Adding Value - More Than Just Selling Flooring

When I first started out in flooring, petrol was nine shillings a gallon (45p) you could have a fortnight’s holiday in Benidorm for 30 quid and a pint was 2 shillings (10p) which, coincidentally was the going rate for laying a square yard of 9x9 thermoplastic tiles, most of which were installed in the many thousands of houses being built around that time.

 My first job once “qualified” was tiling 500 such dwellings in Rochdale near Manchester, 50 yards per house, one house per day, day in day out for months through the long and snowy winter days of the late 60s. The first house took me 12 hours and the 500th just 4, I’d arrive around 7-30/8am on my little Honda 50 and after brushing the snow off the tarpaulin which covered the tins of ATA I’d start work.

8-00am - Sweep and scrape the floors.
8-30am - Set out and fix a string line.
8-40am - Spread the stiff cold adhesive, stack the tiles on a hot plate in an adjacent house then stop for a sandwich to let the adhesive go off.
9-00am - Start tiling.
12-00pm - Finish tiling and sweep up the off cuts.
12-15pm - On my little bike heading for home, £5 the richer.

I know I should have, could have, tiled another house in the afternoon and doubled my income, and I would have, but by the time I was fast enough to make that a possibility, I was so bored with the repetitive “house bashing” that I didn’t have the heart.

Many things have changed since those days, petrol is now about a fiver a gallon or one house worth, that fortnight in Benidorm has rocketed to £1000 and a pint is around 3 quid.  Manufacturers of flooring have had to change too.

They have had to become more approachable, more understanding and much more supportive than ever before, the quality of after sales service is paramount to the success of a company and the esteem in which it is held by flooring contractors. When I started out, if you had a problem on site with adhesive or materials, subfloors, conditions etc, you had to sort it out yourself.

Not so today.  Today direct contact with the manufacturer means that wherever you may be in the country there will be somebody who can help either by answering queries over the phone or if the problem is serious enough, a site visit to help get things sorted out.

Obviously we at Altro also realise the importance of good customer service and cover this in a variety of ways, such as a first line technical support team based at head office, always available and who are trained to either answer the query or to field it to someone who can, and there will always be someone, however obscure the question.

We also have a Technical Services team out on the road, all willing and able to help whatever the problem.  From on site demonstrations on the fitting of a particularly difficult detail to arbitrating between warring factions to free up a log jam during the contract, or at the end when payment is being held up on a technicality.

We have a large and mobile, highly trained sales team who can and will help with specifications to assist in putting forward the right product for the job, with a wealth of technical knowledge they are able to offer advice at all levels to help the contract run smoothly.

And although the majority of people are fully adept at fitting safety flooring these days, we also carry out a large number of training schools either in house at Letchworth or at a contractors own premises on request, the object being to help you to fine tune your existing skills and if possible turn out an even better job than before.  Which is a good advert all round and leads to more business for everyone.

This article first appeared in the September 2009 edition of the CFJ.