Going the Distance: See the Winners of the 2026 WFB Outstanding Retailer Awards

Whether they bring the world’s wood straight into their clients’ homes or set new standards for in-store experience, these wood flooring retailers go above and beyond to serve their customers, communities and staff. The winners of the 2026 WFB Outstanding Retailer Awards prove that a willingness to learn and evolve—paired with an unwavering dedication to supplying customers with the best possible product—sets the great apart from the good. Are you a wood flooring retailer who pushes the industry forward? Enter our 2027 Outstanding Retailer Awards here: bit.ly/enter27ora.

Panel Town & Floors | Columbus, Ohio

Number of employees: 32

Year founded: 1967

Locations: 1

Annual revenue: $20–$30 million

Columbus, Ohio-based Panel Town & Floors didn’t start with panels or floors—it started with tomatoes. In the 1950s, founder Ed Dillin sold homegrown tomatoes door-to-door in Dayton, Ohio, then built a roadside stand with hand-painted signs drivers could spot from the highway. Word spread, customers came from all over, and Dillin earned a nickname he’d carry for life: the Tomato Man. He later bought a building with the intent to open a grocery store, but saw a bigger opportunity in wood paneling. He brought in the product, learned the business and founded Panel Town in 1967.

What Dillin lacked in industry experience he made up for with hard work and a commitment to treating customers right, a standard that outlasted the paneling itself. As the market turned to hardwood in the 1970s, the company followed, becoming Panel Town & Floors. The company moved its brick-and-mortar operation to Columbus in 1991 and, 21 years later, took its products nationwide with a specialty flooring e-commerce site, one of the first of its kind. Now a third-generation family business owned and run by Karen and Homdi Soliman, Panel Town & Floors will celebrate its 59th anniversary in September.

A family-owned business for three generations, Panel Town & Floors in Columbus, Ohio, is now run by Homdi (pictured) and Karen Soliman.Courtesy of Panel Town & Floors

Decades after the original tomato stand, the same work ethic and dedication to treating people right shape the showroom. The team keeps its displays as neat as Dillin once kept his produce, using a method they call “tomato row standards.” As a distributor and a retailer, the team implemented a two-counter system to better cater to their different customers: one that allows professional contractors to get in and out quickly, and one that features more specialty products for homeowners and designers who want to take their time. “If a homeowner is coming in to find their dream floors, we can’t rush them,” Homdi Soliman says. “The goal is to give them the experience they’ve driven here for.”

Panel Town & Floors has a two-desk system: one for contractors who want to be in and out quickly, and another for homeowners and designers who want to take their time.Courtesy of Panel Town & Floors

Panel Town’s customer service philosophy is simple yet effective: Treat people how you want to be treated. “We want to deliver exceptional customer service,” Soliman says, pointing out that in order to do that, his employees must be treated well, too. “Accommodate whatever they need so they can do their job the best,” he advises. “The result will be five-star reviews.” General Manager Sam Thomas confirms his boss’s attention to employee happiness: “Talk to anyone at Panel Town—the respect and love they have for the Solimans has made it possible to retain employees even through some of the most challenging times,” he says.

Panel Town's customer service philosophy is simple: Treat people how you would want to be treated.Courtesy of Panel Town & Floors

Online, Panel Town offers over 2,000 flooring products available to ship to all 50 states. The website features a convenient virtual visualizer so customers can see what flooring products look like in their home or in a staged scene. In addition to their e-commerce website, the company also operates an Amazon storefront for added reach. Its top-tier in-person and online customer service has earned Panel Town over 800 five-star reviews, and a staff member responds to most of them with a heartfelt thank you.

From a corner tomato stand to hardwood floors in homes across the country, Panel Town & Floors has evolved to meet and exceed customer expectations. Soliman says the success is all thanks to staying true to his father-in-law’s tomato stand roots: “That story, his lifetime and my wife’s efforts—that’s what guides us.”

Panel Town & Floors stays true to the tomato-stand roots it was founded on almost 60 years ago.

Floor Expert LLC | Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Number of employees: 7

Year founded: 2022 (retail)

Locations: 1

Annual revenue: $2.5 million

On an island where word spreads as fast as a bad floor buckles, Paul and Yelena Didok are committed to raising the standard of wood floor products and installation. After separately immigrating from Ukraine to the west coast of the United States, the couple took Paul’s lifetime of wood flooring experience and Yelena’s business acumen to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where they established Floor Expert’s storefront in 2022. “As a flooring installer, I envisioned one day owning my own store—a goal that felt far away yet inspired every step I took,” Paul says. From 2011 to the store’s opening, Paul took every opportunity to expand his skills and knowledge, earning certifications in installation, sales, refinishing and sanding, and ultimately becoming a certified flooring inspector. Then, “amidst a market filled with uncertainty, I made the bold decision and a leap of faith to open my own flooring store,” he says.

