St. Petersburg, Fla.—Tariffs were predictably the major topic of conversation at the recent spring meeting of the National Floorcovering Alliance (NFA), and the prevailing sentiment among the 40-plus members involved taking a wait-and-see approach until things may or may not happen on July 2. However, many NFA retailers are being proactive whether it comes to marketing, inventory positions or even taking on more domestic suppliers.
There was one thing on which members were in agreement: Four months in, 2025 has not been a bad year. Most touted a strong first quarter with some tail off in April as tariffs and the news media created uncertainty. “I haven’t really heard anybody say business is terrible,” said Ian Newton, NFA president and general manager of Flooring 101. “Everybody understands we’re all in the same bucket.”
At Great Lakes Carpet & Tile in Orlando, Tom Urban, general manager, touted a “really good” first quarter. “We were up double digits, but April is flat year over year,” he said. “We’re looking to get through the next 60 or 90 days and hope things will start increasing after the summer.”
It was the same story at Jordans Interiors and Floor Covering in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where Greg Miller, general manager, said business is up double digits over the first four months of the year. “But April definitely slowed down due to consumer uncertainty.”
Jason O’Krent, vice president, O’Krent Floors in San Antonio, echoed Urban and Miller while adding some perspective. “The first three months were good and April slowed,” he said. “The first couple weeks of April are historically slow, probably because of tax season. But this year the tariff news and stock market spooked everybody, and consumers were holding back.”
O’Krent added another insight that many retailers may not have considered. “We might be starting to see how we took some people out of the market as a result of COVID-19. When you have these big upticks [from 2021-23], you’re selling people who are on the eighth year of the typical 10-year life cycle. If they are going to [replace their flooring] a little earlier you are going to lose them a couple of years later. We’re still optimistic, though. We had gangbuster years during those COVID-19 years, and there are just going to be those life cycles.”
Geography certainly plays a role in retail performance as evidenced by the success Bob’s Carpet & Flooring is having on the west coast of Florida. “The year has gotten off to a good start and April was fantastic compared to 2024,” said Ashlie Butler, president. She cited the three hurricanes that hit the Tampa area last season, which created significant replacement business.
One retailer who had a completely different story to tell was Jay McDonnell, president of Custom Carpet Centers in Buffalo, N.Y. “The first two months of the year were awful, down about 15%, but we were up 20% in March and April,” he said. But he said it’s less about traffic and more about the level of purchase. “Traffic in April was slightly down with many people in the Buffalo area heading south for Easter. But there’s no question the average ticket has been way higher. The people with money are buying, and they are buying better goods. Our business with Karastan and Masland and some of our higher-end hardwoods is strong.”
While NFA dealers say tariff talk has had minimal impact on business thus far, that has not been the case for Jordans. “Tariffs have affected our business—Canada’s counter tariffs on U.S.-made products,” Miller said. “Each manufacturer has been a little different, between 16% and 25%. But we’ve seen an increase from every U.S. manufacturer.”
Retailers in the U.S. are somewhat divided over the impact of tariffs on their business for the second half of 2025. “I’m not anticipating too many price increases in the near term because there is so much product inventoried in Florida, Savannah, Texas and California,” Bob’s Carpet & Flooring’s Butler said. “It should be a hot minute before we feel anything.”
Jimmy Poulos, president of Flooring 101, with multiple stores in California, expressed optimism. “I don’t anticipate many price increases because the Chinese will reduce prices to combat the tariffs. They will eat it. That’s what they did the first time. The Chinese are more interested in full employment than profit. Otherwise they will have a revolution.”
One the other side of the country at A.J. Rose in Boston, Sam Locher, vice president of business development, did not seem overly concerned, either. “One thing we learned from COVID-19 is the price is going to be the price and we’re just going to have to work around it,” he said. “We have been getting notices on some of the entry-level wool carpet that gets imported from China. Those we may have to switch out completely. They might not be bringing that material in anytime soon.”
O’Krent is also receiving alerts from the vendors that price increases are coming, but he is not overly thrilled with the ones who are raising prices now. “Those who are raising prices ahead of time I think are a little premature,” he said. “We feel if the tariffs are not really in effect now they are just trying to take advantage and gain some margin ahead of the curve.”
