Strategic Exchange: The fall selling season is upon us – Aug/Sept 2025
By Kemp Harr
As the back-to-school fall selling season kicks into gear, it’s encouraging for those of us who make our living in the flooring business to know that consumer sentiment has been on the rise for two consecutive months, although it’s down 7% from this time last year.
The big unknown on the horizon is the implementation of President Trump’s tariffs and what impact that will have both on the consumer’s attitude and on inflation, which could delay the Fed from lowering interest rates. We all know that lower interest rates will stimulate housing turnover and encourage homeowners to buy more flooring.
If you think we’ve got it bad, take a look at mattress sales statistics. Mattress sales are another transaction that is stimulated by housing turnover, and, like flooring, they are a deferrable purchase. In Q1, the total mattress market was down 5.7% in dollars and 11.2% in units.
Our best estimate at Floor Focus is that the flooring industry overall is down about 3% in dollars for the first half of the year. Retail replacement is down about 5%; builder could be flat to slightly down; and the commercial sector is still positive 1% to 2%. On the retail side, better-end goods are in much higher demand than the lower and medium price points.
CCA Global just wrapped up its regional meetings with its last meeting in Atlanta. The consensus with this group, and also with members of the NFA, is that its retailers are taking share and outpacing the market.
On the commercial side, the July Dodge index numbers were up 20.8%-driven by data centers and institutional work, mostly in healthcare and education. Granted, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) was below 50 at 46.8 in June, but inquiries for new projects were up.
Tribute to Chuck Bode
The saddest personal news I heard in July was that my dear friend Chuck Bode, former CEO of CB Flooring-a top ten commercial flooring contractor based in Columbia, Maryland-has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Chuck just stepped down as chairman of Starnet two years ago, and he turned 72 last month. Earlier this year, he was blessed with two grandchildren-one from each of his two children, Emily and Matt, who are currently running CB Flooring. For more background on Chuck, we wrote a Focus on Leadership on him in January 2021.
My relationship with Chuck extends way beyond just being industry friends. For years, the two of us would routinely be on the phone together in the early mornings around 6 a.m., knowing each other’s morning routines, sharing the news of the week. His wit and trusting openness coupled with his sense of humor are a great way to start the day. Chuck’s ailment is serious, and I ask each and every one of you reading this column now to please take a moment to ask God to be with Chuck and his wife, Carol, and to heal him from this wicked cancer. Prayer works, and I’m asking for a groundswell of support from our faithful readers (see photo on page 82).
Ray Anderson's WFCA Hall of Fame award
Most of you know the CliffsNotes version of Ray Anderson’s story. He was the founder of Interface, the father of carpet tile in the U.S. and the industrialist who shifted course mid-stream to focus on doing less harm to our planet after reading Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce. For those of you who keep back copies of Floor Focus, we paid tribute to him in our December 2011 issue soon after his death.
Last month, at the Flooring Sustainability Summit in Washington, D.C., Ray was posthumously awarded the World Floor Covering Association (WFCA) Hall of Fame award-the pinnacle award for the flooring industry.
But you may not know what Paul Harvey would say is “the rest of the story.” Ray was a Southern gentleman who dripped with charisma. His exceptional achievements started at West Point High School in rural, Georgia, which he started attending at the age of nine. He was large in stature, ahead of his years and a talented team builder. During his senior year, Ray was quarterback, runningback and kicker on a team that won the state championship in football. Quite an over-achiever.
Ray attended Georgia Tech on a football scholarship for a few years but went on to Stanford in Los Angeles to earn his bachelor’s in political science. Ray was known as a storyteller. He had a swagger and a smile that was infectious. He created a culture at Interface where people wanted to hang around with him and listen to his stories. Once, when asked how he overcame challenges, his answer came in the lyrics of a Sunday school hymn he learned as a child-“Brighten the Corner Where You Are.”
One of Ray’s first roles in the flooring business after school was when Roger Milliken sent him to Europe to explore developing modular tile for Milliken. When he returned, with his head full of ideas about how to develop the best carpet tile, he grew restless with Mr. Milliken’s conservative timeline and decided to pull together a group of friends and former associates to invest and start Interface.
After his passing in 2011, as part of Ray’s eulogy, Paul Hawken said, “When Ray turned 60, he rediscovered a sacred earth with all its complexity. I believe that justice produces justice, and injustice injustice. Ultimately, Ray’s work was not about making a sustainable business, it was about justice, ethics, and honoring creation. Zero waste was the path to 100% respect for living beings.” n
For comments on this column, email kemp@floorfocus.com.