Zoho Reignites CRM for Acme Brick Company

Zoho CRM helps Acme Brick reintroduce CRM by developing custom solutions in an effort to improve sales opportunities and customer solutions in less than a year

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, today announced the successful deployment of Zoho CRM within Acme Brick Company, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. Acme Brick is one of the largest manufacturers of brick in the United States. With the help of Zoho's Enterprise Business Solutions (EBS) team, Acme Brick signed on with Zoho in March 2025 and activated Zoho CRM in August, completing a full migration from their previous CRM provider by October. Acme Brick has already developed custom functions and deeply integrated Zoho CRM with legacy systems and workflows. Solution adoption across the company's 40+ sales locations and 13 states has dramatically improved, leading to more interest and better engagement from prospective clients.

"With our previous CRM provider, it felt like they didn't have any skin in the game regarding our success," said Stan McCarthy, Sr. Vice President of Sales at Acme Brick. "As an example, they recommended a third-party implementation partner that disappeared after our contract ended, leaving us unsupported. If we had support needs after that, we would have to go to the CRM provider's support website, which was not very helpful. With Zoho, the solution team that was in the room with us during development is still involved in our project today. We weren't handed off to an implementation team, because Zoho was our implementation team. That kind of support makes all the difference."

"We needed an intuitive, integratable CRM that our salespeople, some of whom have been with the company for 30 or 40 years, would actually use," said Julie Lloyd, Sales Enablement Manager at Acme Brick. "Our company services both residential and commercial projects from 45 sales locations in our direct 13 state market as well as serving the needs of our distributor customers in our non-direct sales markets."

After Acme Brick's previous CRM deployment failed, they looked at 10 different vendors (HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.), and in every case, they realized that they would have to change their business or sales processes to get a basic benefit from the solution. Zoho CRM wins out because it has the capabilities for customization, integration, low and no-code development, intuitive UI/UX, and platinum support that allow them to scale without changing the business, which has been successful for more than a century.

"Few companies can claim Acme Brick's legacy of consistent growth and longevity," said Ajay Kummar Bajaj, Global Head of EBS at Zoho. "Acme is a diversified, unique building materials business requiring a powerful yet adaptable sales platform that is simple to implement, simple to use, simple to develop, and simple to maintain. During the deployment, the company focused on embracing the 'progressive modernization' of sales processes, which, to Zoho, is a philosophy that extends long past the deployment stage. The strong partnership built between Zoho's EBS team and Acme Brick over the past several months will continue long into the future, with Zoho's continued support and dedication to providing our customers with current tools and technologies. Thanks to this partnership, Acme Brick's success is ours, as well."

Acme Brick's speedy and successful deployment of Zoho CRM underscores Zoho's standing as a first-rate enterprise technology provider for organizations prioritizing customization, integration, value, and ease-of-use. Further details about Acme Brick's deployment are as follows:

Acme Brick's Use Case

Acme Brick's go-to-market strategy is through both direct and distributor sales, serving the residential and commercial building materials markets, which involves three distinct sales pipelines and teams. Given this unique structure of the business, Acme needed a CRM that handles essential sales functions, such as lead tracking and task management, while integrating seamlessly with their existing tools, particularly their business intelligence solution. Zoho CRM's tight integration with Acme Brick's 3rd party BI platform has allowed sales and marketing teams to view and engage with reports from within Zoho CRM, which has increased adoption significantly. With increased adoption of CRM from sales reps, Acme Brick anticipates seeing lead flow and quality improve. Looking ahead, Acme Brick intends to leverage Zoho CRM to increase and personalize marketing efforts across all three of its divisions, with the implementation of Zoho Marketing Automation to do so under active consideration.

About Acme Brick

Founded in 1891 by George Bennett in Millsap, Texas (west of Ft. Worth, Texas), Acme Brick grew to become one of the largest American brick manufacturers by the mid-20th century. Today, the company employs over 1,700 associates spread across 13 states. Acme Brick owns and operates 45 sales locations, with 15 brick manufacturing, and 3 block manufacturing plants, primarily located in the South/Southwest part of the country.

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