July 2008 Archives

One of the benefits of being one of the largest flooring companies in the world is that when your vendors overestimate on production or have other customers that cancel orders, they compensate by offering deep discounts to those that are capable of purchasing quick and selling in volume. That's definitely us!

Bottom line, they made too much and I bought it all! With one strategically placed phone call (to me,) one of our largest manufacturers was able to get out of a pinch while simultaneously making a very happy customer (also me.)

Up for grabs is over 3 MILLION DOLLARS worth of flooring that we will blow out for 50% or more off of retail value. Why should YOU pay retail anyway? This hardwood and laminate liquidation is your ticket to a SUPER high quality floor for substantial savings.

And so the old cliché goes, their loss is our gain (and better yet your gain!)

In fact, these deals are so good that in addition to passing these savings on to our customers, I made a call to Wells Fargo the iFLOOR card partner and got them to extend last week's special offer: 0% Financing for 36 months!

Remember, these are all first-quality manufacturer overstock items and at these prices, I suspect they'll be gone rather quickly. The financing promotion ends on the 31st and these special purchases are only available while supplies last, so don't wait until the last minute! (early bird gets the worm - another cliché for you.) Below are some shots when we made the buy which illustrate just a taste of the scale of these multiple truckloads of flooring that you can now buy below wholesale.

Pictures of some of the newest items from these trucks are on the next page.

Kudos to Jamie and the good folks in LA who are getting it done.

From: brent
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 8:57 AM
To: Jaime Lopez
Subject: final shot

James,

Here is the final shot of our floors. Thanx again for your help and speedy delivery!

Brent

We have such superlative installation talent - they have no conducted more than 10,000 in home service calls and the number continues to grow.

A video that I really like is shown below. I feel proud and fortunate to be around people who are passionate about flooring and their customers.

As I have mentioned many times in the past cleaning and maintenance of your flooring is CRITICAL to long term satisfaction.

Check out my video with a couple basic tips.

We were talking about some FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions about Flooring) and we had an idea to just turn on the iFLOOR TV Camera and have me talk for a minute or two on a couple topics.

Here's a quick tip of the day:

When installing your floating flooring (or fitting your floors for our British friends) you need to consider what type of expansion space may be required for the product.

Well in the world we live in today the buzz word is value.

Walmart, Costco, Target will fare better than Sears, Nordstrom and Tiffany.

Clearly iFLOOR is at the heart of the value equation. Low overhead and no frills are the origins of the company.

Recently consumer reports highlighted this fact in their kitchen remodeling article. The basic point is that folks are less likely to sell their homes, but still would like to live in a nice place. And we all know that the housing cycle will come back around so all things will level out.

However, right now getting focused on value is a good thing. Although they mentioned a liquidation style competitor in the same article I don't mind. There's enough to go around and if it comes to a head to head battle we'll win more than we lose. (yeah I said it - btw isn't it weird that our store in Brooklyn catches fire 3 days before their store opens? Coincendence?) (The prior passage was tongue in cheek.)

Anyway here is a link to the consumer reports article that reinforces that value is key and IFLOOR is the key to that key. (mmmm...I need help writing obviously.)

Consumer Reports - Kitchen Values, Where to Save

I can't seem to find enough time in a day to post on the BLOG. I will have to catch up some night when everyone is sleeping.

In the mean time here are some photos of a bamboo forest I recently visited(one note is that the different color bamboo "pole" indicates the age. The more green it is the newer it is. It is also interesting in the first year it will pretty much grow to the full length (140-160'?) and then it just gets more dense until it begins to decay. Of course part of the trick is to harvest only at the right time to maximize the usage for flooring or other construction related products. Depending on the region that "best time" can change. Also during the rainy season (may-july) most regions do not harvest AT ALL. That can lead to supply issues of the forecasting is not done well enough in the spring time. Any here are some pictures :

I have been jammed up and haven't had any time to post on the blog and so for the folks emailing me to get on track I apologize.

I will post a couple quick photos because I still don't time. :)

I just returned from a couple weeks of travel. I don't have time to post now, but thought I would share a couple quick photos from some of my journeys:

Nobody in the world of PGA golf can compare to Tiger Woods. I was in China a couple weeks ago and watched part of that match that he battled into the Sudden Death round and he pulled out the win after sustaining an injury to his leg and limped his way through the remainder of the match. To find out that he actually broke his leg only makes the come from behind win that much more amazing and something we can all appreciate.

The fact that there is a species of hardwood known as Tigerwood is a pure coincidence, but I figured I would try and use his victory to imply how awesome Tigerwood is. And I really do believe is it incomparable in so many ways. The contrasting rich colors combined with the whacky natural variance makes a floor that really finishes strong. (see what I did there? I alluded to Tiger Woods' finishing strong in the context of hardwood...any who....)

A customer from the Sacramento area shares these photos and I think a common reaction to his new 5" wide ultra luxury Westhollow hardwood. Westhollow is one of the brands that really pushes for the best harvesting techniques to practice sustainable harvesting techniques for tropical hardwoods.

Ms B,

I just finished cleaning up after the last patches and got the furniture back into the rooms so here you go.

- The floor was floated seamless across the family room, kitchen and entry hall. Maximum dimension is about 25 feet and the boards were run along that dimension and perpendicular to the sliding glass doors.

- The baseboard is 4" tall x 1/2" thick and has a 9/16" shoe molding to make sure all the spacing gaps were covered. I used a dark 3/4" red oak quarter round around the hearthstone that looks like it was made for the floor.

- The floor works with both the cabinets (birch with a honey spice glaze) and the coffee/end tables (natural knotty pine).

Dave

Kudos to Brooke for helping a customer with this dream flooring!

Here are some photos of the Dalton location billboard which is very visible as cars exit the freeway and head on over the find the finest flooring at great everyday values.

Nice work to the team on getting this refreshed!

Georgia

In the past I have referred to the Brooklyn New York iFLOOR store as being "on fire" with their high energy, huge service commitment and excellence in sales.

On Sunday I got a call that was on a crappy cell phone connection and it almost sounded like the caller said our Brooklyn store was on fire. Turns out that's exactly what he said.

I checked in with the folks who actually know what is going on and sure enough there was a major storm that rolled through New York and apparently lightening stuck our rooftop and began a fire.

Here is the story directly from Tim the Brooklyn iFLOOR Manager:

Story goes this way - we had a few customers in the store, the rain had just started coming down in Brooklyn and there was a loud boom (gunshot -ish) in the store. A few customers including me, kinda ducked for cover, after then we began to smoke and I looked around the store, warehouse, and the back and noticed nothing, a customer said it sounded like a transformer had blown, it had happened to her last week where she lives. Terrence said to me after the customers were gone, he was smelling smoke, I looked outside didn't see anything and came back in. We were on the phone with Madison and Terrence got the burning smell again but stronger, I also got it then and I went back to look throughout the store, went back outside walked across the street and noticed smoke coming from the roof, came back told Terrence and warned the neighbor and got ourselves outside to safety. Terrence called 911, I called Rich and when the firemen came (very quickly I may add) they saw how serious it was.

We're so happy that everyone is safe! Great quick thinking by the team to check and re-check and then get out. Although the damage will take a little time to repair we already have a team trying to make sure that our customers do not feel any ill effects since most of the inventory in the store was completely water soaked and smoke damaged. The store will be back online shortly!

Special thanks to the incredibly fast response from the good men of the FDNY! They were on the job quick and no question saved the building.

Here are some pictures that reflect the serious nature of the problem:

Here is a video to let you fully appreciate how much water was incoming! Great job on the photos Tim & the gang.