Hi, I am currently in talks with a good friend of mine who has been in the flooring industry for over 20 years and we are discussing opening a flooring shop. He is a floor layer and his role will be doing the practical side of it and organising the other fitting staff. My role is sales, orders, stock etc. which I have done for many years in my own line of business. I have owned a successful business for many years and have a couple of other premises where we are going to locate our flooring shop. My Questions are: Should carpet suppliers charge for samples to go in our showroom as a couple of reps have said this to me? surely if I am promoting their product they would want to give out samples. This then leads on to suppliers, who has the best name in the game, prices, products delivery times? Help and advice is greatly appreciated
Most suppliers charge for stands,,expect to pay between £50&£200 per stand for carpet, swatches and updates are usually free, if you want to do lvt, then expect to spend thousands, then hundreds for updates, laminate similar to carpet prices. What area are you thinking of opening? Just so people know which suppliers to recommend
What do you know about flooring? There’s things you will need to learn especially when you’re selling the products otherwise your competitors will annihilate you all day long, you need to know the products inside and out, how to prep the floor, how it’s installed, why it’s done like this, the potential issues from not doing so and be able to communicate that to the customer in a way they can understand without seeming like you are reading it from a script before even thinking of getting any samples in. As an industry we can tell when a shop isn’t prepared and most will smell blood, for your first 3 years or so be prepared to make no money it takes time to build a reputation and for people to know you exist and get to know everything you can about your competition, send in family or friends to check prices, how the sales staff operates, how their store looks, what products they’re running. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Expect plenty of stress, for each job,you have to deal with a customer,a supplier and a fitter, quite often one of them is going to spoil your day. You will be competing against big stores that still get away with misleading claims of free stuff and initial low prices and the internet
It is very, very, difficult to start out. You first mentioned flooring, and then led on to carpets. FLOORING is mainly contract, industrial, commercial, (apart from LVT.) You will unlikely gain immediate flooring contracts by having an outlet or premises. Contracts (continuous and repetitive work with a client) are obtained by doing the finest quality work for a reasonable price, and the customer deciding to use no one else. These situations take years to acquire and only by very skilled people. A shop or showroom isn't even a necessity, as the flooring contractor takes the samples on site, or the client specifies such. It's all about previous work and reputation. CARPETS are a different trade and ball game. If starting out, you have no chance in the first few years of trading, to obtain accounts with the established manufacturers, as they will be interested in protecting the businesses of long established carpet retailers in the area who have purchased their products regularly and have traded for decades, and who do not welcome newcomers wishing to muscle in on their bread and butter income. The same applies to accounts with Amtico and Karndean. So you will at first be restricted to buying everything from supplier groups such as Headlam rather than from manufacturers. You will thus be a budget carpet shop, and not be allowed to trade in high end products from manufacturers. There are multiple such shops everywhere struggling to make ends meet with low profit margins due to too much competition. One way round this is to purchase a long established carpet business which is a limited company, in which scenario you would inherit all of the manufacturer accounts. This though will likely cost (maybe many) tens of thousands of pounds, and you will still need to establish a reputation in your given area over the first few years. Also, unless you have the absolutely finest installation team, expect an early end to your dreams, as no one will give you repeat business.
I found that the biggest problem, you wouldn't expect it to be so difficult to get good fitters but there are not that many that aren't already fully booked up with other firms and too many bad ones about that will cost you money and reputation
This is the biggest factor, doesnt matter how good you are at selling, how many accounts you have or buying power. If you cant find the fitters youre going nowhere, i think alot of firms are finally starting to realise they should value their good fitters over their mates.
