Earthcore Industries adds second factory through Firegear acquisition after 35 years building fireplace empire (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — After more than 35 years as a pioneer in prefabricated volcanic pumice fireplaces, a Jacksonville firm continues to expand its country-wide retail, wholesale, manufacturing and distribution operations.
Headquartered at 6899 Philips Industrial Blvd., Earthcore today employs more than 150 team members and 35 sales people across six regional offices, six distribution centers, two factories and nine sales and installation offices across the country. CEO Carl Spadaro, though, aspires for a wider market footprint.
“Look, we’ve been in Jacksonville for 36 years. It all started here, and we have a good-sized company, but we’re always looking at getting bigger,” founder and CEO Carl Spadaro told the Business Journal.
In that spirit, Earthcore acquired Firegear in February 2026, which serves a dual purpose: to expand a complementary product line and to grow Earthcore Industries’ manufacturing capacity.
Firegear’s product aligns with and extends Earthcore’s offerings. The Huntington Beach firm was the sole North American distributor of Heatstrip, a premium Australian brand of electric and portable radiant heaters. Now, Heatstrip exclusivity strengthens Earthcore’s position in the outdoor living market, Spadaro said.
Founded and operated by a Danish team the 1980s and helmed by CEO Carl Spadaro since 1990, Earthcore’s flagship brand is the Isokern Fireplace and Chimney systems built from pumice sourced from Iceland’s Hekla volcano. The modular masonry fireplaces were the first of their kind in North America, Spadaro said.
Being the first with a product is a blessing and a curse, however. Earthcore carried a product no builder was willing to install in American homes because modular fireplaces didn’t exist in the marketplace. Spadaro soon found himself with a massive oversupply of fireplaces, a partner who had over leveraged purchase of those bricks from Denmark and builder friends who thought he was crazy for joining in the the Danish business. With a company to rely on him to survive, Spadaro put in the work to get Earthcore off of the ground.
The CEO secured a storage space in a Northside warehouse, and traveled the country to sell fireplaces to architects and builders with an offer of building a better system. Spadaro then returned to Jacksonville to pack bricks into his personal vehicle and deliver them to be distributed from shipping yards
“I had a 1986 green Saab. In my trunk I had banding machines, ‘Fragile stickers’ and Fed Ex stickers,” Spadaro said. “I was in great shape.”
The sweat equity paid off. An Oklahoma City dealership grew into a Dallas office and opportunities in San Francisco in the housing boom that followed the 1990 earthquake. Spadaro’s vision drove him coast to coast to speak with whomever would listen about the technology that he said would change building codes and the hearth industry.
Earthcore has expanded its offerings over the years all centered around the original pumice components and how to shape the way people experience fire. From large custom linear fireplaces and Seismic anchor plates to mechanical venting and makeup air systems for modern efficient homes, the modular components of pumice reflect the heat to stay in the home rather than escaping up the chimney.
Earthcore already owned the Isokern brand, handled wholesale distribution and collaborated with builders on design and installation. Adding a factory gave the company full vertical integration.
“If you manufacture a widget, sell the widget and install the widget, profitability travels all the way to the bottom line,” Spadaro said.
That’s the idea, but a company also has to be careful with that profit as Spadaro soon found out as the factory was built. In 2008, Earthcore developed a catalytic combustor that reduced post-burn air particulates, and EPA phase II approved. That same year, business was so promising that the company broke ground on its first factory. Then the bottom dropped out.
“We put a shovel into the ground, and two weeks later, Lehman Brothers said it’s going out of business,” Spadaro said.
Sales dropped 48%, but Earthcore survived and emerged with a new factory in Chesapeake, Virginia.
The next decade-and-a-half found the company expanding again. In 2016, Earthcore developed an all gas fireplace. In 2019, the company patented a chimney-less gas delivery system. It was the first-in-market glass-encased masonry fireplace that pulls air in and pushes air out via a vent.
The February 2026 purchase of Firegear provides Earthcore with a second factory — a 57,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana that will be used to produce Firegear stainless steel and brass fire pit burner systems. These are gas delivery systems that come in a variety of sizes and configurations used in outdoor fire features.
Firegear offers three prominent product lines — Kalea Bay, an outdoor ventless fireplace, the Sanctuary Series of GFRC fire tables and bowls and the Lume series which is a smokeless firepit solution that is available in a metal insert or GFRC bowl option.
The goal is to balance and broaden an indoor product mix that accounts for about 85% of sales.
“This will really scale up our decorative gas appliance business,” Spadaro said. “Firegear has had this product on the market for at least 10 years, but they weren’t paying much attention to it. And it’s a really great product for our outdoor line.”
Three-and-a-half decades in, the acquisition has only sharpened Spadaro’s appetite for growth.
We’re looking at other acquisitions,” Spadaro said, but the company already reaches across North America. Earthcore installations sit in high-end developments from Yellowstone to Martha’s Vineyard and across Canada. The Isokern systems can be found across thousands of residential and commercial spaces.
“It’s a lifetime of building,” Spadaro said. “I picked everybody’s brains when I was younger. I wanted to know, ‘How’d you get into this? How’d you do that?’ You have to build those sales skills.”
Photo courtesy of Earthcore