Christine B. Whittemore is Chief Simplifier at Simple Marketing Now, a marketing consultancy firm which she formed in March 2009, focused on integrating traditional with social marketing. Christine previously worked for the flooring industry, specifically carpets, for 6 years as director of in-store innovation for Wear-Dated carpet fibre by Solutia Inc. She also blogs extensively about marketing solutions for the flooring industry, at http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com. She focuses strongly on marketing for the woman consumer, since, as research shows, women make or influence over 80% of purchase decisions.As a marketing consultant advising businessmen, Christine addressed in particular the issues of disconnect between consumers and manufacturers and how to present choices to consumers, first in the upholstery business where she started out, then subsequently in the carpet industry where she felt the same dynamics. What began as industry summit presentations and newsletters became a regular column in Floor Covering Weekly, a major US trade title and an exploration and study of the possibilities offered by the internet as a free, fast, and effective marketing tool to educate and share ideas and insider knowledge.
“I had had great success in apparel and upholstery with paper newsletters, but they were becoming preposterously expensive to print and mail out, so I started learning as much as possible about blogs where the creation of content was practically free.” She encountered skepticism to begin with, with many peers wary of internet as a marketing tool. “I remember mentioning blogging and blogs to some of my associates and being poopooed that they weren’t serious tools. The flooring industry is a mature one”, says Christine, echoing my impressions that many see a huge divide or barrier between traditional marketing and online marketing, as though they are somehow incompatible, or separate entities, when in fact, when used together they can be especially powerful tools for reaching out to consumers. “The current focus in both hardwood and the soft/carpet coverings market however is on product rather than on what the consumer does with it. Furthermore, so many businesses in the flooring industry seem to hire mostly insiders, which leads to a paucity of thinking and perspective.” Overall, she concludes, the focus has been physical rather than digital, as if somehow the consumer isn’t shopping differently now to ten, twenty years ago, when there is evidence to hand that this is no longer the case. Digital retail is the inevitable future, or even present. How does one explain to clients, manufacturers, retailers, the advantages of having and maintaining a blog, or some kind of social media presence? “I launched Flooring The Consumer under the radar, in June 2006. Once it was set up I mentioned it to associates and got their buy in. I used it in presentations when talking about marketing to women, but the transition from integrating offline to online marketing took a long time. It was about bringing it up in conversations, talking about it at tradeshows. I printed business cards with the address of the blog and gave them to clients at fairs. I now have close to 1500 subscribers.. The blog is the single best way to raise one’s digital awareness, to bring your company to life.
Many ask “why bother with a blog, if you have a website”? The answer is simple, but the putting into practice is the challenge. A website lays out information on the table. A blog is a conversation, an exchange of ideas, a form of discussion between manufacturer and consumer. It bridges the divide and becomes a more personal approach, which plays on the factors of trust and loyalty between customer and retailer, consumer and manufacturer. In a sense, its like reverting back to the age of the local shop and tradesman, using the technology of the 21st century. Social media marketing, of course, is not simply about opening a Twitter account and tweeting about what sandwich you had for lunch as a means of “bonding” with the consumer. It is a time-consuming process and needs careful study and review in order to be effective and to target the right consumer in the right way. It might not benefit everybody. “I see two big problems with social media, says Christine. Firstly, for large flooring companies, the medium requires that they become intimately involved in it and that they engage in it for the long run. They cannot delegate their social media to an outside company; it needs to come from them in order to be authentic. This means relinquishing some control over their communications and that social media be integrated into their overall strategy – that they be willing to actually talk, communicate with and respond to customers. That takes a lot of thinking through. Secondly, there’s a problem for smaller organizations. How do you find the time to do it all? This is a big issue for traditional mom/pop stores, independent traders etc. who have been clobbered psychologically by the economic environment. The days when the consumer came to them and all they had to do was deliver/install the product are over. But, in the bigger picture, for small to medium entrepreneurial organizations, these tools allow you to reach more people than you can imagine at far less cost than traditional vehicles and more effectively because you can target specific consumers. A great example is Carpets by Otto, a small family business which with a few changes and more personal additions to their web page have reached out to the customer and presented themselves as a clients’ “friend”, giving a sense of community which is very attractive for a consumer searching for a local retailer.
