Best Practices: ProFloors & Cabinets – February 2025

By Jessica Chevalier

Cedric Eckenrode, a rep for Beaulieu of America in the mid-’90s, was waiting in a Naples, Florida flooring retail showroom to speak to one of his accounts when he noticed that the retailer had more customers than its staff could reasonably handle. That realization was the nudge Eckenrode needed toward starting his own flooring retail business, ProFloors & Cabinets, which he has now been in operations for 27 years. ProFloors & Cabinets serves the upper end of the market with a full range of flooring products, yet its sweet spot is in the better goods-hardwood and ceramic.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
Eckenrode dipped his toe into the flooring market early, working in his girlfriend’s father’s retail flooring store at the age of 15. After graduation, he moved into the distribution side of the business.

For Beaulieu, Eckenrode was territory manager with more than 200 accounts in the southwest Florida region. At the time, he and fellow Beaulieu employee Bobby Thompson, now vice president of merchandising and member services for Abbey Carpet & Floor, had progressed as far as they could up Beaulieu’s corporate ladder without having to move to Dalton to work in the corporate office, and neither was particularly keen on the idea.

Eckenrode and Thompson launched ProFloors in Naples in September 1998, and Eckenrode bought out Thompson’s share of the operation about five years later.

Right out of the gate, Eckenrode was focused on quality over quantity. While at Beaulieu, he had become aware of the strength of the design community in the Naples area and chose a location on Trade Center Way, one of two design streets in Naples. Around ProFloors are other retailers also serving the built market, such as lighting, granite, window and trim purveyors.

THE OFFERING
ProFloors offers hardwood, carpet, laminate, tile and luxury vinyl. In addition, the company fabricates area rugs from broadloom made by mills like Nourison, Stanton, Masland and Fabrica.

Overall, Eckenrode’s strategy is to partner with manufacturers that can strengthen ProFloors. “We increased sales by a couple million last year by strengthening our partnership with hardwood supplier Riva Spain alone. We developed a showroom-within-a-showroom-the Riva corner. We have 12 colors to choose from in three widths plus herringbone. Customers can order in select or character grade, so there are lots of options. Since changing the shopping strategy, we’ve seen lots of sales there.”

In addition to flooring, ProFloors has a cabinet offering. The cabinet business has been beneficial for ProFloors, though the learning curve wasn’t painless. “The cabinet business is a success, though I won’t say it was immediately,” recalls Eckenrode. “From an early age, I learned about floors. But selling cabinets is a different mindset. We had to hire the right people. We lost money until I did it correctly.”

He continues, “Cabinets are a money maker. They have a higher margin than floors. But there are different terms when delivering cabinets. We run the departments separately, though they feed one other. As we get referrals back on successful cabinet sales/installations, we can usually make a sale for floors. We can capture more business under one roof by having both, which are generally the largest ticket items in the home.”

The company also does custom homebuilder and some commercial work focused primarily in the hospitality and faith-based segments. It doesn’t work in segments that require specialized flooring, such as healthcare.

DIFFERENTIATION
ProFloors is a Flooring America member, but since the retailer serves the boutique end of the market, it operates somewhat differently from standard members. The business doesn’t utilize any banners or signage from the organization; it doesn’t take the Flooring America name; and it doesn’t use a Flooring America template website. Instead, ProFloors has built a custom website that better supports its brand and goals. “Flooring America websites are more suited for more affordable retailers,” says Ecenrode.” And it was really a detriment to have multiple websites that looked the same. It didn’t help us grow. After that, we hired a web company to handle our website and our Google placement and Twitter and ended up with a cluttered site that didn’t brand us correctly or appeal to the right customer.”

Displeased with the site built by the web company, ProFloors formed a relationship with Riva Spain, a fourth-generation-owned hardwood manufacturer founded in Spain but with headquarters now located in Miami. Riva Spain helped ProFloors develop a website that better represented ProFloors and also assisted with email blasts.

In addition, in June 2023, Eckenrode hired Devin Marchesiello as marketing director. Because ProFloors serves a high-end clientele, it is often working with interior designers representing consumers rather than the consumers themselves. And, as such, ProFloors has found it highly beneficial to be involved with local design organizations such as American Society of Interior Designs, Interior Design Society and Collier Building Industry Association, a county-wide member organization for the construction industry.

“The design community here is an incredibly unique, tightknit community,” explains Marchesiello. “We have learned that getting involved and being on boards is the best way for us to get the ProFloors name out. Designers work with the same providers for years, and to infiltrate that, you have to have a name for yourself.”

END OF THE DAY
“Ultimately, the customer has to be satisfied,” says Eckenrode. “We take pride in educating our customers. Our sales team gets a lot of certification and training.” ProFloors’ sales staff is structured differently from what is typical in retail flooring. Rather than refer to the sales team members as “retail sales associates,” ProFloors calls them “project managers,” and that title comes with a different set of responsibilities, as well. Instead of handing off a job to a production team after it’s sold, ProFloors project managers oversee their jobs from sale to installation. In establishing that structure, Eckenrode reports, “We changed the commission structure so that each sales professional can work more slowly and focus on end results.”

Through experience, Eckenrode has learned to hire for personality rather than flooring experience, noting that those he’s pulled in from other flooring firms “want to tell me how to run my business” and generally don’t work out. Instead, he looks to “bring in people with the right stamina and goals.”

And while ProFloor’s installers are subs, the company feels a responsibility toward keeping them sharp. Eckenrode notes, “One problem in our industry is that new information doesn’t get down to the installers in the field. Our job is to train the installer.”

In addition, Eckenrode is a big believer in keeping the showroom tidy and clean, noting that an unkempt showroom was one of his biggest pet peeves as a territory manager with Beaulieu.

THE NAPLES BUBBLE
Eckenrode says, “There is an incredible amount of wealth in Naples. Up north, like in Pennsylvania where I grew up, people will keep carpet in their homes for 40 years. Here, they might put in a high-end hardwood floor, and if it goes out of style in a few years, they will swap it out-$50,000 to $100,000 sales for hardwood floors and cabinets are not unheard of here. Naples is a bubble. And trends and style are a big part of the community.”

Ultimately, Eckenrode’s goal is to “take a bigger piece of the Naples pie. We have probably 200 flooring dealers in Naples-between Lee and Collier counties. There is so much competition. We really have to shine. There are multiple flooring stores on every street. A good portion go out of business, but there are solid ones that stay. It is very much a reputation area. A bad reputation will kill you in an instant. Our biggest goal this year is to acquire more designers and credit-worthy custom builder clients.”

The “Naples bubble” can be challenging, of course. ProFloors has essentially outgrown its 12,000-square-foot location, which Eckenrode owns. With real estate costly and ProFloors well-established in the design district, there is no simple solution. Already, Eckenrode reports that ProFloors has containers in the parking lot as additions to its warehouse space.

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