Best Practices: ProFloors – July 2024

By Jessica Chevalier

Rick Curbelo’s journey into the flooring market is unlike anyone else’s. The child of two Uruguayan immigrants, Curbelo’s career path traveled through the taxi business, the bar and restaurant scene and the general contracting side of the multifamily segment before he found floorcovering. Ten years ago, Curbelo launched his own floorcovering firm, which does 70% of its business in the multifamily market; in only a decade, ProFloors has opened three locations in major urban centers and reached $50 million in annual sales.

ALWAYS CLIMBING
That prior summary of Curbelo’s life only scratches the surface of what has made his journey unique. Curbelo’s parents immigrated to the U.S. while his mother was pregnant with him in hopes of providing their son a chance at the American Dream. The family settled in New Jersey. “Both my parents were very hardworking, and Dad was very entrepreneurial. When I was seven, I was in the garage with Dad on Saturdays while all the other kids were out playing. My dad paid me for my help, and it taught me the value of working and having money,” explains Curbelo.

When Curbelo’s parents split in his early teen years, he decided to drop out of middle school and follow his father into the taxi business. Curbelo then moved into the bar and restaurant scene in New York before a difficult divorce sent him in search of something new.

In the early 1990s, he took off on his motorcycle for San Francisco, where his sister lived, and fell in love with California. “I got into business serving multifamily apartment complexes, managing and running construction crews,” recalls Curbelo. “A flooring company vendor asked, ‘Rick, would you like to come work for us and run the company?’ I didn’t know much about flooring, but from my background in the taxi and bar and restaurant businesses, I knew how to provide extreme customer service. I saw this as a new opportunity with the same approach.”

Curbelo joined that flooring firm in 1996, working up to partner, and stayed with it until 2014 before parting ways.

But Curbelo wasn’t finished with floorcovering, and as he contemplated launching his own venture, he considered, what is going to make my firm stand out?

Curbelo determined that standing out started with pulling together the best team possible. “If you were going to put a golf team together, what would you do?” he asks. “You’d hire Tiger Woods. I knew if I could get passionate people, I could teach them everything else. My team is the best of best.” To secure that best-of-the-best team, Curbelo pays his team well. In fact, Curbelo reports, there were years early on when he and his ex-wife/CFO/best friend made less than his account executives.

Curbelo is always on the lookout for individuals with strong customer service skills that he can bring into his business, and he believes the quality of the team he has assembled gives ProFloors an edge. He says, “Flooring is not complicated. I teach my account executives how to make friends and build relationships. I have a very small sales team-four individuals-for $50 million in business because they do what they are great at.”

In addition, Curbelo believes that having a finger on the pulse of the multifamily market has been key to ProFloors’ success, but, even so, his goal of creating a memorable experience for every customer doesn’t come easy. He says, “In the multifamily market, the key is long-term relationships. Our customers are our friends, and we work hard to take care of our friends. Our core values aren’t focused on money or profit. If I build the right team and have the right vendors, we will take care of our customers, and the profits will follow.”

In service of that belief system, ProFloors relies solely on word-of-mouth advertising. “If we create a memorable experience, customers will talk about it,” Curbelo says.

Today, in addition to multifamily work, ProFloors serves the commercial market (25%) and the builder market (5%), with all three locations serving all three segments with a full scope of floorcoverings and flooring services, including subfloor preparation, concrete grinding and epoxy application.

ALWAYS IMPROVING
Curbelo answers his phone, “What can I do to make your day bigger, better, brighter?” That sort of “wow service” is what he seeks to put into every customer interaction.

“Multifamily is a niche business,” he notes. “You need to stock a tremendous amount of flooring to cover same-day emergency jobs, next-day jobs. We stock a tremendous amount of product so that we’re always ready to go.”

Curbelo follows that up with honest conversations with clients. “I don’t want to hear only praise,” he says, “I was in front of a very large company property management company recently and asked, ‘What could we do better? Where are we failing? Where can we improve?’ We can always adapt and be better.”

Once ProFloors’ account executives make a sale, they hand the job off to the sales administration team, which follows through with the sales process and installation. This structure enables ProFloors to get quotes in potential customers’ hands very quickly, freeing up its account executives to focus on chalking up more sales.

Ultimately, Curbelo’s goal is to hit the $100 million revenue mark but, more importantly, to be the most well-respected floorcovering provider in the U.S. serving the multifamily market. “I would consider that a feather in my cap,” Curbelo says. “The financial goal is out there, and we’re on track to do it. We will continue opening new locations on the West Coast in the next couple of years.”

ALWAYS LEARNING
Curbelo is a vigorous learner and eager to educate himself and his team about any philosophies or processes that will make his business better.

He recently attended FloorCon. “One of the reasons I go to boot camps is to learn about new technology, better ways of doing things, the right software,” he says.

At FloorCon, Curbelo learned about AI and ChatGPT, about which he’s really excited. “I feel like I have so much information at my fingertips. It’s very exciting. In a couple weeks, we will have a team meeting about it and will buy the app for everyone on the team so that they can use it too,” says Curbelo. “I put three kids through college. I’m a big believer in education. If you are open to learning, you can always learn something new. Learning keeps me young.”

ProFloors has developed its own app for the quality control inspections post-install. “We put everything into the app, so operations gets an instant email about the inspection. We are always trying to learn what other companies are doing better, not just flooring companies. How do they take care of customers? I want to use technology but have customers know us individually,” he explains.

In addition, Curbelo is a voracious reader and operates a library out of his office, keeping multiple copies of books he finds valuable so that his staff can check them out.

Copyright 2024 Floor Focus 

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