Another problem that many in the industry have raised with regards to emphasizing online presence is that flooring is ultimately a tactile product. They then use this as an excuse not to improve, update, maintain or increase their website/blog/online presence. I put this to Christine: “What I think is scary for many flooring retailers is that all of this requires some deep thinking about what value they bring, then they have to adjust their organization to deliver it. The reason flooring retailers may be slow at getting round to online marketing is that many flooring retailers got into business because they were installers. They have a strong technical knowledge base. But, they aren’t customer focused. Not that they give bad service, but they aren’t focused on ‘walking in her shoes’ and understanding the process/experience from her perspective. Life was easy for many years, with business literally walking into stores without too much encouragement. Now they have to do what I call ‘retail outward’ and do things they aren’t comfortable or knowledgeable about.” Consumers are much more picky now, and can find a huge range of information online before they approach a retailer, both when it comes to price and quality. They are aware of choices and can find deals online that they won’t necessarily find in store. “All these arguments are reasons for getting into social media. Can’t do much with your website? Then start a blog and let your personality shine through. Yes, flooring is tactile, but as an industry we do more to sell it as a commodity than we do to showcase it as a design product for the home. So far, most of the social media efforts from flooring are about shouting “Cheap, Cheap, Cheap Carpet and Floors!” Who wants to engage with that? Consumers are sceptical. They don’t want to be taken advantage of and too often walking into a flooring store is like walking into a used car lot with the hard sell focus. Not pleasant. Flooring is an investment piece. Even in a recession, consumers are willing to pay a bit more for good value and quality. At last year’s National Floor Show, great efforts were made by companies such as Ryalux to emphasize flooring as a design element, a long-term investment that fits into the whole context of home and family. People had their company designers on the stand, mingling with clients and buyers. Imagery was strong and there was a lot of attention paid to marketing concepts that looked at flooring as an integral element in the home. Somehow, this still hasn’t translated to many company websites or blogs. Christine elaborates, “Design should be key, it should be emphasized. I believe that’s what consumers want more of. I don’t think retailers necessarily believe that. Phil Pond at trend forecasting company Scarlet Opus (who spoke at the NFS) says that manufacturers have convinced themselves that consumers only purchase beige carpet. However, the only option that consumers are given is beige carpet.” How does Christine monitor the success of social media for the flooring industry? “In 2008 I couldn’t find a single reputable sign - other than myself (!) - of flooring in social media. As I got my business going, I started coming across more signs of flooring activity. Much of it I attributed to the winter convention of a prominent flooring retail cooperative which instructed its members to go forth and be social. They all went off and started Facebook and Twitter accounts. As you can imagine, many of those are languishing because they don’t have much of a clue on how to be social and to sustain the effort. However, I started noticing possibilities and some success stories.
I decided to organize what I found by platform and document it in the Social Flooring Index. As a quick first step to evaluating, I’m paying attention to followers/fans, etc. I’m using some of HubSpot’s tools to get a quick read on ranking. And now, I’m getting more immersed in monitoring the level of truly social behaviour. I also want to segregate the blogs, for example, in terms of the subjects they address. There’s a lot of traditional behaviour taking place... hard selling, shouting, not much interacting, but also, some who get it! So, who “gets it”? Christine cites several examples of companies that “get it”, many small, family operations, but some bigger companies who are starting to explore the possibilities beyond traditional online retail. “Carpet One Floor & Home in Panama City does a terrific job on Facebook offering flooring tips. Palmetto stores has an active Facebook fan page with contest and passionate users. The Domotex blog has been very useful for industry people. McKay Flooring in the UK (see interview with Richard McKay) has really used the net to its full potential. The aforementioned Carpets by Otto has made small, but significant in-roads. Does Christine get the sense that if flooring companies don’t get on board the social media bandwagon in the next 5-10 years they will disappear? Could it be that urgent? This year has been crippling for many in the UK flooring industry, and there’s a sense that those who are surviving are having to radically transform their entire approach to the customer “I do believe there is urgency. My latest Floor Covering Weekly articles have been about the need to be found online. Online visibility is getting so much more critical, to such a point that if you can’t be found online, despite a physical store, you become irrelevant.”Find Christine at:
Simple Marketing Now
Flooring the Consumer
Carpetology
Social Flooring Index
On Twitter / @CBWhittemore
On Facebook / Christine B. Whittemore
The traditional view from the construction industry pitches Interior Designers as haughty artists concerned purely with aesthetics and the “feel” and “look” of a space, whereas construction workers, floor fitters or electricians, being manual labourers, are generally perceived as the ones who actually “get their hands dirty”. In reality the interior design profession demands a thorough knowledge of architectural structures, specifications, materials and the practicalities of plumbing, electrics and brickwork. Interior Design and construction go hand in hand and pretending that Interior Designers can call themselves professionals and experts without an intimate knowledge of the shell that they work in is a fault that is sadly reflected in many Interior Design courses offered in the UK.
