Amazing and interesting statistics in a response by a group of large floor covering dealers scattered around the country when asked if they could change one thing about the industry and their business. The two most mentioned concerns were product quality and installation or labor.

There is still a high rate of claims and the product quality hasn’t gotten better despite anything you may hear to the contrary. This is obvious from the responses of the participants and it’s something I hear almost daily from retailers calling in from across the country, installers I talk to and inspectors as well. When you get a cross referencing from these people, who give you a factual barometer of what’s happening on the front lines of the industry, you can pretty much take it to the bank.

The first quality materials you purchase from the samples are not always the first quality materials you receive. The dealer then becomes disillusioned and the consumer distraught and frustrated. How many times do you receive a product that you send out to the consumers home for installation only to hear from the installer that there’s a big, visible flaw in it? I’ve been in this business 32 years and you’d think someone would really want to try very hard to keep this from happening but apparently it isn’t that important. The dealer is not the quality control department for the manufacturer and shouldn’t be. Certainly it is beyond question that you should inspect the products, especially roll goods, that you receive before you send them out for installation. The manufacturer is supposed to make sure there are no visible flaws or defects before they ship to you; they’re the first line of defense. There should be no reason any floorcovering dealer receives carpet with visible defects. If you, the installer and the consumer can see a defect then someone at the mill, before all of you, should have seen it too and it shouldn’t have shipped.

Claims average about 2% of volume at manufacturing level. The carpet industry does about $12 billion dollars at manufacture. 2% is $240 million dollars but maybe that isn’t enough to fret over. However, I’ve always believed the true figure is close to double that at 4%, when you take into consideration all the other costs and losses such as the consumers repeat business and trust. That makes the losses closer to ½ billion dollars ($500 million), a much more significant amount in anyones ledger.

Why is installation still a problem? The answer has to come from you. How many installers have I spoken with who have spent the time and money to train themselves, or who are union trained, who then have to struggle with the dealer to get paid what their worth. For example, if you go to a GM dealer and have your car worked on by Mr. Goodwrench, he’s a trained and certified technician. Is it cheap and would you want it to be? Absolutely not! And you wouldn’t want to trust your familys’ life in the car if the service technicians didn’t know what they were doing. If you put things in perspective, the floorcovering dealer is still the problem. Everyone complains about installation, a variety of entities, including the manufacturers, offer to help but you don’t want to pay any more to the people who know what they’re doing versus the ones that don’t. You want to get the installation for as little as you can and make a profit on it. Guess what? You get what you pay for and you reap what you sow or, as my mother would say, “you spit up in the air and it comes back and hits you in the face!” How do you solve this problem? Well, you can subcontract to only certified installers and pay them what they’re worth. You can weed out the bad installers and let them work for your competition. You can hire the installers, making them employees, so you can now tell them exactly what to do and how. You can stop complaining and start making a difference. If you can’t get what quality installation is worth you can’t sell. With quality installation you can create a whole new world of value for your customer that they’d be more than willing to pay for. All you’d have to do is ask them one question. Do you want the installation done cheap or do you want it right? Can you guess what the answer would be the overwhelming majority of the time? If they want it cheap you can send the apprentice, if they want it right you can send the certified journeyman. That’s one way you can differentiate pricing.

I’ve written about this same subject so many times it’s numbing, yet the same problems exist and everyone wonders why. The problem is the dealer and the manufacturer. The sooner you realize this and start making a valid effort to change by working together, instead of being adversaries, the sooner you’ll all solve the problems and start making more money. If you want even more information on this and subjects like it, buy my book, “Flooring: Problems to Profits” and start increasing your profits at virtually no expense. And remember, “If you think you can’t; you can’t but if you think you can; you can.”