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Scotland boasts one of the richest and most time honored architectural landscapes in all of Europe. Nowhere is this more evident than in the castles and historic dwellings that remain standing after hundreds of years. At the bottom of it all, or at least at floor level, is Archie McKay, president and founder of McKay Flooring Ltd. Recognized as Scotland's market leader for supplying, installing and resurfacing hardwood floors, McKay Flooring is based in Govan, Glasgow, and features a showroom that displays more than 200 flooring styles. The company also has a five-year-old showroom in Leith, Edinburgh.
A 38-year veteran of the wood flooring industry, McKay's work spans everything from Scotland's historic castles to contemporary, pricey homes and public structures. He attributes his success to starting out small and growing the business as the market allows.
"My philosophy is 'Turnover is vanity; profit is sanity.' If you don't forget that, you can't go wrong," he says. "Don't expand too quickly. Some companies seem to want it all at once. I can honestly say that I've never borrowed money from a bank or other money source for this business, and I don't think we've had a year in 30 where there's not been a profit."
The Fortune Seeker
Consumers can see a whole spectrum of options at McKay's showroom.
A native Scotsman, McKay started in the wood flooring industry at the age of 15 when, against the wishes of his mother, he decided to forgo further schooling in hopes of making his fortune. Hired as an office boy at the flooring company that employed his sister, McKay soon determined that, if he were to make any real money, he needed to learn how to lay flooring himself.
"At the time, the company had 300 men laying and sanding floors all over the U.K.," McKay says. "I decided to take on a five-year apprenticeship to learn the trade, but first I had to find my own replacement as an office boy so I could spend more time laying floors."
Eventually, the company that employed McKay was sold, and later went out of business under the new ownership. Convinced that he'd learned enough to venture out on his own, McKay started his own company in 1973. Today, that company is recognized as one of the top wood-flooring organizations in Europe, and its success led McKay to launch a distributor operation called Hardwood Flooring Importers Ltd. (HFI).
The Sands of Time
With a list of projects that includes everything from sports centers and museums to schools and private residences, the most notable projects are Scotland's legendary castles. One particular source of pride for McKay is that he has worked in Edinburgh Castle. Perched high above the city, it is the country's most famous castle and serves as home to both the Scottish crown jewels (known as The Honours of Scotland) and the country's revered Stone of Destiny. While parts of it have been destroyed and rebuilt many times, the original structure dates back to early in the last millennium.
Storeman Gerry Reilly cuts timbers to suit a floor's design.
When it comes to the issue of age, however, McKay believes his work in a building known simply as "Glasgow's Oldest House," which dates from the 1500s, may have presented him with his oldest challenge. "It has been renovated and whatnot a few times, and nobody can tell if the flooring there is really that old," McKay says. "But the flooring had holes drilled in, and they had hammered down wooden pegs to hold the floor in place. Now, I can't say that that's the oldest [floor I've ever worked on], but it was at least 250 years old."
Working with a floor that's from 100 to 300 years old can be dicey, McKay says. Because of the methods that were used to hold the blocks in place, the slightest mistake can turn a historical treasure into a pile of black dust.
"What they tended to do was take a concrete floor and put asphalt on it, and that would be your dampproof membrane. Then they would attach woodblock to that with hot pitch," he explains. "A lot of those old wood-block floors that are 150 years old become loose as the hot pitch becomes brittle and turns into something resembling black sand."
When refurbishing and refinishing floors such as these, McKay notes that a special agency, Historical Scotland, often is involved in the process. Extremely particular in all aspects of the renovation, this agency often oversees everything from the initial sanding to the final finishing stages.
"A lot of the renovations that we do have to be approved by Historical Scotland, and we have to defend a lot of things," says McKay. "For instance, they insist on hand-scraping in older buildings. They might let you start off with a sanding machine to get the rough off of it, but you've got to finish with a handscraper and wax it with the same finishes they had years ago."
Distinctive Differences
One common misconception is that, with its damp and rainy climate, Scotland should have problems with moisture. According to McKay, such expectations often are exaggerated.
"When I looked at the humidity map of the U.S., I noticed that we relate a lot to the type of weather they have in New England," he says. "For instance, the humidity here today would generally be about 55 percent. That's in the middle of summer. But we also have days where the humidity rises to between 70 and 80 percent as well, so it's much like the conditions you have in your northeastern region."
In McKay's view, the most notable difference between the American and European market has little to do with weather conditions and more to do with species use. Recognizing that oak still seems to be the flooring of choice in the states, McKay notes that a wider variety of species come into play overseas.
Glasgow, Scotland, is the headquarters for McKay Flooring.
"I would say that the biggest difference is that, in America, you would normally buy oak and stain it different colors to fit the look you want," says McKay. "Here in the U.K., we tend to go with a species that carries a specific color rather than stain oak to make it work … If it's important for someone to have a dark floor, we would rather import tropical timbers."
McKay also notes that, unlike American consumers, Scots tend to have less of an interest in ornamental flooring. McKay explains that most of his customers would rather have a modern look than the time-honored borders and medallions.
