Hanover Hills is Carpet One Floor & Home’s new, hardwood flooring brand.

By Steven Feldman
DALLAS—With less-than-favorable business conditions enveloping the retail floor covering landscape, the Carpet One Floor & Home winter convention focused on reviewing programs unveiled last year while touching on important initiatives that are “in the works” and set for a full launch this summer.

“We don’t need to make huge steps every six months,” said Evan Hackel, president. “We’ve been spending a lot of time at this convention reinforcing and building what we introduced last year.” First and foremost is carpetone.com, relaunched Jan. 3 with shop-at- home and online purchasing components, making it the first retailer to offer installed flooring sales online throughout North America.

Stan Langer, vice president of marketing, told members that the consumer who logs onto their sites is the same consumer who years ago walked into the store or called on the phone. In other words, carpetone.com is all about gaining access to flooring consumers who initiate the shopping process online.

Early carpetone.com returns are promising, he noted. In illustration:

• 84% of consumers said they were likely to learn about flooring here.

• 72% were engaged on the site from three to 10 minutes.

• 76% had a favorable impression of Carpet One after their visit.

• 76% thought they could get enough information on the site to make a purchase.

• 87% said they would likely visit a Carpet One store after visiting the Carpet One site.

It is equally impressive in practice. Jim Farrell, Mercer Carpet One Floor & Home, Westminster, Md., said he received seven leads in one week recently and closed four of them, all in the $2,000 to $5,000 range. “The other three were outside my area,” he said.

What’s more, Farrell said every job was sold at regular installed prices, and each was to customers much younger than the 40-to-60- year-old norm. “They were looking for quality service and not banging for a price.”

Hackel noted that the Internet is becoming a retailer’s front door. “That’s the first impression customers are having with your store. Having a site that serves the customer is only going to become more critical going forward.”

To that end, Carpet One is offering consumers three ways of purchasing their flooring: In store, online or at home. “The purpose of us presenting to the customer three ways to buy has to deal with us meeting our customers’ needs in ways in which they want to shop,” Hackel said.

Scott Julian, Downtown Carpet One Floor & Home, Spokane, Wash., said the industry is definitely heading toward purchasing online. “There has already been more movement toward the Internet for collecting information,” he said.

“Online buying will probably start with such things as area rugs and laminate—cheap, light, easy-to-install products. Consumers today are looking for convenience; the Internet provides this.”

Hackel noted consumers want a site that offers good information, where they can look at product, where they can compare prices. “The problem is most flooring sites are simply brochures, yet when a consumer goes to buy any other product, she can look at merchandise, prices and buy. Research shows consumers are sorely disappointed by most floor covering sites. They don’t compare to sites for other types of products.”

Bill Thacker, Style Craft Carpet One Floor & Home, Salem, Ore., sees value in carpet-one.com beyond shop at home and online purchasing. “I’m impressed with the new Internet presence,” he said.

“Customers today can go online and make inquiries, collect information, schedule room measuring, use virtual room design, fill out credit applications, etc. The most important thing is that the information online be correct and current.”

Going green

Seeking to be a front runner in taking a position on natural and eco-friendly products, Carpet One announced a partnership with cork supplier Amorim to offer an exclusive program called Montado. The glueless line offers three styles—block, random and linear—for a total of 15 SKUs.

“The cork category has not been aggressively attacked,” said Scott Wheeler, vice president of merchandising. “We have experienced growth without focusing on it.” He expects it to be a multi-million dollar product category next year. Why? Cork is a natural product with many unique benefits, he said. “It’s cutting edge, environmentally friendly, naturally anti-microbial, naturally resilient, naturally slip resistant, naturally warm and naturally sound deadening.”

Shahriar Bayat, president of Carpet One Floor & Home- Burke in Woodbridge, Va., believes it is the retailer’s duty to inform customers and provide green products. “If you educate consumers they love the green initiatives [and cork offerings]. Other ways we try to initiate green programs is by avoiding environmentally unfriendly products.”

Branding initiative Carpet One has taken its SelectAFloor hardwood and channeled it into its own brand dubbed Hanover Hills. The display will be a retrofit of the current SelectAFloor system and is flexible enough to grow and change with the program.

Product is a compilation of 148 of the best-selling looks on the market today and is organized by warranty instead of color. The idea is that the salesperson can walk the consumer through product benefits and make it easier to trade her up.

“When we first came out with SelectAFloor hardwood five years ago, the styling and options were different than today,” Hackel said. “When we revamped our hardwood program, we decided to develop the Hampton Hills brand to give our members more exclusivity and more ability to have less price pressure in their marketplace and take advantage of all the new styling and technology in wood.”

The Hanover Hills collection will offer basically the same suppliers that participate in SelectAFloor with the addition of Anderson. The line also includes an array of products imported directly by CCA Global Direct. No vendor brands are part of the program.

Other convention highlights

• Marketing: Carpet One has dramatically changed the look of its newspaper ads, point-of-purchase materials, circulars, direct marketing, etc. According to Langer, the new campaign talks to women in a language they understand. It makes the product the hero and uses the full spectrum of flooring featuring exclusive brands such as Good Housekeeping, Liz Claiborne and Relax It’s Lees to separate Carpet One members from the competition. “Advertising is a key component of finding new customers,” Langer said. “But you need to have the right media mix and right message. Targeting women through a visual and oral relationship is key to establishing a business relationship with them.”

• Laminate: A CCA Global initiative has Carpet One revamping its laminate strategy. According to Randy Gum, vice president of merchandising, the group will support two primary lines—one major line offering the best designs and exclusive products from about six suppliers, and another completely reborn line from Global Direct. Details will come during the summer convention.

• Relax It’s Lees: Tom Lape, president, Mohawk Residential, termed Lees for Living the most successful private-label launch in the history of the carpet industry and a tough act to follow. However, the Relax It’s Lees brand now accounts for seven of Carpet One’s top 10 styles despite being introduced merely five months ago. Lape implored members to give the brand marquis space on the showroom floor and to get the Lees message out to retail salespeople. Relax It’s Lees consists of 23 styles and 652 SKUs.

• Product placement: Terri Daniels, vice president, public relations, and her team are working feverishly on building the Carpet One Floor & Home brand nationally and locally. In 2006, the brand benefited from 130 million consumer impressions. Among the placements: welcome mats on “The Rachel Ray Show,” ranked fourth among daytime TV shows reaching three million viewers every day; Liz Claiborne flooring in the boardroom of “The Apprentice,” which reaches 10 million viewers weekly; and “The Price Is Right,” where Carpet One’s exclusive brands were featured on 14 episodes, giving more than 91 million impressions.