Waynesville, NC, May 22, 2006--What a difference 10 years and a little good fortune can make. When Joe Schneider moved to Waynesville in 1996 to start a new life, he never imagined becoming an owner of a fast-growing chain of flooring superstores, according to the Ashville Citizen-Times.
“When we came to North Carolina, we were broke and broken,” he said.
After losing his floor covering company in Florida during the savings and loan crisis in the early 1990s, Schneider and his wife, Karen, were left with no money and no direction.
But their dire luck didn’t last. Within the last five years, Schneider went from laying carpet as a contractor to investigating prospects for the location of his third flooring superstore, called The Carpet Barn.
“I didn’t foresee opening multiple stores,” Schneider said. “That’s just how (the market) changed, and we developed a vision for the business.”
Schneider’s entrepreneurial aspirations remained dormant while he worked as a contractor for Danyco Carpet, a company formerly on Jones Cove Road in Clyde.
“It was in my mind (to start a business), but I had some other growing I had to do,” he said.
The timing was right six years ago when the owner of Danyco, Bob Dany, decided to retire and allowed Schneider to take over the operation with no money down.
“I wanted to get out of that business,” Dany said. “And I just basically cut him a deal.”
Just more than a year later, Schneider opened The Carpet Barn at Muse Business Park in Waynesville.
He had the idea to make that business a cash-and-carry flooring superstore with a large inventory available for immediate sale.
“I thought that type of business was needed,” Schneider said. “And I saw the potential for it.”
The Carpet Barn started off with 7,000 square-feet of space and continued to grow as other companies moved out of the business park.
Over the next four years, as the company continued doing well, Schneider expanded the Waynesville store into a 30,000-square-foot warehouse. He then searched for a place in Asheville to start another Carpet Barn.
Last May he put the finishing touches on an 18,000-square-foot building on Old Brevard Road and opened the new store in July.
Just before the opening, Schneider vacated the Danyco building, allowing Dany to move in his current business, Musicland Express.
Five years ago, Schneider had only one employee other than himself at Danyco, and today he has 16 employees, plus his wife, who manages the Asheville store.
The type of flooring he offers and the amount of merchandise on hand has grown as well.
“We’ve had to add a lot of inventory to our store,” he said.
In the beginning he offered only carpeting and vinyl flooring, but hard surface flooring gained popularity and he responded by adding laminate, tile and area rugs.
“Business changes, and you have to be ahead of the pack,” he said. “And we are ahead of the pack as far as the business cycle.”
