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Throughout my career as a retail sales advisor, manufacturer representative, and educational writer for the flooring industry, I’ve worked hard not to use negatives about my competition to influence a purchase in my direction.

The buying groups, marketing groups or whatever they’re called these days in the floor covering industry have been an extremely valuable adjunct to the business.

As flooring manufacturers, distributors, dealers, contractors and installers have likely found out, their job is not done when the end-customer purchases a floor and the installer installs it—far from it.

I get it’s been at least a month since the “60 Minutes” story broke about Lumber Liquidators, but don’t think for a minute this news is going to disappear, not with the publically traded national chain store fighting back the allegations combined with lawsuits alleging, among other things, insider trading.

When you stop and think about it you would probably agree that I have the best job in the industry.

Nobody wants to be disturbed by his or her neighbors.

How do you stay ahead of the pack when it comes to the service industry?

Going back in time to places like South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and other older civilizations people have cut and shaped stone or made some form of tile so you might say those places have been manufacturing, bartering and selling these products for just a few more years than we have in the good old US of A.

Consumers buy from people they like.

At a recent convention, Randy Merritt, president of Shaw, told the group the industry’s biggest problem is installation.