display and merchandising of hardwood flooring

HEN FHA began to accept carpeting in addition to hardwood flooring, tile and linoleum in the housing they insure about 10 years ago, it knocked the hardwood flooring business for a loop, reducing the business bY a staggering amount. For Years, many assumed the business was gone forever.

But about five years ago, Dave Ferrari, the enterprising president of the Virginia Hardwood Co. of Monrovia, Ca., decided to go about regaining a part of this lost market and determined that a strong merchandising course was his best bet.

What Ferrari did was to:

(1) Open a Los Angeles showroom, in conjunction with several other companies, to proPerlY display his products; and subsequently another disPlaY area and showroom at his plant.

(2) Convince wood flooring contractors in his area also to oPen their own display areas so that the product could garner the exPosure it needed.

The nearly five years since has seen the wisdom of his moves proven as the showrooms have continued to draw and sell ProsPects. Once again, initiative and imagination and effort produced the push hardwood needed to recaPture part of its lost market.

At their Monrovia warehouse, the display of hardwoods begins before the customer even reaches the showroom. The wood flooring theme is firmly established bY the use of samples wall-hung like Pictures in the corridor by the firm's offices. Before going up a wide staircase to the showroom, there is

Story at a Glance

innovative merchandising of hardwood flooring bY a West Coast flooring distributor continues to perform a successful service in helPing regain some of hardwood flooring's market.

an installation of Bruce laminated wood blocks with imPregnated finish. It was the first display of the product in the West when it was initially put up.

Crystal chandeliers, draPes and attractive chairs set a decorator touch to the showroom itself. The floor is comprised of six 10-ftsquares of oak plank and each is a different color.

When the flooring contractors first eyeballed those six decorator colorsgreen, terra cotta, blue, vellow. white and browntheY anticipated problems matching the colors. But there have been none as Ferrari wisely made sure each of the six colors had come directly out of a can of standard stain. Time has proven the colors to be very popular, not onlY with the contractors, but with their decorator customers.

Four adjoining panels of Harris Bondwood flooring products make up the entire back wall of the showroom. A side wall disPlaYs 50 samples of unusual woods and patterns in wing panels. Additionally, there is a wall disPlaY of Bruce's Old English Prefinished plank as well as some of the decorator cork that theY imPort from Portugal.

Not wanting to miss a trick, theY have used all the table and desk tops in the showroom area as displays of hardwood flooring patterns. These are available, incidentally, to people in the trade at cost; another way of disPlaYing the product.

Hardwood flooring continues to make its comeback in PoPularitY from the bad old days and much of the credit goes to innovative merchandisers in the hardwood business, like Dave Ferrari, who have had the ideas and energy to get the products' good Points across to present and Potential customers.