Choosing and installing the correct commercial floor covering can be a detailed and complicated process that necessarily looks beyond aesthetic preference and examines every aspect of the installation, beginning with the substrate and its condition and ending with the required maintenance regimen once the flooring is installed.
Distribution remains a vital part of the floor covering trade, but distributors are facing increased competition from e-commerce sites and retailers who go direct to manufacturers to buy their flooring products.
The Floor Installation Association of North America (FIANA) and International Certified Floorcovering Installers Association (CFI) recently held joint conventions in New Orleans.
Technically proficient and well-organized, the company had evolved from two independent commercial flooring companies—D. S. Baxley of Livermore and Preston-Borg of Milpitas, Calif.
For more than three decades, hockey goalies didn’t wear masks because they weren’t considered tough enough if they did. You have to wonder, what were they thinking?
Connecting with customers is vital to the success of any business. Flooring contractors are no different, but which customers and how? Who do you spend time with—architects, designers, end users or general contractors? What about product manufacturers?
Pavilion Floors came to life a little over 10 years ago in 2003 with a very small startup staff. I brought 25 years of flooring knowledge to the table and a four-generation family history in the flooring industry dating back to the Mohawk/Bigelow carpet mills of upstate New York, but I knew that would not be enough.
Like many flooring contractors, JP Flooring in Westchester, Ohio started out as a small installation company in 1988. Our founder, Phil Schrimper, first learned the carpet business by working for a local retailer and branching out into starting his own company was a natural move motivated by his entrepreneurial spirit.