Price hikes are never easy for dealers from a logistical standpoint. “We have to protect ourselves by making quotes valid for a certain amount of time,” O’Krent said. “Vendors have to understand that our life cycle of a sale is sometimes months. We are going to have clients come back wanting a price they got quoted two months ago. They need to help us get through that.”
Some NFA retailers told FCNews they are stocking up—just in case. “No one has raised prices on us yet, but in anticipation, I overstocked in advance,” Flooring 101’s Poulos said. “I bought a lot of merchandise from China and Vietnam—LVP and wood. But it’s not going to last for long.”
Same story at A.J. Rose, which is looking at beefing up stock on some imports. But McConnell at Custom Carpet is not jumping the gun. “I don’t think we are going to do anything different until there is more clarity. I don’t want to overbuy and then not have it pan out correctly. We may do things differently with some builder products, however, where we may bring in a little more LVT and laminate.”
Great Lakes’ Urban said he is doubling down on domestic, particularly Daltile. “More than 86% of Daltile’s products are domestic, so tariffs will not affect them.”
Fashion Carpets is one dealer that is looking more at domestic products. “We picked up a made-in-the-USA laminate that we are doing well with,” Hilfer said. “And I am looking at some domestically made product from Engineered Floors.”
Promoting domestic product
Many dealers have already started emphasizing domestically made products in their marketing. For example, Bob’s Carpet’s Butler said, “All my advertising for the rest of the year will promote ‘Made in America,’ especially Mohawk.”
O’Krent noted that he may promote Made in the USA but is taking a realistic path. “Let’s face it: The majority of what we sell are imports. We’re not going to go straight to a limited selection. We’re going to need other options for the salesperson to be confident and feel he has a lot of horses in his stable to sell.”
Fashion Carpets is taking a different approach. “Right now we are promoting the urgency,” Hilfer said. “If you are thinking about buying hard surface, now is the time to do it. You have 90 days [before tariffs may hit].”
A.J. Rose’s Locher is being cautious. “Made in the USA is a positive message, but we don’t like to do negative marketing, like ‘pay now before tariffs hit.’ We don’t want to put ideas in people’s heads.”
And north of the border, where the landscape is a little different, Jordan’s Miller is also trying to keep the messaging upbeat. “We’re not saying don’t buy U.S. products, at least not in so many words. We’re just trying to advertise value, which in and of itself does that.”
Approaches to pricing
Should retailers be hit with price increases due to tariffs, they will have no choice but to pass most or all of the hikes onto the consumer. But their approaches vary:
Custom Carpet Centers: “I hope manufacturers will share some of the costs, and we can share some of it with the consumer,” McConnell said. “The difficult part is in our builder business because it’s really hard to pass immediate tariffs down to people who already have houses under contract. As a general rule, our builders ask us to protect the houses that are already in the cycle. And that’s going to be very difficult if the tariffs get really high.”
Great Lakes: “We will raise prices a certain percentage of our increase, said Darren Hearns, president. “I don’t know that we will pass the entire amount down. It just depends on how much they go up.”
Jordans: “We will pass down to the consumer whatever we have been raised,” Miller said.
A.J. Rose: “It’s always been our MO to look at price increases as a cost, and we have a margin that we expect to make, so, yeah, we will pass them along to the consumer.”
Flooring 101: “I will check the competitive prices in my market area,” Poulos said. “I look and see what Home Depot and Lowe’s are going to do. I have to see the competitive situation and then we adjust. We are not a big boat; we are a little boat that can turn around at any time.”
O’Krent: “We look at margin,” O’Krent said. “We will absorb some of it but want to make sure we are making the margin we need to make. In the end, when our salespeople are getting paid based on the gross profit of the job, they have to make a living, too.”
NFA vendors said they will try to make some concessions to members if they have to raise prices due to tariffs, possibly holding up the increases for a month. “Some may not want to do a price increase because 30 days later the tariff may get rescinded and then they’re back and forth,” Newton said. “The other factor is freight. Who knows what’s going to happen with freight charges.”
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