Founded by Paul and Yelena Didok, Floor Expert LLC started out as an installation and refinishing business. Then, in 2022, the Didoks' dream of opening a retail store came true.Courtesy of Floor Expert LLC

His commitment to excellence, Yelena’s business background and knack for sales, and the standards their seven-person team is held to make it possible to keep the promise that has shaped Floor Expert from day one: “We do it right the first time.”

It’s a promise that grew organically from watching the products and installation practices of other flooring companies on the island. “There is a gap here because the products are wrong,” Yelena says. “For our climate, you shouldn’t be installing any solid flooring. It could pass for the mainland, but for us, it’s something we shouldn’t be putting in, because most people on the island can’t control the climate anyway.” With roughly seven microclimates on the Big Island and most homes lacking air conditioning, Paul still fields call after call about failing floors installed by others—most of them solid wood glued straight over concrete.

The variation in climate makes curating the right products—most often not the cheapest products—a unique challenge. But, it’s one that Yelena takes on happily: “I don’t need to make another thousand dollars—I can sell you a good product and sleep well knowing it’s going to last you and your family,” she says. She points to TrueTouch’s MonoTech Evolv collection of engineered wood flooring as a new favorite. “It’s 100% organic compressed wood,” she explains. “A lot more people come in asking about sustainability, about VOCs. You have to have answers.”

Floor Expert only sells products that make sense for the diverse microclimates on the Big Island—that does not include solid wood.Courtesy of Floor Expert LLC

In addition to innovative products, the Floor Expert team counteracts bad flooring practices by educating their customers. “You have to educate the customer and guide them toward something that’s not going to fail,” Paul says. And, if he finds that a new product doesn’t meet expectations, “we toss the rack. I don’t care how much we paid for it.”

“I don’t need to make another thousand dollars—I can sell you a good product and sleep well knowing it’s going to last you and your family,” Yelena says.Courtesy of Floor Expert LLC

Word spreads fast on the Big Island, and for the Didoks, that’s a positive. Not only do their customers have good things to say, but so do their employees. The Floor Expert team “work hard and play hard,” Yelena says, adding that their employees are treated like ohana (Hawaiian for “family”), often enjoying meals, taking trips to Waikiki and even manta ray snorkeling together.

The Floor Expert team enjoy meals and outings together. They truly are "ohana."Courtesy of Floor Expert LLC

Hardwood Floors of Lancaster | Lancaster, Pa.

Number of employees: 2

Year founded: 2007

Locations: 1

Annual revenue: $1.5 million

Tom Dux, founder of Hardwood Floors of Lancaster in Lancaster, Pa., didn’t know a thing about flooring when he started at Bruce Hardwood in the ’80s. Now after 40 years in the industry, he’s seen a thing or two. Dux has done everything from training retail sales teams to running territories across North America to traveling to China, Taiwan, Brazil and Germany to bring wood home. He opened Hardwood Floors of Lancaster in 2007 alongside the office he ran for UA Floors, and today still works the manufacturing side full time for Teka Hardwood Floors while running his own wood floor retail business.

Tom Dux, founder of Hardwood Floors of Lancaster in Lancaster, Pa., has spent 40 years in the wood flooring industry.Courtesy of Tom Dux

Dux’s global sourcing is the store’s backbone. He buys top-shelf wood flooring direct from manufacturers whenever he can, skipping the distributor to save customers 20–30%. He doesn’t sell brands—he sells wood: Brazilian pecan, small-leaf acacia, Taiwan acacia and dozens more. In 2010, he added his own line, Keystone Hardwood Floors (a nod to Pennsylvania’s nickname), which offers both prefinished and unfinished wood flooring. “Everything I have in my store has a specific reason why it’s here,” he says, adding that he refuses to crowd his floor with duplicate displays of nearly identical grays and creams.

To show off his curated hardwoods, Dux builds his own 30-by-80-inch panels, explaining that a standard 2-by-2-foot sample hides a floor’s real character. At overseas factories, he says, a sample maker “is given three boxes of flooring and told to make 50 panels,” so a sample “could be all from one board—it’s not always representative of what you’re going to get.” That’s why he includes the longest and shortest boards in his panels. “The bigger sample wins,” he says.