Axel was born and educated in Germany, back in the days when apprenticeships were commonly offered to students of design and architecture (he studied the latter). He himself trained as a bricklayer and learnt carpentry, often working on building sites, something he found very helpful later on in his career saying it “improved his communication skills” no doubt implying that being able to banter with construction workers is an invaluable skill for a designer. This apprenticeship practice is disappearing due to EU regulations aiming to standardise qualifications offered across the European Union countries. Axel hopes to introduce his university students to apprenticeships, internships and training schemes within the construction and flooring industries and hopes for a free exchange between the two worlds to encourage interior design students to look beyond the parameters of their courses but also enable manufacturers to market schemes to the interior design industry.
“I always want to know how students can get involved”, says Axel, “either with design professionals or manufacturers who can approach the students, like Dalsouple have done, organising student competitions. The head of Dalsouple came to the ID Department of AIU London and gave a very interesting lecture to our students. He talked about rubber flooring and its various qualities such as it being a natural product and therefore supporting sustainable design. This was extremely helpful for students to understand and appreciate the different aspects of flooring materials and their appropriate use. They also appreciated the complex processes which are involved to create high spec flooring materials. We have great interest in the flooring industry; “I’d like to give the manufacturers a chance to inspire the students to better understand specifics, like floor fitting, floor laying, and types of flooring. The same applies to construction and electrics, etc”. Bemoaning the loss of the apprenticeship scheme, Axel added, “Now we’re moving towards a standard European BA model, so there won’t be a one-year apprenticeship offered anymore. It’s a shame. I think we should use the possibilities of internships / apprenticeships to get students back into on site learning, get them practically involved either within the university programme or outside. The more diverse knowledge the students can acquire, the more employable they will be in the ID profession. This is one of the reasons why the ID department at AIU London has established a SBID student chapter to establish strong links with manufacturers. Breanna Wucinich is one of the Interior Design department’s SBID student representatives at AIU. Breanna has had a lot of experience as student liaison at her previous university in the US with the IIDA (International Interior Design Association). She arrived in London last year just in time to be elected to represent the ID department of AIU London in the newly established Society of British Interior Design (SBID). She feels that this involvement will bring a fresh outlook and establish useful links to the manufacturing industries. It all started when Vanessa Brady, president of SBID, approached Axel with her education-driven ideal and he was named Director of Education. Their fresh approach was to ensure a high-standard entry level for SBID student membership, to guarantee students a certain standard of quality at networking meetings and student events. SBID will only welcome student chapters from universities that offer a BA.
