Volume 26/Number 19; February 4/11, 2013
Dalton—The Carpet & Rug Institute (CRI) has released its first ebook designed to help retailers better serve their customers. “The Carpet Chronicles: Highlights from the CRI Blog for Retailers and Their Customers” is a three-section, interactive, electronic book that should prove to be a handy tool for the thousands of carpet retailers across the U.S. and beyond.
“This ebook is aimed at a particular audience—retailers—providing them with an easy training resource for their sales force as well as a convenient fact book to use with customers who visit their showrooms,” said Werner Braun, CRI president. “Dealers need to be able to give customers on-the-spot answers without having to wade through a lot of extraneous information. This ebook provides a wealth of talking points to help retailers pull up those answers seemingly out of hand.”
Based on material taken from the most popular articles on CRI’s blog (criblog.org), the ebook has numerous hyperlinks to take readers to relevant pages all over the web.
The ebook’s three sections—The Benefits of Carpet, Indoor Air Quality and Shopping for Carpet—include:
•The Benefits of Carpet section addresses the reasons why carpet is America’s No. 1 flooring choice, stressing the comfort, safety, warmth, sound reduction, relative value and easy care carpeted floors provide.
•The Indoor Air Quality section focuses on asthma and allergy issues, as well as the strengths and benefits of CRI’s Green Label Plus indoor quality standard.
•The Shopping for Carpet section offers tips on choosing a carpet style, selecting the right pad or cushion, installing carpets in basements and preparing for new carpet installation.
“These three sections cover topics that are particularly pertinent for retailers in the marketplace today,” according to Bethany Richmond, CRI communications director. “They provide answers to some of the most frequently asked questions posed by consumers when they are making decisions about which type of floor covering to choose.”
The Carpet Chronicles piggybacks on many of CRI’s other communications materials in print and on the web by providing advice on such things as how to find carpet cleaning products and equipment certified by CRI’s Seal of Approval testing and certification program.
“In all of our communications, we stress the importance of finding and using products and equipment that are of the highest quality,” Braun noted. “We try to educate the consumer on the advantages of buying equipment and products that have earned CRI’s Seal of Approval certification.”
CRI officials decided to create this ebook as a means of giving retailers access to a useful and attractive tool that provides them with the information they need “right at their fingertips,” he concluded
For more on the CRI ebook, call 706.428.2125 or visit carpet-rug.org.