PART Two | Cromer Carpets founder Graham Burdett has been in flooring since his teens and still works full-time at 68. Some people just don’t stop rolling.
GRAHAM Burdett is the founder and owner of Cromer Carpets in Norfolk. A man aged 68, he may well officially be a pensioner, but he works four days a week estimating and shows no signs of retirement – after more than 50 years in flooring.
Last month we discovered how he’d started in the trade by working for Queensway in Norwich, taking on an apprenticeship afew years later. He took a job with SGP Carpets in London’s Fulham where he worked on ‘pubs, clubs, hotels, and London Airport’, then returned to domestic work for Harris Carpets at its Staines, Slough, Windsor, and Queensway, and New Walden branches.
There he remained until 1988, and he was 30, when he decided to return home to Cromer to start his own carpet company he called Buy at Home. Eventually, he moved everything into one shop and called it Cromer Carpets. And then that’s where he’s been ever since – in a 4,000 square foot site in the town centre near the main car park. He’s been there for nearly 32 years.
This month we take a closer look at the contract side of the business.
Cromer Carpets’ work is 20% contract and 80% domestic. In terms of the former, he outlines that it has involved jobs at a pier theatre, pubs and hotels – ‘all soft contracts’ as he terms it. On top of that is work for a council including public toilets.
But as to why his company wins business, it seems to be all about reliability: ‘When we did a pier theatre it had to be finished by the end of February. We started early January, and they were supposed to get three quotes in but the contractor said, ‘there’s no way that anybody else but Cromer Carpets is going to turn up and get this job done in the time’.
Graham tells how he gave a fair price and his was the only firm close enough to get the job done on time. He says quite often Cromer Carpets is ‘the preferred contractor because the main builder knows we’ll turn up and we will perform’.
He notes his rivals aren’t really interested in the work he undertakes – ‘many are one-man bands, small firms with one or two fitters… we can afford to chuck fitters at a job for a month and still have 12 others for other work’.
Business and skills
As to current business activity, Graham describes it as ‘nothing dramatic – it’s steady growth. Last year it dropped a tiny percentage and this year’s up a tiny percentage so far. We’re not affected by global events’.
When asked about skill levels in the sector, he details how he was ‘taught the old-fashioned way… you work with a senior carpet layer and he teaches you. It was the way it used to be years ago. And it’s the same now.’
And with the firm being a family enterprise, it should be no secret the firm has three generations – ‘we’ve got Ollie, Ian and Dougie, Dougie’s nearly retired, he’s the grandpa and a floor layer. Ian’s his son and has been with us 20 years – he’s a floorlayer. And there’s Ollie, Ian’s third son, he’s learning the trade, but we’ve given him the easy jobs, he does a lot of uplifts and works with other fitters’.
The biggest problem for Graham in terms of training the young is a function of location. He had hoped to have an apprentice on two-day release where he’d pay the wages and get the apprentice three days a week while they learned two days a week.
The issue is there’s no carpet fitting course in Norfolk – ‘the only thing was a carpentry course’. He outlines that ‘we sent our poor apprentice to learn carpentry for two days, even though he didn’t want to do carpentry. It just didn’t work’.
So, now Graham has Ollie and another, ‘who are learning on the on the job and don’t go to college’. They’d have to travel miles and stay overnight if they did.
Memorable work
Everyone in the sector will have their memorable jobs and for Graham it was Heathrow’s Terminal 3 departures hall – ‘potentially the largest piece of stretch fitted carpet in the world… that’s what we thought at the time’.
He explains that it was laid on green felt and was a little bit tacky – the tack being to hold a three colour Wilton carpet. ‘We’d lay three 12-foot-wide sections a night. We’d get there at 9pm but couldn’t start till 10pm. We had to be finished by 6am.’
He continues: ‘We’d cut away the old carpet, 36 foot wide and 100 foot long, roughly – the four of us. And then we’d black tape it to the original carpet for the next night’ before returning to fit another section.
From the way Graham talks about this job, it was clearly very impressive and one he vividly remembers.
To end
With a life spent in flooring, Graham has tried various ways to tackle the flooring market, has seen much and learned more. It shouldn’t be a surprised he has some very distinct views and wants change.
www.cromercarpets.com
NEXT MONTH: Graham on his distinct views and need for change