“Each student chapter will publish its own newsletter and we want to be able to meet, organise events and student networks, first nationally and internationally, especially in America” (Axel is a member of IDEC, the Interior Design Educators Council). “We want to make sure that academic standards in education are high but we also feel the need for industry based learning experiences. It’s important for us to talk to the trade press, like Contract Floors magazine, for us to get into apprenticeships, get students involved with the flooring trades. We are looking to achieve very high standards.” “SBID’s student chapters are also great for recent graduates. When they first go out in the world to make a career for themselves they already have a fully-fledged network behind them, a support system of excellent, high-standard contacts. We also offer CPD’s (Continuous Professional Development Units). This brings the designers to the University, our students can come for free and we always have drinks and nibbles afterwards to give students opportunities to network and ask the participating professionals questions in a relaxed atmosphere. “In times of recession, the more skills you have, the more employable you are when you graduate. If you have a possibility as an interior designer to get involved in an area of industry, such as flooring, and you have some experience in that area, you may be able to design specifically for it. Remember the Bauhaus in Germany, which was very hands on - students developed certain projects within the construction and building industry and that is what we need to work on developing more here”. The American Intercontinental University offers design students opportunities that many of the better-known design colleges or universities don’t. For starters, graduates here are equipped with a degree recognised both in the US and Europe, because they gain accreditation through an US academic accrediting body and London South Bank University. This opens doors to those who will travel abroad for work, or return to the US after their London experience. For designers living, working or studying in London, Axel believes they experience the best design environment in the world. To readers familiar with British flooring designers, from rugs and carpet-makers to ground-breaking floor coverings in rubber, vinyl and bold colour-rich designs, this statement may come as no surprise. Axel also believes the recession will not hamper interior design, rather inject some necessary creativity, something he believes the Brits have in bucketloads, thriving in moments where thriftiness and quirk are required. 
“Good designers are educated here, then go to Paris or Milan. Paris and New York are very interesting, but London has no rival. English is now the most important business language, which is reflected, in the cosmopolitan mix of different nationalities and their talent in London. There’s money here, a bit less at the moment, but we still invest. Thrift and thriftiness are excellent qualities to have as a designer. I asked Breanna from a student’s perspective what she saw as being interior design student’s major concerns today. “I always try to tell students what to do to be a better designer. This is actually my second career, I come from a customer service background and what I tell students is this: Don’t forget about that. Get out there, network, talk to people. Design students can get wrapped up in their little worlds and can be very shy. They forget that you have to sell yourself. You have to get involved and build relationships, learn how to communicate. And it’s not just about the talking, but listening to feedback, and other people’s opinions. Learning to listen as well as be outgoing. Axel agrees, “Yes, it’s dangerous if you feel that you don’t have to listen any more. Always be curious and always listen.”
If you are interested in promoting apprenticeships or internships to the SBID student chapter contact Axel Griesinger: Axel@sbid.org
American Intercontinental University: agriesinger @aiulondon.ac.uk
Interior Designer Vanessa Brady, whose award-winning creations have appeared in everything from national papers to Homes and Gardens and idFX is the Chairman of the Society of British Interior Design, an internationally-reaching organisation aimed at promoting excellence in design and extending professional accreditation to designers to protect the profession of Interior Design in the UK. Currently preparing for the SBID official launch event, she spoke to Retail Floors about her vision for the future of Interior Design in the UK, the importance of education within the design profession and, of course, her vision on future trends in flooring.The Society of British Interior Design was conceived in Christmas 2008 after Vanessa had repeatedly found herself inundated with emails from associated trades within the design world calling for her to found an organisation to set a standard and represent the industry. Taking on this daunting but exciting task, Vanessa knew from the start that education would be the key to SBID because it formed the “absolute basis” of what she wanted to achieve.“If you are promoting professionalism, you have to focus on how a professional is formed, said Vanessa, people were telling me ‘there needs to be an umbrella organisation, a body that represents designers and anyone associated with interior design, and which accredits us’”.Currently many design schools are not adequately preparing students for the challenges and demands of the interior design market. So much focus is on the actual design process that little attention is paid to finance, business skills and learning about the technical specifications of individual products. Vanessa cites a particular incident that led her to this conclusion.“I had an issue with a graduate intern once. I asked her to source a bed for a client and she went on Google and came up with six beds. The client can do that on his own, we have to offer them something more. We have to give clients options. It’s not just about budget, although that is very important, but there are so many other concerns that as a recent graduate, she didn’t think about. Besides deliveries, there are logistical issues: how will the couch get up the stairs, will it turn round the staircase? If you don’t consider these things you could end up with a lot of furniture sitting in the streets.”“Graduates often don’t understand anything about finance. If you work in a company or for a business, you have to understand costs. Budget is everything it dictates your entire project. You cannot go sourcing things if you don’t know the value of your products. Graduates don’t seem to have a very good understanding of installation in terms of the product. If they don’t understand the facilities and the use of a product, then they’ll specify the wrong product. You buy things because they look beautiful, but every designer-looking item isn’t necessarily right for that environment or appropriate for that area. If you hold yourself out as an expert you have to stand by that, you need to know why you’re using a product, and you need to understand in a building all the mechanics of that building. Ultimately I would say that means electrical, plumbing and water - that affect everything else in the design.Vanessa has worked a long time with interns from the US, whose internship schemes had strict monitoring procedures, a comprehensive program which allows them to learn all aspects of the job from creating a business plan, how to cost and pitch a project and marketing and measured feedback to ensure the student is getting a varied and intensive internship. This is the standard Vanessa wants to see in the UK where, she says, “many interns are simply used as cheap labour, cleaning cupboards, making coffee, faxing, etc. I don’t do that, I make sure they learn as much as possible about the job.”