"We don't do a lot of what you call ornamental floors now," says McKay. "A lot of the floors here, the old parquet floors, are the original cuts with borders and medallions that were installed 100 or 150 years ago. Those are being renovated with sanding and polishing, but there really isn't a market for new ornamental floors the way you have them in the States with fancy designs. They are already here in old buildings, and people don't want them in their new houses. It's the complete opposite in the States, because people want to make their homes look rather old there."
McKay has a varied palette when it comes to wood species. With a wide range of domestics and "tropical timbers," and with suppliers in the Far East, the United States and all points between, there is no end to the selection he can acquire for his customers. For his money, however, it is average, everyday oak that stands out when it comes to ease of use and versatility.
It is in many of Scotland's most prestigious residences—the castles—where McKay often finds this popular and prevalent species. "Most of [the castles] have oak floors," says McKay. "Here we have Scottish oak, or what we call home-grown oak. That is very slow growing, it has a darker color than the American white and it is very hard because of the slow growth. We see a lot of that. But we also have European oak, which is anything not from the U.K. If you go into an old, old building that might be 300 years old, the early parquet floors would be Scottish oak. In castles built in later years, like 130 years ago, a lot of that would be European oak from France and whatnot."
Finishing the Jobs
As for finishes, McKay says that European rules tend to limit options to either a water-based two-par polyurethane or waxes. Noting that safety is recognized as the No. 1 factor in any job, standards are very stringent on the use of "varnishes."
"We do not use any spirit-based stains because of the country's health and safety regulations," he says. "You're not allowed to use them in public areas, so we have to use water-based products or waxes. No varnishes, or at least very, very little. Water-based products do not give you the depth of color of the timber, but if you go to a building site today, it's about safety. I would say we use 95 percent water-based products and 2 or 3 percent wax."
The small number of wax applications are usually for high-traffic commercial areas—areas in which McKay tends to disagree with its usage. While McKay is always prepared to give customers what they want, he finds that many customers eventually ask for the wax to be removed.
"There are lots of problems with maintenance that people don't think about," he says. "They want to buff [the floors] and make them look shiny. That is not what wax is about. It takes a lot of work to keep that shine up, and in shopping malls, I don't think it works well at all. In fact, we've had a lot of shops that had previously gone with wax now asking us to sand it up and replace it with water-base because it's easier to care for."
To apply these finishes, McKay's crews normally use lambswool pads. "Trowels are the things to use in Germany, and if it's a wax we do it on our hands and knees, but water-based polyurethane is applied here with lambswool pads and brushes," he says. "Some manufacturers recommend rollers, and we've used them before and they've been fine, but 95 percent of what we use is lambswool pads."
Getting the Word Out
In McKay's experience, word of mouth is the publicity king; he points to satisfied customers and years of service as his best source for new jobs. He also is a big believer in Yellow Pages listings, advertisements in the local newspapers and ads on his company's Web site.
"Scotland is not a big country," jokes McKay. "There are only about five million people in the whole country. When people and architects get to know you, that works really well. We're on a mailing list for architects and local authorities, local government officers and schools, so we're right there when it comes to new contracts. Plus, I'm 54 years old and I've been at this since I was 15, so I know a few people."
Along with advertising and reputation, McKay believes that continued exposure through glossy magazine pages and DIY shows has only helped increase interest in a "new" home improvement option that's been around for years. "People seem to think that hardwood flooring just came around yesterday," he says. "A lot more people are interested in it now than in the past, and that is making it more and more popular.
"If you go back to the 1960s, which were the big hardwood flooring days, our products were in public schools and in places where people had plenty of money," he adds. "Now, the market has changed to where people with middle incomes can afford it. I think that's what you've seen in the States, and that's what's happening here, too."
It was that increased interest in wood flooring that prompted McKay to launch HFI 18 months ago to cater to the growing DIY market.
"McKay Flooring Limited is purely supply and contract, but we have recently begun doing a bit of supply only, which is maybe 15 percent of the business," McKay says. "We can't lay all the floors. I wish we could, but with logistics and whatnot, we felt that we were losing out as a flooring business because people were buying supplies from other companies and [laying the floors] themselves. We wanted to get in on that, so I started a business completely separate from this one."
In all, McKay estimates his two ventures turn around approximately $5.5 million (U.S.) annually. McKay now employs 25 people who handle his jobs throughout Europe. Limiting himself to some of the more high-profile projects, McKay has handed off a large portion of the day-to-day tasks to his son, Richard. By doing so, the elder McKay has given himself time to reflect on his life in an industry that has not always been glamorous, but has kept him busy and content for more than half of his life.
"I used to say that flooring is boring, because after about 17 years, you get to a point where it's like, 'Well … flooring again?" says McKay. "But I've certainly found it exciting at times, like when you come in and refinish a floor that's been around for 100 years."
And as his empire continues to grow, McKay remains true to his original philosophy—"Turnover is vanity; profit is sanity." "I've learned that you can turn over $10 million and make nothing, or you can turn over $1 million and make plenty," he says. "You've got to keep it to a size that you can make money at, or you're just working for someone else." Sounds like this wee lad from Glasgow has found the winning combination.
