Best Practices: Floor Boys SC – March 2024

By Jessica Chevalier

Floor Boys SC is a full-scale flooring retail operation in South Carolina with four locations, a full-service hardwood flooring refinishing operation, and a fleet of mobile showrooms partnered with local Costco warehouses. Surprisingly, the sole-proprietorship, owned by Brian Peed, was founded only 12 years ago. With both successes and failures behind them, Peed and his wife, Megan, director of marketing, believe that the key to success is continued evolution.

MULTIFACETED
Prior to starting Floor Boys, Peed worked for another local flooring retailer for 15 years, installing with his brother-in-law Bart Taylor on the side for five of those years. When a meniscus tear compromised Peed’s ability to install full-time, he decided that he would open a boutique flooring store a few days a week to service builders. That venture was successful and in 2012 transitioned into a full-fledged retail flooring operation in a 700-square-foot showroom in a Lexington, South Carolina strip mall.

Today, Floor Boys has four locations across South Carolina-in Chapin, Greenville, Lexington and Spartanburg-with Peed and Megan’s daughter, Ashton Letterer, running the Greenville location, which, Peed notes, is “the fastest growing with the most opportunity.” As of late, Peed has been spending four days a week in Greenville to maximize that location’s potential.

Floor Boys focuses solely on flooring, as Peed believes it’s best that his team “stick with what we do well.”

The sand-and-refinish business, run by Taylor, is something not offered by many of Floor Boys’ competitors. “We have dabbled with refinishing since the beginning, but we’ve been doing it really well for about ten years,” says Peed. “Doing it really well” involves testing the species, controlling the environment and performing moisture testing. “What we offer is not inexpensive,” says Peed. “What we provide is for the discerning customer that wants a furniture finish, something that will stand up to life and be tough under animals.”

Floor Boys has also had mobile showrooms for quite some time but picked up Costco’s program for Greenville and Spartanburg on December 1, 2023 and is now utilizing the vans for that program, as well. “We run one mobile showroom out of Chapin, one out of Spartanburg and one out of Greenville,” he says. Leads for the mobile showrooms are generated either through the Floor Boys websites or through Costco, and Floor Boys has specific employees who oversee that arm of the business and make the in-home service calls.

BUSINESS BALANCE
Asked what type of flooring generates the most sales for Floor Boys, Peed responds, “LVT is the biggest seller unfortunately. I’ve beat my drum, speaking out against SPC. Until manufacturers do away with that hard core, issues will continue. Subfloors are too imperfect. We have seen our claims triple. Before SPC, we went six months with one claim. We currently have 35. We had to hire a full-time employee to handle them.” Peed greatly prefers WPC to SPC.

On a more pleasant note, Peed reports, “We are selling lots of carpet; that’s definitely making a comeback. Hardwood sales are growing again too, and I love to see it.”

The company sells all flooring categories, including ceramic tile, and fabricates custom area rugs.

In addition, Floor Boys is currently working to expand its commercial business. “The manufacturers, architects, engineers and commercial builders really make it difficult for the retailer to break into the commercial market,” Peed notes. “Commercial is a beast all its own, and they want to keep their secrets proprietary. It’s hard to get in with a bid, but we are trying hard because we do it well.”

Currently, the company’s revenue is 65% retail and 35% builder and commercial. “The balance is changing, it’s going back to retail,” Peed explains. “Builder dried up in August 2022. Builders just quit building when interest rates started going up. Homeowners couldn’t refi, so they weren’t buying. They were staying in their homes and remodeling, and that helped the retail business. But we do see builder coming back now.”

TEAM BUILDING
Floor Boys’ installers are subs. “We would love to bring them in-house, but with the South Carolina Worker’s Compensation laws, we couldn’t afford it,” Peed notes. Floor Boy’s contract installers do work exclusively for the company.

“I’m learning Spanish as fast as I can and encouraging my managers to do the same, “ says Peed, who notes he’s found that encouraging installers to bring friends and family into the business has been a good strategy for establishing a flow of new workers.

Staff employees, whom Peed considers his greatest resource, are “hired as pros, paid like pros and treated like pros.” As on the installation side, Peed has found word-of-mouth to be the best strategy for bringing in quality talent to join the Floor Boys team. Once new employees are hired, they are trained through “straight-up mentorship with current staff and product knowledge from reps,” Peed explains. “We have the greatest reps, especially from Shaw, and they do a tremendous job helping to train our newcomers.”

Megan currently sits on Shaw’s dealer council, and Peed sat on it for five years previously.

TRIALS & TRIUMPHS
Floor Boys has capitalized on tools to help customers overcome some of the financial challenges to purchasing new floors. In spite of that, Peed sees the economy as the greatest obstacle to his business. He says, “I can’t forecast the retail business like I used to be able to. This is a different environment than I’m used to.”

One of Peed’s central strategies for success is continual evolution. “We are constantly pivoting and adapting,” he says. “Through my years in flooring, I’ve watched so many retailers become stagnant and old. They do the exact same thing they’ve always done. I decided that I would always keep an open mind and change. We’re in the middle of that now. We have new software. We have restructured the business; I turned the operations part of my job over to a comptroller, and I am back to selling flooring.”

He continues, “Last year, we almost grew too big too fast. We were the fastest-growing retail flooring operation in the Southeast of all time. But it all came to a screeching halt. We almost out-punted our coverage. I had to pivot and accept that I screwed up. I opened some stores I shouldn’t have opened. Luckily, we were able to make enough with the good ones to cover those that weren’t performing. We’re in our sweet spot now, and we want to run what we have as efficiently as we can and be satisfied with the position we’re in.”

He adds with a laugh, “Plus, my wife said if I opened another store, she’d find another husband.”

SPREADING THE WORD
Floor Boys utilizes both social media and traditional advertising tools, varying its strategy from market to market. Peed says, “We use TV in Greenville, radio in Lexington. We still do billboards and advertise in local magazines. We support baseball teams, and we’re all-in with schools. If we can put a t-shirt on your kid, we will.”

He continues, “Megan did a good job getting us started on social media back in the day. She established a great presence and has built on that.” Floor Boys utilizes Shaw’s Velocity program.

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