An Interior Design Services design by Vanessa Brady...“In the US, there’s a very different level of measuring. There’s an inspection, there’s health and safety, students complete feedback forms, it’s very much more professional. This is something I want to achieve with SBID and I want to address how graduates degree courses are preparing students for their career.”Once the business plan was drawn up and Vanessa had a clear vision of her aims, she set off to Europe to talk to universities over there. “We said, SBID will incorporate the highest levels of qualification for an interior designer, which will make us the industry bearer. Whoever comes along after us cannot reach our standard, which is good for the consumer. If that person is looking for a designer in Italy, he would get the same measure of standard as they would here.” Which is where the second element of SBID’s goal comes into play, it is an internationally-reaching organisation, which already links to 17 other European countries.“It’s good for competition: those countries get the benefit of the standard here in the UK, and when we our members go to Europe they automatically get the best intake. We delayed the launch until October because we wanted to have these connections in place.“We’re a consumer organisation and not a trade association. We’re actually here to protect the interests of the public and therefore we can in that regard recruit across industry, whereas if we were a trade organisation we’d only be able to represent interior designers. In this regard we can now look after the interests of suppliers and that makes us hugely important. Our business model is protected so that we can’t be replicated. Our membership is predominantly architects, followed by professionals and we’ve got just a few affiliates and the student chapter. In terms of membership split, it’s roughly 50/50 in terms of designers and suppliers.”Another concern for SBID is the “cowboy element” in the design world. The flooring industry, and all construction trades have accrediting bodies, governing bodies that protect them and help consumers make informed choices. So far, this has been missing for interior designers.“Everybody who prints a business card nowadays is an interior designer. But there’s still no measure of that professionalism, which is why our standards are so important. Anybody can call themselves an organisation or an interior designer. Either of those two things would make a consumer think that they were hiring from a professional body. Now if I am a consumer and I need a plumber, I’ll go to the Institute of Plumbing, because the Institute of Plumbing has standards that are recognised and therefore you know what your getting.”SBID aside, I couldn’t sit with such a talented designer and not get her viiews on flooring trends. Vanessa sees a return to what she calls the “Shephard’s Pie era”, a return to comforting, homely items brought on by the recession.“You come home, you want a comfy sofa to crawl onto, luxury floorings, soft carpet underfoot as well as wood for cleaning and easy sweeping. There’s a lot of country furniture, cosiness and warmth, the security in yesterday. In terms of flooring we’re moving back to carpet. I think we’d moved away because of heat. I like wood flooring but I love to have rugs and insets, there’s nothing like getting out of bed and putting your feet into a squishy rug or carpet. I love tiles aswell in all the communal areas. Ground floor interiors are good for wood and sisals. “Our clients nowadays are not driven by price but by source. Longevity. Sustainability. I remember going over the last ten years, people asking me, “How long will this tap last?”, “How long is this wood guaranteed for for this flooring?”. Now its also “Where is that wood from?”, How is it manufactured? Its a very important sales point from our perspective. We always need a certificate for wood flooring. Dampness and leaks are major issues in the UK because we have so many historic buildings. Crooked floors because England is built on clay. We’ve just used this woven vinyl in an old shed conversion that led into a house and the levels were different. We didn’t want a ridge so we used the vinyl flooring and floated it into the next room where it met the tiling and it worked wonderfully.”The primary aim of the SBID is to champion the cause of Professional Interior Designers working throughout this Country. The Society will shed clarity, for potential clients, on the difference between experienced professionals and the ‘hobbyists’ or amateur designers and will, thus, enable British Home owners, Architects, Specifiers and the Managers of Commercial Buildings, to be better informed when making their decisions on new interior design commissions.Contact SBID
Christine B. Whittemore is Chief Simplifier at Simple Marketing Now, a marketing consultancy firm which she formed in March 2009, focused on integrating traditional with social marketing. Christine previously worked for the flooring industry, specifically carpets, for 6 years as director of in-store innovation for Wear-Dated carpet fibre by Solutia Inc. She also blogs extensively about marketing solutions for the flooring industry, at http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com. She focuses strongly on marketing for the woman consumer, since, as research shows, women make or influence over 80% of purchase decisions.
