After Stainmaster exited the carpet market, retailers faced a critical question: could any brand fill that gap, and would consumers actually care? Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) decided to find out. Following the success of their first location in Omaha, Nebraska, NFM has opened a second 2,000-square-foot Anso Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri—a dedicated Shaw partnership that's redefining how customers shop for carpet. But Kansas City presented unique opportunities: customers here have an unexpected passion with stair carpets and pattern designs that now consume 45% of the showroom floor. 

In this episode, Dave Chambers, flooring director at NFM, reveals how new fixture designs are changing shopping behavior, why Kansas City carpet preferences differ dramatically from Omaha, and details Shaw's unconventional partnership approach that includes a Memorial Day weekend customer activation featuring an actual food fight. From visualization kiosks to pattern walls, discover how this “store within a store” concept is betting big on premium carpet branding in a post-Stainmaster world. This interview has been edited slightly for length. You can listen to the conversation in its entirety below.

Dave Chambers

Floor Trends & Installation: What makes this Anso Gallery special? 

Dave Chambers: One of the things that NFM does exceptionally well is that we do a great job of elevating brands. You see it throughout all the different product families they have, from furniture, appliance electronics, and now we're doing it in flooring. It's next to our Cambria showroom and you know Anso is trying to become more of a power brand in the flooring industry. Shaw and NFM partnered and said we have a great platform that we do this with other people, so why not bring that concept here and really showcase what your product, your innovation, that we bring to the industry, and let's put it in one complete concept for the consumer to experience.

Floor Trends & Installation: The gallery appears designed for easy shopping. Can you describe the shopping experience? 

Chambers: We worked with Shaw and the fixture company to create some new fixtures that were not ever out really in the industry to kind of change how flooring is displayed and how the consumers shop and get immersed into the product versus maybe the old showrooms that you're used to in the past. We definitely don't have that today. We want to immerse them with samples, touch, feel, see larger pieces, visualize it with a kiosk, do all those types of things, and then also showcase off the innovative quality of what the Anso product really brings.

Floor Trends & Installation: How important is the differentiation with the Anso brand for consumers?

Chambers: That was a test for us, right? After Stainmaster left, there was a big gap, and was anybody really going to be able to fill that, and did the consumer really want it? And so that's what encouraged us to do. The Omaha one is a great test pilot, and we saw a tremendous amount of success with the Omaha version. I think it's still building. I think the brand is still growing. I think Shaw's doing a great job trying to get that brand out there and build awareness with the consumer. It's new for them as well. We're excited to have, you know, a leading brand on the floor that hopefully gets more and more recognition, uh, as, as we go on through the years.

Floor Trends & Installation: Can you describe your Kansas City customers and how they're unique compared to other locations? 

Chambers: They are unique. One of the aspects I would say they're unique is we do so much stair carpet here in Kansas City. It's pretty crazy. We don't do that much stair carpet in Omaha and pattern is a very, very big segment of our carpet business in Kansas City. And as you walk through our showroom you'll see we've dedicated I would say close to 40 maybe even close to 45 percent of our showroom is dedicated to pattern products now because that is what it's warranting as a percentage of the business anymore and you have to do pattern the right way you can't just have a 27 x 18 sample and expect a customer to be able to see it so we you know we brought it in for the smaller samples so they can touch and feel what it's going to feel like we brought in our big pattern walls with the new concept that we have in the showroom plus the visualization that we're going to have to where a consumer can either see it in the room on their stairs here in the showroom or they can do it at home and feel more comfortable.

Floor Trends & Installation: How do your sales associates walk customers through the shopping process?

Chambers: They start by explaining how the floor is laid out and what customers are shopping for. Many customers are already drawn to the Anso Gallery because it's different—it looks different than the rest of our showroom. The fixtures are different colors and designs, we have lit graphics, so it catches your eye. It's easy for salespeople to bring customers over because they're curious about what it's all about. Once they're there, we help them figure out what they're looking for, which rooms they're doing, and get them into the right product.

Floor Trends & Installation: What's unique about Shaw's partnership approach with the Anso Gallery?

Chambers:  Doing this is, they've not just been a, hey, here's the fixtures and here's the showroom and good luck. They have been partnered with us on promotions, grand openings, collaboration around what's that promotion going to look like, how are we going to execute it? We're doing a first-of-its-kind activation Memorial Day weekend in the store on Saturday, where we are doing a food fight with customers. We are bringing in some Shaw carpet.

Floor Trends & Installation: Are eco-friendly or sustainable stories important to your customers? 

Chambers: Anderson Tuftex is a big part of the Anso Gallery, and that's definitely where Shaw is taking that brand. There's a segment of the Kansas City population that's very conscious about sustainability, and we need to have an answer—Shaw provides that.

Floor Trends & Installation: How do you measure success beyond sales figures? 

Chambers: I would say beyond sales figures, it's reviews from consumers, the ease of shopping in the store. We've already gotten great reviews from our RSA's. They love the new layout. They think it's absolutely easy. It's much easier than what we had before to walk a customer through the showroom and help them land on a product faster, but really, it's the consumer feedback. Are we doing what they want, right? Is the experience in the showroom making it easier for a consumer to buy flooring?