Best Practices - July 2009

By Sonya Jennings

By focusing on fashion and product diversity, Diversified Flooring has grown its sales and profits by 21% this year when many dealers are treading water. Offering carpet, tile, wood, laminate, vinyl, LVT, cabinets, countertops, backsplash, paint, window treatments, rugs, furniture, appliances, shower doors and windows, Diversified Flooring is truly a design center. Last year, the company incorporated all of these products in its showroom in order to broaden an avenue for business in a bad economy.

Until last year, Diversified Flooring offered design services such as helping customers choose paint or redesign a bathroom, but they weren’t heavily advertised. Now, with the addition of products like cabinets and appliances in the showroom, the customer knows immediately that the store specializes in designing all of the home and not just the floor.

According to Carrie Seifert, vice president of sales and marketing, “When the economy began its downturn, we had to really consider how to expand our opportunity. Once we gained the customer’s design confidence with the flooring choice, we saw a natural opportunity to take that confidence into other design areas. Seeing is believing. The customer can now come into our showroom and visualize what we can do in her home.”

Many of the company’s clients initially come in to choose a flooring product, which often leads to sales of other interior furnishings because of the efforts of the in-store designers. The company wins this business by first gaining the customer’s trust with the flooring choice and then “planting the seed” for future purchases. First, they help the customer with the flooring choice by asking questions like, “How many people live in your home? Do you rent out your home? How important is durability?” The thoroughness of the design team helps the customer gain confidence in the flooring selection, and while she’s there, she sees that Diversified also offers other products, like cabinets, for example. Even if she’s not in the market to purchase cabinets immediately, she’s very likely to ask how much they would cost for the future. Often, she’s pleasantly surprised that the quote is less than she had imagined.

By showing other avenues of design in the store and sending the customer home with a quote for other products, Diversified Flooring puts itself at the top of the list when the customer is ready to make a purchase, and she often returns within the next few months to do just that. Seifert adds, “The floor is the canvas to the entire design of the room. Once we choose a floor, and the customer is satisfied, we want to continue to help her create the rest of the vision for her home.”

Diversification has always served the company well. The company began in 1983 when Mark Seifert, with nothing but a small warehouse and a truck, approached homebuilders with a promise of service after the purchase of his carpet products. Most dealers who served the low-end builder sector of the carpet market offered little to no service guarantee, but Mark Seifert gained business by offering this to builders. Once trust was established with builders, they eventually allowed him to work directly with their future homeowners, and he was able to upgrade many of them to a better quality carpet. This is how the company moved from serving mostly builders to serving individual customers on the retail level. Today, Diversified Flooring has a main store and showroom in Edgewater, Florida and a smaller showroom in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The company’s business is now 95% retail and focuses on the mid to upper end of the market.

Today the builder market is struggling and Carrie Seifert also points out that now, especially in Florida, it’s difficult to sell a home. However, that creates opportunity. She states, “If you invest in the home to create the living space you have always wanted, then you can really enjoy your home now while making it more valuable later when you do sell it.” The company focuses on communicating this message to customers and has ways to show visually what a new design could look like.

Using design software provided by Shaw Industries, Diversified Flooring’s designer can take a photo of the client’s living room, then revise the paint color, flip the couch to the other side of the room, and change the flooring. This is an effective tool for helping the client visualize exactly how the new design choices will look in her home.

With every quote, Diversified also offers attractive credit options, which helps make additional sales. A 90-day same as cash option is available in addition to longer loan periods with interest rates as low as 4%. By offering a much lower interest rate than most credit cards, many hesitant shoppers will go ahead and make the purchase. It also paves the way for future sales because financing is already in place.

Diversified Flooring looks for every opportunity in this down economy, and as a result its business continues to grow.

Related Topics:Shaw Industries Group, Inc.

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