“I had had great success in apparel and upholstery with paper newsletters, but they were becoming preposterously expensive to print and mail out, so I started learning as much as possible about blogs where the creation of content was practically free.” She encountered skepticism to begin with, with many peers wary of internet as a marketing tool. “I remember mentioning blogging and blogs to some of my associates and being poopooed that they weren’t serious tools. The flooring industry is a mature one”, says Christine, echoing my impressions that many see a huge divide or barrier between traditional marketing and online marketing, as though they are somehow incompatible, or separate entities, when in fact, when used together they can be especially powerful tools for reaching out to consumers. “The current focus in both hardwood and the soft/carpet coverings market however is on product rather than on what the consumer does with it. Furthermore, so many businesses in the flooring industry seem to hire mostly insiders, which leads to a paucity of thinking and perspective.” Overall, she concludes, the focus has been physical rather than digital, as if somehow the consumer isn’t shopping differently now to ten, twenty years ago, when there is evidence to hand that this is no longer the case. Digital retail is the inevitable future, or even present. How does one explain to clients, manufacturers, retailers, the advantages of having and maintaining a blog, or some kind of social media presence? “I launched Flooring The Consumer under the radar, in June 2006. Once it was set up I mentioned it to associates and got their buy in. I used it in presentations when talking about marketing to women, but the transition from integrating offline to online marketing took a long time. It was about bringing it up in conversations, talking about it at tradeshows. I printed business cards with the address of the blog and gave them to clients at fairs. I now have close to 1500 subscribers.. The blog is the single best way to raise one’s digital awareness, to bring your company to life.
Many ask “why bother with a blog, if you have a website”? The answer is simple, but the putting into practice is the challenge. A website lays out information on the table. A blog is a conversation, an exchange of ideas, a form of discussion between manufacturer and consumer. It bridges the divide and becomes a more personal approach, which plays on the factors of trust and loyalty between customer and retailer, consumer and manufacturer. In a sense, its like reverting back to the age of the local shop and tradesman, using the technology of the 21st century. Social media marketing, of course, is not simply about opening a Twitter account and tweeting about what sandwich you had for lunch as a means of “bonding” with the consumer. It is a time-consuming process and needs careful study and review in order to be effective and to target the right consumer in the right way. It might not benefit everybody. “I see two big problems with social media, says Christine. Firstly, for large flooring companies, the medium requires that they become intimately involved in it and that they engage in it for the long run. They cannot delegate their social media to an outside company; it needs to come from them in order to be authentic. This means relinquishing some control over their communications and that social media be integrated into their overall strategy – that they be willing to actually talk, communicate with and respond to customers. That takes a lot of thinking through. Secondly, there’s a problem for smaller organizations. How do you find the time to do it all? This is a big issue for traditional mom/pop stores, independent traders etc. who have been clobbered psychologically by the economic environment. The days when the consumer came to them and all they had to do was deliver/install the product are over. But, in the bigger picture, for small to medium entrepreneurial organizations, these tools allow you to reach more people than you can imagine at far less cost than traditional vehicles and more effectively because you can target specific consumers. A great example is Carpets by Otto, a small family business which with a few changes and more personal additions to their web page have reached out to the customer and presented themselves as a clients’ “friend”, giving a sense of community which is very attractive for a consumer searching for a local retailer.
