Spotlight: Brent’s Carpet One Floor & Home

Spotlight: Ben Griffiths

Brent’s Carpet One Floor & Home

BY JIM WALKER Signal Staff Writer

If you’ve lived in the Santa Clarita Valley for any length of time, you are probably aware of one of our longtime family businesses, Brent’s Carpet One Floor & Home (formerly Brent’s Fashion Floors). And the odds are that you’ve done business with Brent’s. If so, you are most likely a loyal customer — for reasons you already know.

Established by Brent Griffiths in 1979 in Newhall’s Apple Valley Plaza, Brent’s Fashion Flooring was more of a happy accident than a dream.

Griffiths was an accountant — and really had no intention of working day to day in the flooring business — when he and a partner opened two such locations in 1979. The other guy was supposed to actually run the operation. However, the partnership didn’t work out and Brent suddenly found himself owning, and in charge of, the Newhall store.

Always expecting to sell the store, the operation and responsibilities of life held him there over the years, while his business acumen and customer-first methods made him successful.

Brent’s Fashion Flooring joined Carpet One in 1992, and changed locations in 1997 to the corner of Lyon’s Avenue and Wiley Canyon Road. Brent’s Carpet One has been owned by Brent’s son, Ben, and his wife, Natalie, since 2013, when Brent retired.

Ben Griffiths noted, “In the 43 years we’ve been in business, we’ve done more than 40,000 floors in the SCV.”

Helping all those local homeowners truly makes Brent’s a large part of the SCV family, but there are also a lot of Griffiths.

“My father and mother had six kids together, and adopted three more,” Ben said. “And Natalie and I have four boys and a girl.” Those generations of children grew up in the SCV, attended local schools and were involved in local youth sports and other community activities.

“My parents were always involved with our local church and a commitment to

Brent’s Carpet One Floor and Home Co-Owner Ben Griffiths. PHOTO BY CHRIS TORRES / THE SIGNAL

the Boys and Girls Club.” And Ben’s family continues this service. “We do a lot of work for the local church,” he said, “and we donate to people in need through our church and to local charities like Carousel Ranch.”

The flooring business has also been a family affair over the years. In addition to Ben and Natalie’s involvement, Ben said all of his brothers worked in the warehouse during their high school years, and one brother continued working for Brent’s long after that.

For his part, Ben said he attended Peachland Elementary School, Placerita Junior High and Hart High School. He played AYSO soccer and Hart Baseball. And though he did his stint at Brent’s, he also worked a lot of service jobs.

He noted that his parents were always very caring people and concerned for others in the community, including Brent’s customers. He figures this and his service job experience, shaped his initial career direction, which was to go into social work. However, that veered some, and he got his Bachelors of Arts in public relations. “I’ve always been a writer, an idea guy,” he said.

When the public relations career ran its course, Ben found himself in the flooring business, as his father had.

“In 2003, I came to Brent’s to work my way up through the ranks,” he said. ‘I’ve worked in every position here except accounting,” he added. And, as his wife Natalie is an accountant, “I’m lucky I had a ringer.”

Ben said that one of the reasons he became co-owner of the business (with his wife) was that, when his father finally decided to sell it, because Brent was the guarantor on the long-term lease, the lease-holder wouldn’t release it for sale. After some negotiations, the lease extension was negotiated with the requirement the business be sold to family.

Ben said that the legacy of Brent’s is a big responsibility. As his full name is Benjamin Brent Griffiths, “My dad’s name, my name, is on my shirt every day, and on the building.” Beyond this, he said he grew up watching his father treat people with respect and integrity, putting the customer first. “And I can’t tell you how many people come in with amazing stories of how well he treated them. Those are big shoes to fill.”