The passion for the craft in the wood flooring industry is second to none. Even if enthusiasm for the operations side of a business is not as exciting for some as creating a custom color or parquet pattern in a customer’s home, knowing the numbers, managing people, and maintaining a client list is important too.
According to Fundera, one in five businesses fail within the first year, and the number increases to half of all businesses closing by the fifth year. Though not wood flooring industry specific, it is a statistic you probably have heard before. All the more reason to have a plan in place.
Whether you are considering going on your own or are responsible for carrying on the legacy of a family business, successful wood flooring professionals are sharing thoughts on how you can prepare for prosperity.
THE APPROACH
Kevin Mullany, president of Benchmark Wood Floors Inc. in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been in business for 30 years. He says growth is not a one-time move; it’s a continuous process.
“With a newer company that is doing several hundred thousand dollars per year, it’s pretty easy to have exponential growth. When your revenue is several million dollars per year, increasing that 15 or 20 percent is really significant,” explains Mullany. “I think you have to establish parameters in order to make good decisions on the rate you are going to grow.”
When considering whether to take a slow or fast approach to growth, Corey Cathcart, owner of Integrity Floors LLC in Tampa, Florida, recommends starting slow, but with the caveat
that it does not mean you are waiting for growth to come to you.
“Practice, practice, practice will bring growth as you are ready. Focus more on growing profits rather than top-line sales,” says Cathcart. “Growth also is planning for slow seasons and finding ways to make money by expanding your value to your clients. Examples of this include cleaning and maintenance, screen coat, pattern upgrades, and medallions and parquets built from stock or leftover inventory.”
For more than 80 years, Gehl Flooring Supply Inc. has been a distributor located in Wisconsin. Bob Gehl is a fourthgeneration president of the company. While the idea of fast
growth is exciting, his experience is that slow and steady growth brings less headaches and consistent results.
“Investing in technology and systems is a must to sustain scalable growth and consistent service, but your people and your team must come first to support any growth you may achieve through other means,” advises Gehl.
“The quality of your team, their level of experience, knowledge, and involvement in your company’s growth is necessary for any forward progress you make will be undone by poor services rendered from a poorly trained, undereducated, and potentially overworked group of employees.”
BUILDING A TEAM
Respondents to Hardwood Floors magazine’s 2026 Industry Outlook survey stated the challenges with finding new employees remain steady. Nearly 70 percent felt the issue
was about the same as the year prior, while more than 20 percent thought it was worse. At the same time, more than 40 percent of NWFA members were planning to add to their team in 2026. So, how do you know it is the right time to hire?
“When you have enough cash flow to finance payroll sitting in the bank, it’s time to hire,” says Cathcart. “Collaborating with a qualified local NWFA member is a good way to build healthy competition and may help bridge busy seasons before you commit to someone full time.”
For Phil Valenti, owner of Valenti Flooring in Ronkonkoma, New York, the answer is when they cannot turn over work at the same rate as they do normally. “I kind of base it off how we are moving through 1,000 square feet. If the pace isn’t the right way with the right volume of people, then something may need to be done. Either change a guy or
add a guy, one or the other,” he explains.
To find good talent to surround yourself with, Doug Howard of Growth Team Strategies notes that you should always be recruiting, even if you are not hiring. He says a lot of times, people do not have the conversation or include anything on their website about joining their team unless they are hiring for a specific position. However, he thinks that would be like waiting to market your company until you have no work to do. If you need to hire in the moment, you may be limited by who is available.
“You should have an idea of a couple of positions you may fill at some point. We want to be putting the word out that for the right talent, we may be willing to talk to somebody. Have a lot of informal discussions,” advises Howard. “I find that some of my very best hires came from those conversations when I didn’t even have an open position, but then something changed or we landed a big project.”
Acknowledging that finding good candidates is one of the industry’s toughest tasks, Mullany says investing in employees is critical. “If they enjoy their dealings within the business, you’re on a really good growth path,” he explains. “That involves compensation, making sure there is work fulfillment, and paid time off so they can recharge and have balance in their lives.”
THE CUSTOMER BASE
Gains would be hard to make without adding new projects. For that, Mullany believes in not only taking good care of your employees, but your customers, the local community, and the
industry community as well.
“For customers, we always have to remember that the process is as important as the result for them. We need to show up on time, keep everything clean and organized, and clean up at the end of every single day to make sure they understand we appreciate the opportunity to be in their houses,” says Mullany. “Community ties help build brand. Industry ties build resources and the knowledge we need to continue to grow our business.”
Word of mouth and the architect and design community are how Cathcart has gone about reaching new customers and keeping existing ones.
“Focusing on high-end residential and hospitality projects, we have developed a loyal customer base that helps us grow without the distraction of leads and social marketing,” says Cathcart. “We have learned to accept that we don’t have something for everyone. Rather, we focus on something for someone. This loyalty and attention to clients’ particular needs has worked well to keep us from getting too big to follow through.”
