The much-anticipated FloorCon 2022 is just three months away and promises the same disruptive and transformative experience as the inaugural event provided just last year.
Positioned as an all-inclusive industry event—not just for Broadlume customers—the three-day show will take place Nov. 14-16 in Tucson, Ariz., and will offer up a bevy of networking opportunities and educational content aimed at providing flooring dealers with the information and tools needed to move their businesses forward.
“Our goal at the end of the day is to help local flooring retailers be the disruptors of the industry, not the ones that are disrupted,” said Todd Saunders, CEO of Broadlume—organizer of the event. “We’ve seen a lot of industries get disrupted with technology. We know it’s coming to the flooring industry, and we want to be the one that helps retailers get through it. There’s an old guard that helped the flooring industry get to this point, and we look at ourselves as the new guard that will help the industry get to the next point.”
With that in mind, FloorCon 2022 will again focus heavily on networking and learning. Education tracks this year include Leadership & Culture, Sales & Operations, Marketing & Advertising and Technology. The event will also highlight Broadlume’s new technology advancements—including a new integrated payment solution, visualization capabilities and updates to its website, CRM and ERP platform. “We want to give local flooring retailers an all-in-one technology platform that makes it easy for them to sell more flooring and make more money,” Saunders explained. “That is our goal and always will be our goal.”
Like last year, the talk of the event will most likely be the newest addition to Broadlume’s all-in-one platform, which was unveiled at last year’s show. The revolutionary retail selling system that Broadlume offers connects a dealer’s online technology to the in-store experience. The new end-to-end platform promises simplified systems, optimized marketing investments, increased profits and an improved consumer experience for dealers and their customers. All of this is accomplished by melding digital and in-store technology, including a turnkey merchandising system and in-store visualizer.
Last year Broadlume announced this by being the first to bring Digital Retailing to the flooring industry. “Retailers that are taking on the full all-in- one platform including the retail selling system are going from selling jobs on average at 33% margin to now, on average, 49% margin,” Saunders explained. “Our retailers are making more money, which is how we know what we’re doing is working.”
Aside from an increase in retailer profits, the company’s integrated software system also provides something otherwise unheard of in the flooring industry: a clear view of a user’s ROI. “A lot of people in our industry want to talk about clicks or impressions or conversions, but as an industry we should be talking about return on investment,” Saunders stated. “The only way you can actually figure that out is if you’re working with a company that owns and builds their own proprietary end-to-end software. We can actually tell you, ‘Hey, you spent $100 on Google ads and your profit was $500.’ That’s the conversation we should be having. We want to bring more than just leads to your store; we want to bring qualified consumers ready to buy.”
But Broadlume knows that with every great change even greater support is necessary—especially within an industry that has been historically hesitant to fully embrace advanced technology. As such, the company is bolstering its support and training teams to help retailers make the transition. “We know support is the No. 1 priority of our retailers—whether that’s for our ERP system or the website system or the retail selling system,” Saunders explained. “Retailers need our support. They want to change, they know they need to change, but they need a little hand holding and some patience to get there. We want to be their partners in this transformation and are investing heavily in our support structure.”
Overall, Broadlume said its main goal for FloorCon 2022 is to help dealers become more successful while working on their business, rather than in their business. “For us, success at FloorCon 2022 is pushing the industry forward,” Saunders said. “It’s our viewpoint that if retailers adopt more technology, they become better retailers, make more money, get higher margins—that’ll only help us and the rest of the industry move forward.”
