There are so many wannabes in the flooring business. One recent failure is the group known as Floors Today (orginally started as Laminate Kingdom.)
Very smart guys running it, but they lost their focus I guess. They were so successful in the UK and I think overall had a brilliant vision.
The operation went from zero to 60 stores in about 18 months and from 60 stores to zero stores in about 6-9 months after that.
There are alot of great people that worked there, but the model was broken.
We took a look to see if the stores were worth acquiring, but at the end of the day the baggage was far too onerous. Plus the product that was in stock didn’t pass our minimum needs in terms of quality.
DON’T GET LIQUIDATED!
Recently the stores have reopened to liquidate their remaining stock for whatever price. I would be sure that you are using anything you get from them in an area that you need a low price, but don’t need to worry about long term aspects of durability.
Additionally we noticed a liquidation place started selling a bunch of stuff from this chain including cheap bamboo etc… Cheap yes, quality – not so much. When we evaluated the product about 2 months ago it was not something I was willing to risk at any price. As always – BUYER BEWARE!
Some of the news about this:
Customers Getting Ticked
Staff Getting Even
Courts Getting it through Bankruptcy
From The Miami Herald:
Floors Today stumbles over growth, ends up in bankruptcy
A Miami flooring product retailer’s plan to go nationwide hit a road bump, leaving a trail of creditors. The company has landed in bankruptcy court.
BY PATRICK DANNER
HYPERLINK “mailto:pdanner@MiamiHerald.com”pdanner@MiamiHerald.com
Two years ago, a European investor group launched Floors Today from Miami with the goal of creating a nationwide retailer of hardwood and laminate flooring.
Floors Today opened about 60 stores before it ran into trouble.
Last month Floors Today turned over its assets in Miami-Dade Circuit Court to a representative, Byron Smyl, who said he planned to sell the company as a going concern.
Last week, Smyl temporarily closed Floors Today’s remaining 23 stores, including eight in South Florida, to save cash. A day later, three creditors initiated an involuntary bankruptcy against the chain, putting the state court on hold.
When they closed, the stores employed fewer than 200 people.
Floors Today was started in early 2005 by the management team that built Floors-2-Go into the largest retailer of hardwood and laminate flooring in Britain. They sold that business, then 102 stores, for about $65 million, Smyl said.
It has 140 stores today, according to its website.
A supplier later approached the team — led by Robert Hodges and sons Robert and Richard — about launching a similar retail chain in the United States.
Floors Today planned to follow Floors-2-Go’s growth model and open as many as 300 stores, all in rapid succession, in the United States, according to an outline filed with a 2005 lawsuit against Floors Today by a consultant firm. The case was later dismissed.
According to court documents in a 2006 lawsuit against Floors Today filed by a former employee, it opened about 60 stores with estimated annual sales of $70 million. That lawsuit also was dismissed.
Smyl said Floors Today got pinched by the downturn in the housing industry, though he added he hasn’t analyzed what was behind the company’s problems.
Creditors’ lawyer Gary Freedman said it appears Floors Today overexpanded and ran into cash-flow problems.
Lawsuits filed by suppliers and others against Floors Today, whose parent company is Laminate Kingdom, began piling up early last year.
Some even took the step of filing writs of garnishment, seeking money in Floors Today’s bank accounts.
With the number of creditors mounting, Floors Today filed the assignment for the benefit of creditors. The filing lists more than 650 creditors — owed at least $19 million.
At the time of the filing, Floors Today had 37 stores remaining in four states. Fourteen stores were immediately closed before the decision was made to temporarily close the remaining 23 stores.
Freedman filed the involuntary bankruptcy to maneuver the case into U.S. Bankruptcy Court where, he said, creditors have greater say.
He said before the state court action, the Hodges were provided a security interest valued at $320,000. Creditors can seek to void any garnishments and other transactions in the 90 days leading up to the bankruptcy, he said.
The involuntary bankruptcy was filed by three media companies, including The Miami Herald Media Co. Freedman said he will ask the court to appoint a trustee to oversee the business while it is in bankruptcy. A hearing on that request is set for Wednesday.
In the meantime, Smyl said everyone is in a wait-and-see position.
”Everybody’s hoping the stores can come back and the company can be restructured,” Smyl said
copyright Miami Herald
Floors Today – Gone Tomorrow, (It’s about flooring). Very interesting article on flooring Steve!
so after reading the remarks and “facts” about floorstoday i have to wonder were you get all you information from.
It is amusing to think that as horriable of a company floors today is that you would make the call to hire so many ex- employees. For instance Rick Wells a previous district manager, or how about Claude Moise, the former store manager for melbourne, or Bryan… the store manager for the Occoee store, Or Ali… the Ex Astn manager for The lee road Orlando location. This list i am sure goes on but i still have to ask myself if our company is so bad as a whole why do you employ so many of our previous employees. If you are going to attack the company you need to focus only on the Previous owners they were the ones making the wrong decision.
Oh and by the way if your looking for something to focus your next blog on how about focusing on your District manager (C.M.) who still feels the need to go into the melbourne store and rant and rave to OUR customers. If your haveing such a hard time getting buisness find someone to do some better advertising.
Renell-
I am not sure you are reading the same blog as I am…
Here are the comments I see from Steve re: the staff there-
“There are alot of great people that worked there, but the model was broken.”
“Very smart guys running it, but they lost their focus I guess.”
The only person who is making negative comments about the personnel or ex-personnel is YOU.
a good read, not sure why Renell says you are attacking people who worked there.
seemed like an even handed approach.
As one supplier that is owed more than $200,000 dollars by floors today I can say that there were alot of problems there which is why they are in bankruptcy.
