Every two weeks, FCNews seeks out flooring retailers across the country to offer their advice on hot topics of the day. This week, we asked: What area of your business outperformed expectations in 2023?
Here are their responses:
“Main Street commercial has been our most pleasant surprise. We did a lot of projects ranging from church remodels, office spaces and even the famous Lewis & Clark Riverboat. We did not expect Main Street commercial to generate as much business considering how many people now work from home, but it did.”
—Jon Dauenhauer, Carpet World Bismarck Bismarck, N.D.
“Commercial contract work was our biggest growth and outperformed all our expectations for this past year. We attribute most of this growth to Hurricane Ian in October 2022. The work finally came through in 2023.”
—Mike Montgomery, Montgomery’s CarpetsPlus ColorTile Venice, Fla.
“For us, specified commercial remained strong. People still have COVID-19 money left to spend as well as projects they had in the pipeline that were delayed. We are still seeing a lot of medical and education projects coming in for bid heading into 2024.”
—Mike Foulk, Foulk’s Flooring America Meadville, Pa.
“We emphasized improving gross profit in flooring, which had slid a bit from the prior year. Where we gained was in the remodeling sector. We do kitchens and bathroom renovations and those have been extremely strong.”
—Bob Duke, Floor Magic Damariscotta, Maine
“Residential remodel, driven through designers, has been the strongest part of our business in 2023. While we saw a drop in order numbers, the designer work increased our average ticket by 20%, which allowed us to match our 2022 sales.”
—Joel Schreier, Home Carpet One Floor & Home Chicago
