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| Installation: A career opportunity for the future
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PERHAPS NO BETTER example of this exists than Christopher Capobianco, Coverings columnist and floor-industry veteran. Capobianco started in the business working as an installer’s helper for his family’s floor shop and has never really looked back since....more
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| TRAINING: Can it modernize the flooring industry?
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There are two general attitudesa business can take toward training.
One approach, the more traditional,is to simply expect that training somehow gets done....more
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| Airborne particles carry health and financial hazards
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A British Columbia construction developer was fined $2,500 for having its workers handle asbestos during a demolition. A flooring company in Oregon was penalized for over $10,000 for ripping up a floor that had asbestos in it. A school district in B.C. was fined $75,000 for allowing asbestos to circulate in the air while removing the flooring....more
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| Selling by colour
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If we don’t go green, the world dies, or so we have heard for generations. As individuals, citizens, businesses and communities, we have been told to change our lifestyles or lose the planet. A big part of that change is political and economic. A scaling down of our “footprint” is necessary, they say, for long-term sustainability. We have to make sacrifices, we are told, and those involve money and rules....more
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| Keep your customers, grow your business
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Let’ say a customer walks into a store, buys some flooring, has it installed at home or work, and pays for it all. A job well done. Or is it? Not according to a school of thought in business marketing that places top priority on following-up with existing customers — even if it means spending less time trying to...more
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| Ensuring function in design:
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People in the flooring business have usually heard a project horror story or two in their careers. The wrong carpet was chosen for an office floor, not enough thought was put into the tile selection of a hotel lobby, or residential hardwood became scuffed and worn out too soon after installation....more
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| QUALITY
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In his book of 1974, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig maintains that Quality is not definable. It can only be known and that we all know it. In fact, in his opinion, it is the underlying creative force of the universe.
The word is often used that way, as if Quality should always be capitalized and spoken of with reverence. I have both appreciation and sympathy for that view,...more
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| DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE
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In most labour markets, workers are looking for a stable, long-term situation where they can rely on a steady paycheque and the resources of a well-financed employer. Flooring installers may be different. Shane Murray has an installation crew in Sackville, N.S., and he describes a typical situation where independent installers act as casual labour for one another....more
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| MEASURING MANAGERS
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Every time a recessions rolls around, the cuts start at the bottom. There is a good reason for this; the lowest-paid workers are presumably the least experienced and most easily replaced when things get better. But once the front-line staff has been trimmed and managers have less managing to do, owners often fail to take the same hard look at how their supervisors and department heads are...more
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| Quality beyond the surface
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Quality, cost, turnaround — every business must pick a point where these three factors are balanced. Maintaining the lowest cost of operations means a company must move a lot of product efficiently. To do that, it needs to be perceived by its market as offering good deals, in other words, favourable price-to-quality ratios. If superior turnaround is the priority, the company may invest more in process, packaging and product...more
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