Retail Q&A: 'We Put All Our Budget Into Digital'

Andrew Averill Headshot
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6 F 1017 Wfb On17 Retail Brian3 Med

Brian's Flooring and Design

Location: Birmingham, Ala.
Employees: 20
Average showroom size: 3,500 square feet
Annual Revenue: $8 million

In 1996, at the ripe age of 25, coworkers Brian Hammonds and Brian McCarver bought Bailey's Decorating Center from their boss. "We wanted to get rich! We were very confused," McCarver says, laughing. The pair hit the ground running. They've added two locations and grown the business 10–15 percent each year. This year the company will record $8 million in sales from residential and commercial business. Hardwood flooring is becoming a bigger part of their income: A decade ago, 10 percent of sales were from hardwood, but now it makes up a quarter of their business. "The Brians" spoke with WFB's Andrew Averill about their operation.

Brian Hammonds, Co-founderBrian Hammonds, Co-founder

How do you spend your marketing budget?

BM: It's changed a lot. This year we've done away with most traditional forms of advertising. We put all of our budget into digital. Internet, search engine optimization—these are the dominant sources of marketing we go to right now.

BH: For every quote we monitor how we got the customer. TV, radio and newspaper ads never offered a return on our investment. We did start seeing our Facebook ads and other social media campaigns work, and we've actually now hired a part-time employee to work solely on our social media advertising.


RELATED: How I Use Instagram to Boost My Wood Floor Business


What is that person in charge of?

BM: It started with Facebook, but now she's over our whole digital campaign. She monitors our website and our blog to keep things fresh.

BH: She's on 10 different things—Houzz, Pinterest, Facebook, and a number of others.

Brian McCarver, Co-founderBrian McCarver, Co-founder

What is your strategy for digital marketing?

BM: We don't post sales. It's really just identity advertising. We want to keep our name in front of people. We'll boost a Facebook ad that shows a before-and-after picture of one of our hardwood jobs. We've noticed that if we boost a Facebook ad, our website will see an uptick in traffic and we'll get calls from that.

Why identity advertising?

BM: We talked to a lot of women. We talked to our wives and women who work for us and asked them their opinions on what they like to see online. They don't want to see a sale every day or even a post every day. We just want to keep our name in front of our customers, and if they like what they see, if they're looking for floor coverings, they'll go to our website.

BH: The marketing techniques that our local Home Depot does, "Free install!" for example, drive us crazy. We tried it once or twice just to test it, but we hate that mentality. We stay away from that and live off our reputation.

I see you have an email newsletter—how's that going?

BM: That section is new for us. The top three reasons we get sales are a referral from a previous customer, repeat customer and our location. We realized the email newsletter is great for encouraging referrals and repeat business. It's an inexpensive way to reach out to your customers and keep your name in front of them.

How do you track all those emails?

BH: For every quote, we always try to get an email and we store it in RFMS. We purchased RFMS in 2003 to handle our payroll, quotes and inventory. We use 80–90 percent of the available modules. We may spend $10,000 a year for updates, but we've always treated it as one of the best decisions in our 20 years of business. We rely on it and we recommend it.


RELATED: How to Use Email Marketing to Make Your Wood Flooring Brand Pop


What other tech has made your business better?

BM: We turned to Floor Force, which is a digital agency for floor covering businesses, for our website design after utilizing local people and getting sites that never looked professional. Plus it was a lot of work to keep updated. Rather than using someone outside the industry, it gives us ease of mind to know Floor Force is keeping up with the trends in the floor covering business. We focus on selling floors. I don't need to be focused on advertising and the website. We're relying on professionals to make the right decisions for that stuff.

How do you explain your constant growth from the very beginning?

BM: The previous owner was getting to retirement age, so he wasn't trying to grow the business at all. Both of us were pretty young when we bought the business, and we were ready to get out there and get after it and make the company better than it was. We were and are involved with our community. We played community sports, we coached teams, so I think our name got out.

Do you sub out jobs or hire full-time employees?

BH: All of our labor is subbed. That's the Birmingham market these days. I don't know of any residential installation dealer with hourly crews. We did have a crew that lasted for 12 years, hardwood guys, but last year they went out and became independent. To keep our quality high, we do have a full-time quality control employee who will go to training classes so he can monitor our subs in the field and help advise them, even though they're independent.

How do you find good subcontractors these days?

BH: We try to pay them the most we can. We give them accurate work orders without delay. We pay them weekly without hesitation. Really we rely on our reputation, so these quality guys will come to us. We constantly ask the local distributors for referrals.

BM: It's not easy though. That's a hard part of the business.

Is there a shortage of installers?

BM: I don't know that we've seen it here yet. We still find good people, but it does seem to be getting a little tougher around town.

What advice do you have for retailers?

BH: Every day we're correcting something. Neither of us have it figured out. Every day you need to listen to your people—your installation people, sales, marketing, bookkeeper—because on any day someone can make a suggestion to make the business better. Neither of us are very smart, we just worked hard for 20 years and listened to people.


RELATED: How Hiring Outside Experts Transformed Our Wood Flooring Business


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