Sometimes you emerge from a room more intelligent than when you walked in. Of course, that depends on who’s in the room. So here’s my suggestion of the month: If you’re a retailer and John Millar, owner of the 14-store Avalon Carpet & Tile is in the room, keep your mouth closed and ears open. Your business will be better for it.

Millar has it all figured out. He understands every aspect of the retail landscape as well as anyone. Want proof? While just about every retailer I’ve spoken to lamented about business in 2006, particularly the second half, Avalon posted sales of $85 million, up about 20% from the year prior. And the growth was strictly organic because Avalon opened no new stores last year.

What differentiates Avalon? Start with advertising. Here at FCNews, we tell our advertisers that successful companies increase their budgets in less-than-stellar times. Why? Because there is less noise. Millar subscribes to the same theory. “A lot of people are cutting back on advertising. The last thing you do in a down economy is cut advertising.” In fact, Millar noted that if his competition spends 1% of sales on advertising, Avalon will spend 3%. And when you do Avalon-type volume, that’s a significant piece of change.

But Avalon’s success goes beyond advertising. The stores themselves are merchandised strategically, designed to create the ultimate shopping experience. There is no clutter and customers can easily navigate from one department to another. The Philadelphia location may be the brightest flooring store in the country—even though there are no windows. “It allows the consumer to better see the product,” Millar says.

The fact that Millar opened in the city may border on genius, given that he has a draw of one million potential flooring consumers within a 10-mile radius. But that’s just the beginning. The store’s only real competition is a Home Depot and Lowe’s, which allows Millar to leverage one of Avalon’s greatest strengths: its people. Where the big box falls short on knowledgeable salespeople, Millar makes it a priority. Avalon puts its salespeople through a comprehensive sales aptitude test to determine if they have the right personality for the job. If they do, training can last as long as 60 days. And if the new hire is for a new store, he or she is required to work in an existing location for a period of time.

What are the other competitive advantages when your competition is Home Depot and Lowe’s? Product and service. Avalon is either the largest or second largest Floorscapes retailer in the country and also imports an array of solid and engineered wood, ceramic and stone, which he then private labels. In fact, Avalon was into ceramic long before retailers embraced the product en masse. File that under vision.