Making Money With Hardwood - 08 Retailers' Guide

Your customer comes in looking for a wood floor. Are you prepared to introduce her to the world of traditional species like oak and maple, and also the increasing popular exotics? There is no doubt that if the rich look of natural wood wasn’t so desirable, the other flooring categories wouldn’t work so hard to duplicate it.

Being able to speak the broad language of wood flooring not only helps position you as a trusted advisor but it also enables you to sell your customer better and higher margin wood flooring. If she’s interested in solid hardwood, there is the option of prefinished and site finished. Site finished allows for custom inlays and medallions and also eliminates the microseams between each board. Prefinished, on the other hand, has a harder wear surface, can be installed quicker and reduces the risk of dust in the other rooms in the house during the process.

Do you know how to position engineered versus solid? Now with engineered wood products, manufacturers are able to produce boards in wider formats without fear of cupping or warping. It can also be installed in basements, which is not recommended for solid wood flooring. And with engineered wood, you have the green story around reducing the number of trees harvested.

Now that you’ve got the basics covered and you’ve decided on a species, what about gloss level or even hand scrapped texture? And finally you’ve got to decide if your customer wants it installed parallel with the walls or on a diagonal.

And don’t forget about bamboo or cork. Both have a very distinctive look, are growing rapidly in popularity and both have an enticing environmental message. While bamboo is a fast growing grass, it is 27% harder than red oak. And with cork, the floor is warmer, softer, hypoallergenic and yet extremely durable. 

It never hurts to keep a photo album of job installations that not only allow her to visualize the whole floor but allow you to show that your store has plenty of experience.

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