It might interest any creditors of floors today that the former owner rob hodges is now living in luxury in england.His house is valued at 5 million dollars.The address is cheswood grange,chessetts wood road,lapworth,warwickshire,england.
Buyers of liqidation inventory from Floors Today need not be aware, just smart. A closer look at the inventory will show that they carried brand name laminate flooring by Kronotex, Armstrong, Tarkett, Quick Step etc. as well as quality wood flooring by Columbia and Noblehouse. Yes they had some 6 & 7 mm crap that I wouldn’t have bought myself, but that’s all part of the mix. So please don’t kick them while they are down. Let them liquidate so they can possibly pay me the money owed to me. As far as strategy is concerned: You can’t open a bunch of stores without support and advertising unless you have brand recognition like Starbucks or McDonalds. I was running a beautiful showroom for them in Houston and was very dissapointed when they came and closed me down. I think the support between stores was great (store to store transfers) I fell in love with flooring and continue to work in that field. In closing I would like to say that ifloors. is a great website and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn about flooring.
Well, this is the first I heard of the situation. We live in Melbourne and the store was just closed. I stopped in and was told our order would be delivered. All eqiip is moving to Louisiana I was told. $4000.00 worth of floors and glue we are waiting on for almost a month!
HEY STEVE
I LIKE THE WAY YOU ERASED MY LAST BLOG REGARDING FLORIDA INSTALLATION( YOUR INSTALLATION COMPANY) AS WELL AS THE SAME OWNER THAT OWNED AMERITEX FLOORING INC. THAT OWES INSTALLERS THAT DID LABOR FOR HIM FOR FLOORS TODAY. WHY DO I KNOW THIS IS BECAUSE I AM ONE OF THOSE INSTALLERS. I HOLD A CERTIFIED JUDGMENT AND ON RECORD I HAVE CONTACTED MARK WITH NO AVAIL TO RETRIEVE MY MONEY. THIS MONEY IS FOR FOUR JOBS THAT I DID THAT THE LAMINATE KINDOM STATE HE WAS PAID FOR BUT HE SAYS NOT. NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, THE MONEY IS OWED AND WAS PROVEN IN COURT. I AM WILLING TO TAKE A PAYMENT PLAN AND ALL. JUST STEP UP TO THE PLATE.
AGAIN I SEE YOU WIPED OFF MY BLOG. STEVE TELL MARK TO PAY ME MY MONEY AND BE DONE WITH IT. SINCE HE PUT HIS NAME AS A CREDITOR AGAINST FLOORS TODAY.
This blog is not about personal stuff or things unrelated to my company. That is why i removed your last post.
I have seen that Floors Today(aka laminate kingdom) owed more than 600,000 US dollars to Mark’s company that they failed to pay.
You can resolve your dispute without me. I have nothing to do with it. Blog posts will not help.
This is the exact kind of fall out that happens when a company goes down. Lots of folks get hurt.
I was hired locally in the Raleigh, NC market to open a store with Floors Today and here is what I saw and why I quit after three weeks.
1. The site selection of the stores in the Raleigh market (2 stores) was terrible. You simply could not have picked a worst shopping center(s) to put a retail business and after they closed locally the landlord in calling me trying to find someone to contact about accounts in arrears I found they over paid for retail space they rented. Funny the State Controller (that’s Floors Today for District or Regional Manager) who hired me was sacred to death when the owners came to see the stores the opening weeks. First question Paul asked me was, “Bill, would you have selected this site?” My reply was, “hell no”. Paul had heard I had my own retail business before selling out earlier that year.
2. The first paycheck was shorted. We got paid 4/7′s of a paycheck. The company policy was explained by the then Director of HR Ann Poppelwell as “you started work on a Thursday
and only worked thru Sunday so you only worked 4/7th’s of a week and this is how they do it in England”. Before talking with Ann I did call the Greensboro store manager and we had a manager over from Charlotte to open the other Raleigh store and they said their first checks were shorted too. It was a company policy to short the first check then. Those who complained or called them on it got the money but usually were let go very soon. I quit after my conversation with Ann. Anyway, after I said something like, “Ann, sonmeone’s got their head up their ass as I’m in North Carolina and you’re in Miami, Fl and we’re under our states and federal employment laws not Englands.” Ann was quite taken aback saying I should deal with it professionally which made me laugh. How professional can you be as a Director of HR if you act like you don’t know any states have Department of Labor and state labor laws let alone the Federal labor laws. If I’m an exempt employee my salary is my salary whether I work 30, 40, 50, or 60+ hours not the number of days you work!
We do have a national 40 hour work week law.
The next State Controller – while I didn’t work there anymore the one manager who stayed told me he was a little Napolean type. RW were the initials and he didn’t like anyone taller than him – which was about everyone.
The really funny part was that I then went on to sell for Empire Today and averaged over $25,000 a week in sales which was usually triple what the Raleigh store was doing open 7 days a week or 64+ hours. At Empire you’d average maybe 15 leads a week some weeks 18. So basically I worked 30 hours a week and made double the money.
Empire has good warm leads but the management locally is challenged with a lack of people skills. My first day I went on a lead with him and watched the home owner’s daughter put his demo products outside the door as he was trying to do a sales pitch. The next lead he said he’d let me do the talking but couldn’t keep his mouth shut. No sale. Never ran a lead with him again and never had a problem on my own selling. If you’re in a market with a good manager Empire can be a good thing. The problem locally is every morning when the leads come via your home fax he’d have his rant and rave cover sheet about some sales rep screwing up the day before and usually he’d personally attack the sales rep. Realty says he should have never hired most of the folks he did as they couldn’t close – but he stilled didn’t need to personally abuse folks and do it on faxes sent out to all sales rep.