Another problem that many in the industry have raised with regards to emphasizing online presence is that flooring is ultimately a tactile product. They then use this as an excuse not to improve, update, maintain or increase their website/blog/online presence. I put this to Christine: “What I think is scary for many flooring retailers is that all of this requires some deep thinking about what value they bring, then they have to adjust their organization to deliver it. The reason flooring retailers may be slow at getting round to online marketing is that many flooring retailers got into business because they were installers. They have a strong technical knowledge base. But, they aren’t customer focused. Not that they give bad service, but they aren’t focused on ‘walking in her shoes’ and understanding the process/experience from her perspective. Life was easy for many years, with business literally walking into stores without too much encouragement. Now they have to do what I call ‘retail outward’ and do things they aren’t comfortable or knowledgeable about.” Consumers are much more picky now, and can find a huge range of information online before they approach a retailer, both when it comes to price and quality. They are aware of choices and can find deals online that they won’t necessarily find in store. “All these arguments are reasons for getting into social media. Can’t do much with your website? Then start a blog and let your personality shine through. Yes, flooring is tactile, but as an industry we do more to sell it as a commodity than we do to showcase it as a design product for the home. So far, most of the social media efforts from flooring are about shouting “Cheap, Cheap, Cheap Carpet and Floors!” Who wants to engage with that? Consumers are sceptical. They don’t want to be taken advantage of and too often walking into a flooring store is like walking into a used car lot with the hard sell focus. Not pleasant. Flooring is an investment piece. Even in a recession, consumers are willing to pay a bit more for good value and quality. At last year’s National Floor Show, great efforts were made by companies such as Ryalux to emphasize flooring as a design element, a long-term investment that fits into the whole context of home and family. People had their company designers on the stand, mingling with clients and buyers. Imagery was strong and there was a lot of attention paid to marketing concepts that looked at flooring as an integral element in the home. Somehow, this still hasn’t translated to many company websites or blogs. Christine elaborates, “Design should be key, it should be emphasized. I believe that’s what consumers want more of. I don’t think retailers necessarily believe that. Phil Pond at trend forecasting company Scarlet Opus (who spoke at the NFS) says that manufacturers have convinced themselves that consumers only purchase beige carpet. However, the only option that consumers are given is beige carpet.” How does Christine monitor the success of social media for the flooring industry? “In 2008 I couldn’t find a single reputable sign - other than myself (!) - of flooring in social media. As I got my business going, I started coming across more signs of flooring activity. Much of it I attributed to the winter convention of a prominent flooring retail cooperative which instructed its members to go forth and be social. They all went off and started Facebook and Twitter accounts. As you can imagine, many of those are languishing because they don’t have much of a clue on how to be social and to sustain the effort. However, I started noticing possibilities and some success stories.
I decided to organize what I found by platform and document it in the Social Flooring Index. As a quick first step to evaluating, I’m paying attention to followers/fans, etc. I’m using some of HubSpot’s tools to get a quick read on ranking. And now, I’m getting more immersed in monitoring the level of truly social behaviour. I also want to segregate the blogs, for example, in terms of the subjects they address. There’s a lot of traditional behaviour taking place... hard selling, shouting, not much interacting, but also, some who get it! So, who “gets it”? Christine cites several examples of companies that “get it”, many small, family operations, but some bigger companies who are starting to explore the possibilities beyond traditional online retail. “Carpet One Floor & Home in Panama City does a terrific job on Facebook offering flooring tips. Palmetto stores has an active Facebook fan page with contest and passionate users. The Domotex blog has been very useful for industry people. McKay Flooring in the UK (see interview with Richard McKay) has really used the net to its full potential. The aforementioned Carpets by Otto has made small, but significant in-roads. Does Christine get the sense that if flooring companies don’t get on board the social media bandwagon in the next 5-10 years they will disappear? Could it be that urgent? This year has been crippling for many in the UK flooring industry, and there’s a sense that those who are surviving are having to radically transform their entire approach to the customer “I do believe there is urgency. My latest Floor Covering Weekly articles have been about the need to be found online. Online visibility is getting so much more critical, to such a point that if you can’t be found online, despite a physical store, you become irrelevant.”