Valenti uses company-branded trucks to increase visibility and has had success on social media. “Interior designers source a lot of their labor from what they see on Instagram,” he notes. “We focus on making our Instagram look amazing. From there, the interior designer will see us or the builder will see us. It comes from social media exposure.”
But don’t forget the personal touch. “We retain people by sending them cleaning kits for free and keep our cards in there,” says Valenti. “I’ll walk up to their house and hand-deliver it literally.”
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
Of course, finances play a crucial role in success or failure. When advising companies, Howard spends a lot of time explaining why profit margin is the way to sell value.
“They need to truly understand all the costs that go into a job, the difference between mark up and margin, and that they should not negotiate themselves out of a price before they even speak with a customer,” says Howard. “I talk to a lot of folks who say the cost of something has gone up, so they are going to lower their margin. By doing that, they’re taking money off the table before anyone has even said anything.”
Howard recommends growing from the resources you have. “You can put up a lot of expenses and hope a lot of things come about, but we like to see very steady stairstep growth where we are building some capacity, generating some revenue, then building the team a little more, then creating some more capacity, and working in a positive cycle. This approach, as opposed to having all this overhead and debt and hoping to make sales, makes sense because if that doesn’t happen, then they don’t know what they are going to do.”
Gehl describes cash flow as the measure of your business’s overall health and long-term viability, which he says is a must if you want to grow. “Otherwise, you will not have the fuel to power the machine no matter how fantastic of growth that may happen,” he adds. “As you make adjustments that affect profits, whether it be from margin adjustment or increased expenses for tools, machines, or buildings to grow revenue, make sure that cash flow stays in balance or any progress you make will have no fuel to keep it going.”
Mullany notes that operating capital and lines of credit, along with diligent follow-up for receivables, are vital because as you grow, your expenditures grow greatly.
“You really want to analyze in advance of how the changes are going to happen. I export my financial statements into Excel and then I build potential scenarios off of that to see how it is going to affect it,” he shares. “Am I in a position to take care of these things without stressing on making payroll and paying the bills?”
MAINTAINING THE EXPANSION
Once you experience growth, to maintain it, Cathcart suggests going to NWFA schools,
building a network of like-minded NWFA members, and working together to build a better
business for the future.
“We get bored and sloppy if we don’t find a new challenge and addition to our skills and toolbox. Through NWFA schools, the online university, peer reviews, and just time in the shop to figure it out, we learn new things,” says Cathcart. “Don’t forget about your standards and processes that pay the bills and discuss often with your team to review ways to tweak how it always has been done.”
Valenti shares the knowledge he has gained from the NWFA to help his team acquire new skills. “It’s important that my team does everything under one standard format so we
all understand what’s happening on a job,” he says. “It’s constantly educating them. Every new thing I learn here, I share with them.”
Clearly identify what your growth is coming from and Gehl says to be sure you deliver that item or experience consistently. If demand does slow down, he recommends scaling with it.
“Don’t be hyperreactive and adjust too quickly, as there are ebbs and flows,” says Gehl. “I would suggest weathering through to maintain trained staff or infrastructure, but recognize seasonality or economic disruptions that occur, and you must adjust accordingly.”
Making space to focus on the big picture can help as well. “We all work within the businesses probably more hours per week than we work on our business,” shares Mullany. “In order to
have the time to work on the future of the business and how it’s going to play out, we can’t have as many things on our plates. By offering those opportunities to employees to grow in their positions, you’re taking care of two birds with one stone.”
At Valenti Flooring, they may have 30 people working for them at any given time, with four or five crews in the field each day and one leader per crew.
“I’m only talking to four or five people. Our point people are visible to our clients, and that’s the way we keep our crews going,” says Valenti. “The bigger we get, as long as I have the right people around me, my load should lessen through delegation of responsibility and duplication of oneself, you put yourself out there in multiple forms. That is how we handle our areas of responsibility, our accountability, and our quality.”
Valenti adds that a slowdown is something everyone feels at times. He says it also can be a good time to clean up the shop and perform maintenance on equipment.
While Howard loves it when people are passionate about the work they do, he offers a reminder that you also must have business knowledge. “You need to know the critical numbers in your business, know enough about managing people, and know enough about marketing. There are great resources out there in all three of those areas, but the business owner has got to be engaged enough to make sure each of those pieces is in a good place, and they’re making decisions from good information,” he says.
As a first step, Cathcart suggests focusing on and fixing what keeps you up at night. Once that is resolved, you will think more clearly, and the business will follow. “Don’t forget to rely on the NWFA family and their unlimited knowledge that is available to keep you from working harder before working smarter,” he says. “Every day is an opportunity to work smarter, not harder.”
Libby White Johnston is the publisher of Hardwood Floors magazine. She can be reached at libby.johnston@nwfa.org.
