What measures success for a flooring business? Is it revenue growth? Employee retention? Business expansion? The simple answer, if you ask Scott and Sally Perron, owners of 24-7 Floor in Sarasota, Fla., is yes. What began more than 10 years ago as 24-7 Floors, an independent flooring store, has expanded into various entities, all of which successfully service a different segment of the market. What’s more, it’s 10-year anniversary in September 2024 saw the business increase revenue fivefold since its first year in business.
Investing in success, upfront
So, what’s their secret to success? First, gain assets not liabilities. For 24-7 Floors that meant doing something the pair—who were both seasoned flooring professionals before they launched 24-7 Floors—hadn’t before: buying their building. “Prior to this, all the stores that I had ever owned were retail stores, and, like most people, we leased the buildings,” Scott Perron told FCNews. “Like anybody else who rents space, you understand that when the landlord’s costs go up, your cost go up. So, this time we decided to do things differently.”
In 2012, when the Perrons moved to Florida, the market was beginning to recover as the impact of the Great Recession began to lessen. “We bought our building in 2013,” Scott Perron said. “I could see from my travels that more and more people were starting to use these industrial locations as a baseline for their flooring companies—especially the ones that were going to do either pro sales or commercial—without having to spend all this exorbitant money on rent for retail space. So that’s where we looked. This is an almost 10,000-square-foot building, had good parking, it was in a con- tractor district near the airport here in Sarasota so there’s a lot of plumbing and electrical supply and all those guys around us—and the price was right.”
That’s one thing Perron said other retailers looking to buy should pay particular attention to. Buy when the time is right. “When do you enter the market as an owner of the building? The answer is always: You buy low and sell high—or at least when you know your business plan is going to more than pay for the occupancy costs. And make sure you do a break-even analysis. So if the question is when do you enter the market as an owner? The true answer is when you can afford it.”
For 24-7 Floors, Perron said that while the building they chose “was a disaster” the bones (and price) were good. “We were able to buy the building for a really good price,” he said. “And then systematically, as we made money, we put money into the facility. And that made all the difference. Plus, back then, retail space was probably about $12 to $15 a foot. Now it’s closer to $25-$30. It was a labor of love to fix it up, but buying the building was the best thing we’ve ever done.”
However, that initial smart investment was only one step on the retailer’s road to success. Next, the pair realized that if you’re not getting the service you need from your vendors, do it yourself. That’s the philosophy that has helped the flooring retailer grow into several interconnected business units.
Kicking off with shop at home
While 24-7 Floors kicked off with a healthy bit of space, the business centered around the idea of shop at home. “We started with the full service,” Scott Perron explained. “But we catered, really, to the idea of shop at home. It was more of a marketing tactic because everybody was starting to move toward that shop-at-home mentality. It’s easy. And for the dealer, we would love to do all of our business as shop at home because it usually means you’re going to do the sales presentation, measure, estimate and close at one time. And that’s time savings for everybody and it makes you more efficient. But the reality is a lot of people want a showroom that they can go to.”
The showroom space was inevitable as 24-7 Floors began to see its customer base and revenue grow. “The showroom was an eventual necessity because when we started as a shop at home, we moved into retail—meaning Main Street, commercial, dealing with real estate agents, property managers and contractors. We were getting our leads that way. But then the more and more referrals we got, the more retail clients that needed a showroom.”
In 2014, the business opened with a 450-square-foot showroom. Today, that space has grown to 3,000 square feet. “Every year or two we would add on a room if you will,” Perron noted. “So now we’ve got four sections of our showroom that we’ve built sequentially. The last one was finished in 2022.”
Bringing service to the pros
As the business’s grassroots networking efforts continued to pay off and its referral business took off, the duo decided it was time to expand. “At the end of 2016 we got the idea to go the pro side,” Perron explained.
With some advice from friends in the business, Floors4Pros was born. “They gave us some help on what that pro side looks like. Creating your own sample boards, having the private labels, having a core grouping of stock material that you would have for quick pick up and delivery or quick installation on the multifamily or rentals or mainstream commercial arena. It was kind of like rolling the big box into a Pro Source because most Pro Sources don’t do inventory and most big boxes don’t do what Pro Source does. So this model was kind of similar to both of those blended together.”
For 24-7 Floors, that entity of the business (Floors4Pros) only sells materials. It does not sell labor. What’s more, the customer is anybody who promotes flooring to the end consumer. “Anybody who intervenes in the purchase of flooring, whether they’re referring it, designing it, installing it or selling it, that’s the client of a Floors4Pros. Believe it or not, most of those people don’t require the installation. They have their own manpower.”
What’s more, those who may originally tap Floors4Pros but find they need the labor are easily referred to 24-7 Floors. “We do get customers that come from that pro segment who buy through 24-7 Floors because they actually do need the labor. So one does feed the other.”
Dustless Demolition is born
Trusting the Perrons not to rest on their laurels, it was only a matter of time before they decided on a new avenue that would bring value to their clients. Enter Dustless Demolition. “One main issue we were having was dealing with outsourcing demolition,” Perron explained. “A lot of what we do is removal of carpet, tile, etc., and we were at their mercy. When they were busy they could be a month off. So we would be estimating a job, we’d call up the demo company and they’d say ‘We’re two weeks out,’ and then the next time it was six weeks out. It made it very difficult—not that they were doing anything wrong, but we couldn’t count on the schedule.”
That’s when the pair decided to roll up their sleeves and figure out what it would take to tackle the issue themselves. “We decided to look into the possibility of buying the equipment and training teams,” Perron said. “At first, I was skittish because of the liability. But, in the end, we made the investment, and now we control the timing and it leads us to more work.”
Commercial comes next
While three business entities might seem like enough to keep the Perrons busy, it turns out there were even more ways the pair thought they could bring value to their customers: commercial sales.
“Sally is everything on the ‘full service’ side of 24-7 Floors,” Perron explained. “I’m flooring. Once you get outside of that, you’ve lost me.”
Enter Joe Fiorella, a veteran of the commercial business and, as it turned out, father-in-law to the business’s measure technician Joel Arcadipane. “We heard that, and then it was history,” Perron explained. “This is the next evolution of the business.”
Just a few months in, Fiorella is just diving back into the industry he had retired from, but opportunity, he said, abounds. “There’s a tremendous opportunity in the area here,” he said. “There’s tremendous amount of commercial building going on, aside from the residential side, which is also expanding at a tremendous rate. But the commercial is huge.”
All for one and one for all
In the end, it was important to the couple to keep the businesses independent while also being able to work together if needed. This, the duo said, helps provide the best service to any client and their particular needs.
“And you can take one or all three of those things,” Perron said. “In other words, we don’t appeal to only one kind of customer.”
(For the full story, see the Jan. 20/27 print edition of FCNews.)
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