The World Floor Covering Association is offering a PDF worksheet and online version of the 2008 financial survey for NFT readers. They are available here and here. The survey, which will collect 2007 financial results from retailers and other members of the industry, will be published as a benchmarking report that is free of charge to participants.

According to D. Christopher Davis, president and CEO of the WFCA, the report will be valuable to the industry and individual businesses as well. "It's not only valuable to track information on your own operation against industry standards, but if you ever want to expand your business, lenders demand this type of information in order to determine the viability of operations," he said. "If you are interested in selling your business, it will be held up against whatever industry benchmarks are available." he said. "Participants also have the opportunity to have an analysis done of their standalone operation which is helpful in measuring the success of their business, and making corrections and adjustments where appropriate."

He added that he was looking for a large number of responses. "The more participants that provide information the more accurate the report will be," he said. "Industry benchmarks provide targets to measure success and document improvement. They provide standards, assuming enough participants provide information for the benchmarks to have statistical accuracy."