Image: flickr/Emily May
Why You Should Choose An Independent Flooring Retailer
It’s time for a new floor, and you need to look around for the best value and service at the best price. That might be tricky, especially if you haven’t done this before. A major all-service flooring chain retailer might not be close to you, so the sensible thing is to head on down to your nearest big box home improvement store, right?
Well, maybe not. The big box stores sometimes have some disadvantages when stacked up next to the mom-and-pop places. Let’s look at a few.
Price
Big box places can often have lots of hidden fees while advertising supposedly unbeatable prices. These can include costs for delivering the flooring to your home, and even the hardware or secondary materials (grout for tiles, staples and tacks for carpet, etc.) “Free installation” only means they aren’t billing you for the installing labor itself. It definitely does not mean “you only pay for the primary flooring materials.
Big box stores sometimes have suppliers change product names and labels just for that store so they can market the products as “exclusive” in order to discourage shopping around. These stores also have company policies to follow, so their prices – tag prices and hidden fees – are usually not negotiable.
Independents stores usually have low overhead because they have no franchise fees or advertising expenses, and there are no “special, exclusive” labels on thins, so you can more easily compare prices with other retailers. They also control their own businesses, so they have at least some leeway to negotiate prices. You can’t talk their profit margin down to zero, but you can sometimes get a consideration, especially if you’re a repeat customer or have sent them business by referring them to others.
In any case, price isn’t the whole story, because if it comes with a drop in quality or with no warranty, a flooring option can be a worse deal even if you saved money upfront.
Service
Big box hardware stores try to have good customer service in general, to compete with other big box stores, but to them that only means that employees are polite, will point you to the right aisle, and will try to answer your questions. But the fact that they have so many departments often means no one onsite has extensive knowledge of flooring or can answer more than basic questions. They only train to know a little about each department, and the store might have a genuine flooring specialist who isn’t in today.
A flooring-only store is much more likely to have knowledgeable staff because they only do flooring. Such stores are sometimes passed down in a family, so whoever runs it now may have been in the industry their whole career and feel a strong sense of pride in their products and service. Their dependence on referrals and repeat customers also motivates them to give satisfaction every time.
Selection
Large hardware retailers will probably have smaller selections since they carry so many other home and hardware things. There might be only a couple of brands in the store, and one or two choices in each style. That’s fine if you only want something basic and mainstream, but not if you have something specific in mind.
Mom-and-pop stores might not have as much selection as big stores dedicated entirely to flooring (which are harder to find), but they typically have more than big box, all-purpose home improvement stores. Even if they only buy from a couple of manufacturers, they usually have a wider variety of products from each manufacturer.
Call Unique Carpet & Floor
Unique Carpet & Floor has been a Manassas-based small business for almost 25 years and carries at least fifteen brands of flooring products for hardwood, tile, carpet and more, including Armstrong, Floorte, Model, and Shaw. We care about helping you find the floor you’re looking for and through the installation process. Give us a call at (703) 369-1600 or stop by our showroom on Sudley Road in Manassas to see our selection and get a free estimate.