, followed by the last portion of New Jersey, all of Philadelphia and seven counties in eastern Pennsylvania.

The History of Bomanite

Bomanite Corp.’s original products are used for a stamped concrete process, where texture and color are added to concrete to make it resemble stone, brick, slate, cobblestone or other materials, including wood, fossils and shells. The installation involves pressing molds into the concrete before it has fully hardened, during its plastic state. Color is then added through a variety of different methods, including color hardeners, powders, liquids or stains, or a combination of these methods. This decorative concrete is applied both to exterior and interior floors and surfaces.

Although color had been added to concrete starting as early as the 1890s, it was not until 1950 that a man named Brad Bowman invented and patented the tools and process for stamping patterns in concrete flatwork. His invention was particularly ingenious because it allowed for others to use his process to create and install their own textures and patterns.

“The urban legend is that Brad Bowman, who lived in California by the beach, was inspired by watching his wife make cookies with a cookie cutter, and ran outside to test imprints on the sand, realizing he could do the same with concrete,” Brian says.

The process that Brad invented for stamping allows for patterns to be imprinted into concrete so that, for example, concrete can be made to look like stones in different shapes and sizes.

The first stamps that Brad made were out of wood, followed by sheet metal and finally cast aluminum platforms. In the 1970s, two business graduates from Stanford University bought the rights to the patents, formed Bomanite Corp. and licensed contractors across the United States to install decorative concrete using Brad’s process.

The Evolution of a Process

In the late 1970s, Disney World in Florida was building a series of sets to showcase different landscapes from countries around the world. The entertainment complex found it was too expensive to import natural stone from these places, so it approached Bomanite Corp. for a solution. The architectural concrete company had already created stone replicas out of concrete for Disneyland, but for this project it needed more than just a pattern—it needed the texture of the concrete to look more convincing.

Bomanite Corp.’s technical team took on the challenge by creating a new process that included adding texture to the concrete in its plastic state. This dramatically expanded the application of the product, allowing for the possibility of a concrete that could replace a vast range of materials.

The Son Returns

Brian was only 12 years old when Ira launched Beyond Concrete, and for years he helped his father stamp concrete. But when Brian left New Jersey to study at UCLA in California, he had no interest in pursuing a career in the construction industry.

“I tried to get away. I majored in computer science and engineering; nothing related to civil engineering or anything like that,” Brian says.

When Brian graduated, he worked in the information technology industry, doing technical support, designing custom software and, at one point, was even a cryptographic (the study of secure communications) engineer. His career was going well until the dot-com bubble burst, and by the turn of the millennium he had lost his job.

“My mom and dad asked me to work for the family business, and I actually turned them down three times,” Brian says. “Then one day they took me to the Wendy’s restaurant up the road, which we called ‘the boardroom.’”

There, Brian’s parents convinced him to apply the knowledge he had of startups to propel Beyond Concrete from a family contractor to a professional construction company. In 2002, he began working for the company as a management consultant.

Growth and Challenges

Brian’s return to Beyond Concrete came with nearly immediate success. In the first year he joined, the company won its largest jobs to date: two Home Depot stores in Manhattan; a major installation at the Six Flags Great Adventure theme park in New Jersey; and a large construction project for Tropicana Atlantic City, a casino and resort in New Jersey. All these projects were on top of the dozens of smaller residential and commercial projects that Beyond Concrete had underway. Brian settled into a full-time role as general manager.

Everything was going well until the recession began in 2007 and work began to slow down. By 2009, it became clear that Bomanite Corp. had grown too fast, and while the company did not have to declare bankruptcy, the bank forced it to close operations.

“I’ll never forget that,” Brian says. “It was a February morning. The phone rang at about 8 a.m. and it was a rep from another company that sold competitive materials. He said, ‘Bomanite is out of business, are you going to buy your stuff from me now?’”

Fortunately, the crisis was short-lived. The owners of Bomanite Corp. managed to retain the copyright to their products and eventually restarted the business, albeit with significantly fewer people. Beyond Concrete carried on as one of the company’s licensed contractors.

Today, the Bomanite Company (as it is now known) continues to innovate and has an expanded product line with five systems, each licensed separately to contractors. In addition to the original imprinted concrete, there are also licenses for toppings, polishing, exposed aggregate, and a pervious concrete system called Grasscrete. Always striving to stay on the cutting edge of the decorative concrete industry, Beyond Concrete holds licenses to all five of these Bomanite systems.

The Guru of Decorative Concrete

With more than 30 years under his belt, Ira is widely known as a leading industry expert in his field. He has served as chairman for the Bomanite International Society and for years served as the “permanent” treasurer. He’s built close relationships with the architects he’s worked with over the years, who trust his expertise on the most difficult and complex jobs.

As President of Beyond Concrete, Ira continues to manage all projects in the field, while Brian continues to focus on business development and strategy. The two men enjoy shared trust and mutual respect for one another’s areas of leadership.

Brian concludes, “My dad knows what he’s doing, and he understands the materials like no one else in the world.”