The store is open and welcoming from the entrance all the way through hard and soft surfaces. Products are grouped by lifestyle and design and carry easy to understand good, better, best identification.
CCA leadership reports on installation progress
[Manchester, N.H.] It wasn’t an easy undertaking when CCA Global’s floor covering divisions Carpet One and Flooring America/Flooring Canada set out to declutter and simplify not just the shopping journey, but the entire selling floor. After months of heavy lifting from both CCA and its members, the results, shared leadership, have exceeded expectations.
“What’s interesting is we didn’t mandate it,” explained Keith Spano, president of Flooring American/Flooring Canada, Floor Trader and International Design Guild. “Members are seeing the value in doing it and they are adopting it on their own. Members are seeing the value and reason why they want to do it. Business cases are proving it. The fact that we can deliver a better experience is terrific.”
Added Carpet One president John Gilbert, “It’s exceeded expectations on how aggressively members have supported it. The way they have embraced this is a marvel.”
Getting to the point where the organization is today — some 300 stores are expected to have installed both hard and soft surfaces plus the digital component by the end of this month — was no easy task to coordinate.
“We have worn our people out (from merchandising to operations), they have just traversed North America and been in stores every single week,” shared Spano. “It’s a massive undertaking from the time we send store planners to identifying products, to merchandising. We go through products in store and see what is staying and what is leaving,” he said, adding that having samples arrive at the same time as the display crew is tricky timing. “We want to make sure it is a terrific experience.”
He also acknowledged, “It is a painful process to redo an entire showroom. But the end result is fantastic. Not every install has gone perfectly but we learned from the first 100 about timing.” Wave two is scheduled out to October.
Putting Retail 2.0 into Play
Retail 2.0 is, at the core, based on a long held philosophy by CCA leadership to declutter the retail showroom floor and streamline the buying process for both the RSA and consumer. Displays are uniform and low creating an engaging environment with open space and consistent presentations.
“One of the things, as a newcomer to industry, when I went through the process of buying floors a couple of times,” offered Gilbert. “The original visit to the showroom was the sales pro trying to upsell and had to run from one corner of the store to the other. Right now, [products] are right next to each other so the trade up dynamic is built right in, he said. “The sales pros might not welcome the change but, ultimately, they go ‘wow, this is easier.’ And most have embraced it.”
Gilbert also shared, “When you make things easier, the consumer spends more or more often or both. Simplification and making it easier for the consumer is a huge win.”
Another advantage of the new showroom strategy is an easy to understand good, better, best program — either one, two or three diamonds for Carpet One and one, two or three hearts for Flooring America. “We are hearing a lot of the self trade-up and self-select from better goods, best goods. Engineered hardwood on the high end is smoking right now [for example],” shared Gilbert.
Retail Results
Feedback from the retailers that have Retail 2.0 has been “just awesome,” reported Spano. “It is truly changing the way people shop for flooring and it makes life easier for the RSA and the consumer.”
That said, Spano acknowledged the biggest hurdle has been around taking product off of the floor but “by putting everything together, it’s elevated the laminate business as well.”
The entire onboarding process is supported by the co-ops University, explained Spano. “There is an advance program they do before and then after the installation. There are modules online University members can do and some instore training as well — lots of touch points. It’s very comprehensive and goes by category, by name, by hearts and diamonds.”
The Heart of the Matter
While Carpet One, Flooring America and Flooring Canada met fully at convention in January, the summer was reshaped to hold smaller more intimate regional shows.
“The regional conventions are exceeding expectations,” offered Gilbert. “Carpet One is about halfway through. The objective was to be interactive, smaller, discussion based.” Each event is more about member input and getting to know them better than a host of slides and “dog and pony show,” he continued.
“There is nothing better than getting together the night before for dinner and cocktails and catching up. It’s a great jumping off point for the next day,” Spano said. “We talk about things that are on their minds, their objectives and how they are accomplishing objectives this year. It’s interactive, an informal setting where it can be intimate and everyone leaves feeling like they got their questions answered — about margins, products — it’s very operational.”