Best Practices: Essis & Sons celebrate their 75th anniversary - Mar 2018

Essis & Sons believes that finding the best possible product for the customer’s desires, practical needs, decor and budget is the central tenet of business. While it does steer away from the low quality product, it always seeks to find value for the customer. “When a customer comes in, we try to find the right product at the right price, even if they don’t have a lot of money,” explains Frank. “We grew up doing hard work and sacrificing, so we understand value and try to accommodate everyone.”

Case in point, Joe recalls a situation from 2016, “A customer came in, she walked up to the counter and said, ‘My vinyl is turning yellow.’ I said, ‘How long has it been in?’ She said, ‘Since 1980. That man right there sold it to me,’ and she pointed at my father. My father said, ‘I remember you.’ Then he said to me, ‘Change out her vinyl for her.’ I said, ‘Dad, it’s 36 years old. Are you sure?’ He said, ‘Get her a new piece and put it in.’”

Frank believes that the purchase of flooring is both a practical and emotional one and must be treated as such. For the retail sales associate, this means that, while product knowledge is important, presenting oneself as a trusted resource with a genuine interest in the customer’s needs is even more important. “Eighty percent of selling is selling yourself,” Franks says. “We are very particular about who we hire. If you don’t have patience with customers, you don’t belong here. It only takes a few moments to make an impression, and you can lose a customer quickly if you don’t make a good one. Our main objective is to show the customer why they should buy from us. We bend over backwards to satisfy our customers.”

After 75 years in the business, Essis & Sons sees a lot of generational buyers. “Most of our business comes from word of mouth,” says Frank. “Often people will say, ‘You sold flooring to my mom 20 years ago.’”

The business has tried many advertising methods through the decades, and Frank believes that, in today’s market, the willingness to toss a lot at the wall and see what sticks is somewhat necessary. “You can’t really tell what’s going to work these days,” he says. “You have to try a little of everything.”

The company has had a website for quite a while and continues to improve on it regularly; in fact, Essie & Sons recently made its first IT hire. Frank admits that Essis & Sons is a bit behind with regard to social media. “We’re starting to do that now, “ he notes. “We’re dinosaurs and haven’t gotten involved as much as we should have.”

WHAT’S TO COME
The Essis brothers produced 19 children between them, and today a handful of them are active in Essis & Sons: Joe, Michael, Ed, Bob and David. The family isn’t big on titles and they don’t have distinctly differentiated tasks. “We all just do what needs to be done,” says Joe, “from fixing the toilet to handling complaints to estimating jobs.”

The Essis’ feel strongly that their children should not enter the business if it isn’t their passion, and many of the third and fourth generations of the family have followed their own paths. Of course, working in a family business means that the death of a loved one resonates on several levels, and that can make a loss especially painful. “I have lost two brothers and two nephews in the business over the last decade, which I attribute to us all being workaholics,” says Frank. His brother Salem died at the age of 67 in 2007, and Mussellem died at 67 in 2009. “I still have nephews in the business,” Frank continues, “but we are running out of family members to recruit, so we have promoted several employees-ones who have been with us for a long time-to leadership positions. We are second and third generation today, but to keep the business going in the family is tougher and tougher. People just aren’t interested in working in this type of business anymore, and it’s very competitive.”

Regarding employees, Frank believes it is becoming harder to find good associates today, in part because young people don’t want to work retail hours, i.e. evenings, and because many aren’t ready to settle into a long-term career. Luckily, Essis & Sons has a good number of both staff and installers who have been with them for decades.

As for the increased competition in the market today, Frank believes that the best way to compete is by staying true to oneself. “We don’t look to see what the competition is doing,” the retailer notes. “We just focus on doing our thing well and hope it works.”

For his part, Frank absolutely loves the flooring business and doesn’t see retirement as in the cards for either himself or Fred. “I still have the fire in my belly,” he laughs. “I still enjoy it. I get to meet such wonderful people. Eventually, I hope to slow down a bit, but I will always stay involved.”