Dux builds his own 30-by-80-inch panels to showcase the true character of the wood.Courtesy of Tom Dux

The store’s growth is also a story of resilience. Installer Todd Frisbie joined in 2017, then faced the removal of both kidneys in 2018 and five years of dialysis. When he received a new kidney and returned full time in 2023, business took off, climbing 30% a year to reach $1.5 million last year. Todd’s Bona-trained brother, Troy Frisbie, came on to help with the influx of business, handling estimates and the sand-and-finish work.

Brothers Todd and Troy Frisbie have helped Dux make Hardwood Floors of Lancaster a million-dollar business.Courtesy of Tom Dux

Little touches add to the Lancaster experience: the team paints customers’ shoe molding before installation, every finished job ends with a bottle of wine, and Bitsi the showroom dog often greets clients at the door. Combined with Dux’s promise to skip the middleman and let the wood speak for itself, these little extras go a long way, earning the store countless referrals and a 70–80% close rate. Easy to find online because of its location-based name, Hardwood Floors of Lancaster now draws buyers from as far as Philadelphia, 75 miles away.

Little touches—like greetings from Bitsi the showroom dog—add to the top-tier customer experience at Hardwood Floors of Lancaster.Courtesy of Tom Dux

Saroyan's choice:

Absolute Hardwood Flooring | West Palm Beach, Fla.

Number of employees: 120

Year founded: 1993

Locations: 3

“Absolute dedication to quality” isn’t just the motto printed on the vans and T-shirts—it’s the standard that grew Absolute Hardwood Flooring from an idea into a 120-employee, three-location retail operation. It’s the foundation that founder and president Jerry Schumacher poured, and it’s what he and principal vice president Luis Ramos operate Absolute on today.

"Absolute dedication to quality" is the standard Absolute Hardwood Flooring Founder Jerry Schumacher (at right) and Principal Vice President Luis Ramos run the company by today.Courtesy of Absolute Hardwood Flooring

Schumacher got his start in flooring as a rep for a South Florida budget flooring company, but he had dreams of chasing the high-end market. In 1993, he founded Absolute Hardwood Flooring in West Palm Beach, Fla. Ramos came on board in 2006, worked his way up to vice president of sales and marketing in 2015, and made principal at the start of this year.

Early on, Schumacher hired out installation to subcontractors, but he soon learned that if he wanted a certain level of quality, he was going to have to hire in-house. “We started hiring employees and training them the way we wanted things done,” he explains. Because he brings on full-time employees, Absolute has the “manpower to show up when we’re supposed to show up,” he says, adding that they don’t have to cherry-pick jobs—they have a big enough crew to continually take on new work. This approach will carry Absolute past 400 jobs this year, spread across four territory managers.

The company runs three showrooms: its West Palm Beach flagship store, a Miami design district location, and a small appointment-based showroom in Naples. Not one of them sits on a main street, and this, according to Schumacher, was intentional. “We used to be on a main street and we found that we spent a tremendous amount of time educating our client,” he says, explaining that walk-ins would end up buying somewhere else that was cheaper. “We’re off the main path. Conveniently located, but not on a main street where people are just walking in.” Schumacher and Ramos would rather their staff spend time working with people who are being sent by a designer, contractor, architect or past client—people who intend to invest in a high-end floor. This strategy works because most of Absolute’s business already comes from word of mouth.

Integrity, honesty and quality work anchor a culture that vendors tell Schumacher sets his crew apart. He credits the team, saying that many long-tenured employees make Absolute a positive and engaging place to work. Eleven paid holidays, protected weekends and grand milestone anniversary gifts—everything from flatscreen TVs to cars—don’t hurt the culture, either. Schumacher takes care of his employees, and they in turn take care of the clients. “Whatever we have to do, we try to take care of the client to the best of our ability,” he says.

That commitment extends to clients even when they’re unreasonable: a decade ago, the team tore up and replaced a walnut floor that matched its sample perfectly, on their own dime, simply because the customer didn’t like it. While honoring his commitment cost him, and he admits it was painful to do, Schumacher says this level of customer service “comes with the territory.”

Integrity, honesty and quality work anchor a culture that vendors tell Schumacher sets the Absolute team apart from the competition.Courtesy of Absolute Hardwood Floors