After five years of interviewing flooring contractors, Adam Bernstein looks back at the high standards he’s encountered

IT’s all too easy to set up a business in a blaze of glory with the intention of taking on the world. However, making it a long-lasting proposition is much more difficult; keeping the plates spinning long enough to both run and grow it is more complex than most imagine.

And this applies to contract flooring as much as it does to any other business sector.

I’ve been interviewing and writing contractor profiles for CFJ for more than five years now. And in that time there’s been a strong message about success being tied to high standards – that keeping them high keeps clients happy and returning for more, helping to perpetuate the motion needed to move a business forward.

Take Rory MacGillivray. With a business set on Benbecula in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, he faced a number of unique challenges. Not least of which is that his clients weren’t necessarily a short journey along to the next junction of a motorway. Rather, he had to island-hop using causeways and small ferries.

If we re-read his comments – from 2020 – it’s very apparent he holds himself to high standards, partly because that’s his nature, but also, as he said, ‘islands are close knit communities where you live or die as a business so reputation is everything. Accordingly, who you bring into a team is extremely important – I’ve never liked the term employee, we are a team’.

This is why he handpicked people that were honest, hardworking, team players, and who possessed good social skills.

Notably, MacGillivray’s said ‘I can’t remember the last time we advertised,’ adding, ‘we are professional, all work is done ‘by the book’… we’re trusted by our customers and benefit from strong recommendations.’

Another exemplar of a strong set of ethics is Leon Nechyporuk, the founder of Kent-based flooring contractor, Giant Floors. A Ukrainian by birth, he was interviewed just under two years before the invasion of his homeland.

Forced to study large animal veterinary science under the old Soviet Union, he maintained a real hankering for woodwork. Given the chance to travel in 2001 he came to the UK and worked his way up from a driver for a floor sanding firm, to sander, then contractor.

As he explained, ‘I liked my work, and as it happened, the more I worked the more recommendations I received.’ But with further success came greater demand and Nechyporuk found that he could not complete all of the work on his own: ‘I found a helper, then another, and one more after that.’ Initially a sole trader, it wasn’t until 2012 that he formed Giant Floors.

Nechyporuk clearly understood that his public and corporate persona were one and the same. It doesn’t take a doctorate to know that staff are a window into a business in terms of quality of work and how they interact with customers. It’s hardly surprising then when Nechyporuk said all the fitters he used ‘are the same guys that have been working with me for the past 10 years’. He continued: ‘The strengths of our business are our expertise and the quality of the work we do. We always stand for quality. There is virtually nothing we cannot do – we will tackle any job of any size and the (most) complicated (of) projects.’

Someone else who stood out was Dale Osborne, owner of Camox Floors. Featured twice in CFJ – once as he’d just bought the company (that he had previously been an employee at), and again 18 months later – Osborne illustrates that it’s not impossible to turn a company around.

As the story runs, Osborne had been employed by Camox for 34 years. The company had had its fair share of ups and downs and peaked in the early ‘90s – ‘little did we know but the recession of 1991 was to have a massive impact on our business, one which it had yet to fully recover from thirty years on.’

A very long story short, Osborne – having worked his way up – found himself facing redundancy or thinking about buying out the son of a founder.

A brave move, but one borne out of the desire run a business properly – Osborne found himself able to implement changes he had wanted to for some time. He admitted life had been tough but was pleased to report that Camox was, and always will be, dedicated to client satisfaction ‘and that strength stood me in good stead from the beginning of last year when clients found out that I was at the helm.’

In Osborne’s view, good relationships with clients matter and can lead to plenty of repeat business. And if we think about it, quality, standards, and pleasing clients mean the same thing – success.

Carl Hart of Birmingham-based City Carpets & Flooring also had a good story to tell. Having been in flooring since the age of 15 through work experience for an uncle, Hart described himself as ‘a people person’ and loved ‘seeing different faces every day and dealing with different customers, addressing issues or concerns and problem solving.’

His business served both commercial and domestic clients but Hart worried there were a number who thought they knew best but in reality didn’t have the technical experience to know what would and would not work. Consequently, he’d learnt to walk away – ‘it’s something we hate doing, but with a combined 30 years of experience between myself and my colleague George, there’s really not much we haven’t taken on and achieved’. Hart didn’t take too well to failure.

Standards were important to him and he made great play of the fact his company was ‘proud to be NICF Master Fitters, Quick-Step Master Installers, Karndean approved and CITB NVQ level qualified.’ And with a nod to the future, he said the company was looking to expand its credentials further within the trade.

The last contractor to be highlighted here is Antrim-based, Oakvale Flooring – a firm with a global reach.

Neil McGuckin, managing director, told how the firm grew from nothing after being started by his father in 1992. It grew through long hours and reinvesting in the business to the point that it could take on a warehouse and showroom. Now it’s run by two brothers McGuckin – Neil and Christopher.

Oakvale’s customer base is almost a 50/50 split between private and commercial work: ‘The private jobs range from simple laminate bedroom installs a couple of miles from our base to bespoke marquetry panels in South of France.’ McGuckin prided himself in saying ‘we don’t consider any job beneath us or too big for us to handle.’

But on the commercial side of Oakvale’s work, McGuckin said that the firm had been ‘lucky to be involved in some amazing projects’ and that it had been gifted the opportunity to travel. This included working in embassies in Paris, installing herringbone on cruise liners in Puerto Rico, and undertaking National Trust castle refurbishments. This type of work doesn’t
fall easily into the laps of the feckless.

Importantly, McGuckin recognised that businesses that aren’t fly-by-night need to have a certain ‘x-factor’ to keep them going. And as he described it, when it came to his home territory of Northern Ireland, ‘quite a large portion of our work comes through word of mouth.’ He added that ‘job referrals from satisfied clients are very pleasing and in their own way lets
you know that the quality of the work is good. Happy customers come back, and they are quick to recommend to friends.’

To end
Business isn’t easy and involves dealing with a multitude of threats. But any business with a solid core that revolves around decent ethics and high standards is bound to have a natural advantage.

Adam Bernstein is an independent columnist