California's Picketfence Design: Best Practices

By Jessica Chevalier

When Dan Taylor and his wife Amy opened Picketfence Design 11 years ago, Taylor describes his focus on the builder business as “a race horse with blinders.” Though he had been on the supply side of the flooring business for over a decade, working for Shaw Industries and then for Interior Specialists, Inc., he hadn’t had a great deal of exposure to retail.

Taylor’s initial goal for his San Diego-based business was to be a niche design firm that catered to custom home builders and infill builders. However, his exposure to other parts of the flooring business broadened when he acquired Harvey Interiors, not long after he started Picketfence, and so, in 2010, he opened a retail operation called Flooring America by Picket-fence Design in Carlsbad, California, about 20 miles from his B2B location.

GROWING A RETAIL BUSINESS
For many in the business world, 2010 wasn’t a time of investment in new business strategies, but, after years of carefully studying the area’s housing trends, Taylor felt certain that establishing a retail location in the middle- to upper middle-class Carlsbad area was the right move. Many residents in the area were upside down in their mortgages—not in danger of losing their homes but unable to sell them for a profit or to break even. Because of that, Taylor believed that these homeowners, unable to move, would invest in their properties. That hunch was correct. And the Carlsbad location has proven itself a good investment.

At the retail location, Picketfence sells hardwood, laminate, tile, carpet, vinyl and area rugs. “The growth of hard surface is well documented, and we are true to form in

regard to that trend,” says Taylor. Because these hard surface materials are important categories for Picketfence, Taylor believes that it only makes sense to sell area rugs as well, adding, “Why shouldn’t it be us that helps the customer find an area rug?” However, in Carlsbad, real estate comes at a premium, so Picketfence doesn’t have the square footage to devote to a large area rug inventory. Instead, the store offers a custom service, ordering pieces that are made to the customer’s specifications.

In addition to flooring, Picketfence sells complementing interior products such as countertops, wall tile and window treatments. “We’ve slowly gotten into these other items, and it has paid off,” Taylor says. “If you have a good rapport with the customer, why not deepen sales with that one house?” However, Taylor cautions that entering these new categories shouldn’t be a casual affair. “You have to be good at each discipline,” he notes. Otherwise, you risk your overall reputation, which could negatively impact your flooring sales as well.

EMPLOYEES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE
What advantage does Picketfence have over its competition? Is its product mix superior or its showroom more expertly designed? Of course, those things matter, but in Taylor’s opinion the real game changer in the retail flooring business is quality of the employees. Says Taylor, “There is no secret sauce in the flooring business. It really comes down to people. We’re a service business that happens to sell flooring. The differentiator is our people. We have awesome employees who care about the business and the customers.” That level of commitment, Taylor believes, is something the customers can sense as soon as they walk in the door.

Regarding hiring, Taylor believes he’s been lucky. With over 25 years in the flooring business under his belt, he has a good network through which to recruit employees, and quite a few referrals for prospective employees have come from his own staff. “What we’ve learned is, if we can get a referral internally, that’s more powerful than a candidate coming in raw, because an internal person knows the personality of the candidate and whether they will fit into our culture. One thing that is very important to us is company culture. We won’t budge on that. We want a place that is special for employees. I don’t care how good you are. If you don’t fit in with the team, it won’t work. The team will win; individuals won’t. I always start by asking the team members for recommendations. If they make a recommendation, they want that person to succeed because they are invested.”

FINDING SECURITY IN AFFILIATION
When Taylor joined Flooring America seven years ago, the country was not officially in recession yet. However, Taylor knew that, after years of increases in Southern California’s housing market, the area was due for a reset. “Every four or five years,” says Taylor, “we have a reality check, a correction and then a breather. Values come down, and everything slows, then we get amnesia and do it all again.”

Around that time, Taylor ran into a Flooring America retailer from Arizona who mentioned that CCA was looking for a potential Flooring America retailer in San Diego, so Taylor agreed to meet with CCA. “At the time,” he recalls, “I didn’t know which way the mills would go in relation to buying groups, but I felt vulnerable by myself. Because of my history on the manufacturing side, I knew the back end of buying groups, and I knew that CCA was the best, a very well run group.”

Being a part of CCA has only increased his admiration for the group. “They are there for the members’ best interests. I’m not foolish enough to think that they don’t have their own interests, but they put mine up there, too. It gave me confidence to align with a group that has more mass,” says Taylor.

Interestingly, what Taylor values most about belonging to CCA is an advantage he didn’t even foresee. “I appreciate being able to sit down with a peer group and talk open book,” he says. “We stand in our underwear, exposed, and say this is what is working, this is what isn’t. You can’t do that in your own marketplace.”

SERVICE FIRST
Because trades in Picketfence’s region are required to have a contractor’s license to operate, the store has both employee installers and contract installers. The employee installers operate under a license that Picketfence holds, so they are not required to have one of their own. Explains Taylor, “We have a handful who have their own license, but they drink our Kool-Aid and understand the customer relations we want to have.”

In addition, the store has multiple designers on staff. These designers don’t focus only on flooring but instead “help design the space and determine the vision that the customer has for the finished home,” says Taylor. “Customers don’t just want carpet or hardwood. They want a finished home that they can be proud of, a home in which to make memories with their family on Thanksgiving. If you can understand the customer’s end vision, you can break it into parts and achieve the end goal through phases.”

As is typical, Taylor sees women driving flooring purchases in his retail locations, “She is the decision maker. She is the one we need to try to connect with.” He laments that an industry targeting the female consumer is dominated by men. “We are kind of set up to fail out of the gate,” he says with a laugh.

He also points out that, as a baby boomer, he’s at a disadvantage with regard to utilizing social media in his business. He has found that tapping into the knowledge of his younger employees as well as the resources offered by Flooring America has helped Picketfence hang, as it were, with this important form of advertising. Picket Fence participates on Google, Houzz, Twitter and Facebook.

LOOKING LONG-RANGE
At 50, Taylor isn’t ready to consider an exit strategy. Though he has three sons, he doesn’t believe that they have an interest in the business, and he’s fine with that, as he himself stepped out of his father’s plumbing business to pursue his own interests. Says Taylor, “I love doing what I do. I love this industry. I love who I work with, and I’m going to keep doing this for a while. We’ll take this business as far as our people will allow us. I used to set goals, and, although we all have to have goals, I don’t think that we should put caps on ourselves. Things will evolve and change. If our people want more opportunity, it’s not fair for me to say no. My long-term goal is to grow with my people.”

Managing that growth and maintaining the culture of Picketfence are Taylor’s greatest challenges, but he acknowledges that these are “good problems” for any business owner.

Print the Article