Helpful Advice for Family Wood Flooring Businesses

Aug 5, 2025

Family

Many contracting and retail businesses in the wood flooring industry are family businesses—but how do you keep the peace and also grow as a company? Read this advice from fellow pros:

My Best Advice for Navigating Succession as a Family Business

How to Thrive in a Family-Run Wood Flooring Business

How We Modernized Our Business as the Next Generation

How We Transitioned to a Second-Generation Family Business

From Overworked and Under-Paid to Having Work-Life Balance

Next Generation: How Family-Run Wood Flooring Companies Succeed Across Generations

How Hiring Outside Experts Transformed Our Wood Flooring Business

How We Grew Our Store But Kept Its 'Family' Culture

How We Stopped Working Late Nights and Weekends

Transform Red Oak Into White Oak In One Easy Step

Transform Red Oak Into White Oak In One Easy Step

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My Costly Subcontractor Misclassification Lesson

The Personal Connection

The Personal Connection: How Do You Make Clients Feel?

Am25 L Ive Learn Hed Sold In 2 Days

How I Sold My Wood Flooring Business in Two Days

How We Transitioned to a Second-Generation Family Business

In 1980, my dad, Doug Lux, established Milwaukie, Ore.-based D-Lux Hardwood Floors. The business has always been an integral part of my life and my brother Nick’s, and we’ve known from a young age that we wanted to carry on the family legacy.

Shelby, Nick and Doug Lux.

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LOBA 2K Contact – Dustless Recoating of Existing Floor Coverings

My Costly Subcontractor Misclassification Lesson

I’ve never had an issue with classification until 2022 when I needed to get new workers compensation insurance and State Farm wrongly classified an independent contractor as my employee. It resulted in a costly and time-consuming employee misclassification battle.

Screenshot 2025 05 16 At 11 57 37 Am

The Personal Connection: How Do You Make Clients Feel?

As hardwood floor pros, we are always striving to use the best products, the latest gear and the newest tech we can get our hands on, but what actually keeps every one of us in business?

The Personal Connection

How I Sold My Wood Flooring Business in Two Days

During our summer visits to Arizona, we began looking at Scottsdale-area real estate. I told Stephanie, “If we’re going to do this, I have to sell the business"—and we sold our wood flooring business two days after the listing went live. Here's how.

Am25 L Ive Learn Hed Sold In 2 Days

An Eye-Opener: Your Wood Flooring Equipment Costs vs. Labor

Wood floor pro Matt Garcia takes a deep dive into the actual costs of buying and maintaining the sanding equipment necessary to do wood flooring—and why it's such a small cost over the long term.

Investing in good equipment and its maintenance is a small cost over the lifetime of the tool.

Lied to and Deceived: How I Discovered Embezzlement

One day, wood flooring pro Lew Nonay arrived to his office and was locked out—and what he discovered after that was a shocking discovery that resulted in a long criminal and legal investigation.

I built my business while raising my children as a single dad, but one of my employees tried to destroy everything I had worked for.

How Wood Flooring Pros Can Manage Their Tempers and Control Frustration

Wood flooring contractors know that when you are working with the general public all day every day, you can encounter some difficult personalities. Here are 10 points elaborating on how contractors can manage their tempers.

How Pros Manage Frustration

How I Learned the Hard Way What the IRS Can Do

Mike Dittmer has always taken a very serious stance with paying business taxes correctly in his wood flooring business because of something that happened when he was 20 years old.

Like many wood flooring pros, my parents did the books for the family wood flooring business themselves—until someone from the IRS arrived at our house to audit them and my dad was faced with going to prison.

How I Avoid Getting Rolled Up Like Sushi in Court

In the far-fetched case a client is unhappy with me or tries to take me to court, I would hope and pray I don’t get matched against an attorney who is half of what my Uncle John was—his superpower was charisma, and Uncle John rarely lost.

How I Avoid Sushi

He Left My Company After Four Years. I’m Incredibly Proud.

The biggest picture on my work van is of Kevin, my apprentice who left my company last year to pursue some personal goals and learn new things. I was asked recently how I felt about having his photo on my van, and this was my response.

Does it bother me that an employee who left my company is still pictured on the side of my van? No, quite the opposite.

Training for Our Future: Are You Providing It for Your Employees?

The wood flooring industry has been significantly impacted by the loss of knowledgeable employees due to retirement or attrition over the past few years across all industry sectors, and training is a critical factor for the future.

Training For Our Future

Starting a Career in Wood Flooring? First, Find Out Who You Are

Stephen Diggins offers some advice: Starting a career in wood flooring? Seriously, first find out who YOU are. Where YOU excel. What are YOUR given talents and special gifts?

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