Specialty flooring retailers are the drivers of this industry. Their success fuels every channel, from residential retail to commercial. To honor these businesses, FCNews is publishing its inaugural Retailers of the Year 2022 issue. It’s an effort to call attention to those retailers who are excelling or differentiating themselves in some aspect of their business. In this issue, suppliers and vendors nominated retailers who they believe deserved to be featured and why they stand out from the pack.
FCNews’ Retailers of the Year 2022 issue features some of the industry’s most accomplished dealers from influential buying groups as well as smaller retailers with no group affiliation. In other words, it reflects the retail industry as a whole.
In choosing their top retailer partners, suppliers looked beyond sales volume to other key attributes such as communication skills, trust, company culture and even benevolence as differentiating factors. Suppliers/vendors nominated up to four retailers (or distributors, in some cases) for consideration and explained why they stand out. FCNews then narrowed down the winners based on the scope of merit attributed to each.
Throughout this week and next, please visit FCNews.net each day as new winners will be showcased. Today’s highlights for Retailers of the Year 2022 is Pacific Direct’s nominations and winners: Empire Hardwood Flooring and Kindred Flooring.
Empire Hardwood Flooring
North Hollywood, Calif.
What PDI had to say
Consider them the one-stop shop of flooring, carrying an array of flooring categories along with the correlating sundries. They cater to homeowners, contractors, designer, builder, etc. Empire has been a strong supporter to PDI, giving us orders every week; as a result, our business volume continues to grow every year. Empire has been a key partner to the success of our company.
About the winner
Empire Hardwood Flooring & Molding is a family-owned business that has been serving the San Fernando Valley for 25 years. This wholesale distributor is open to the public where it offers a wide selection of engineered and solid hardwood, laminate, moldings and adhesives—more than 200,00 square feet of inventory in stock.
“We take pride in helping our customers find the floors of their dreams,” said Alisa Jerejian, owner. “As a family-owned and operated company for 25 years we take pride in building lifelong connections and partnerships. When looking for suppliers to bring in we look for high-quality products, great pricing and, most importantly, customer service. We found that a decade ago when we formed a partnership with PDI. Their products are timeless yet innovative. The overall experience working with PDI from start to finish is always effortless.”
Kindred Flooring
San Dimas, Calif.
What PDI had to say
Kindred Flooring has been an advocate for our company and has steadily been increasing their business with PDI. Kindred has a superb and beautiful designer showroom and always gives personalized/customized service to every consumer that walks into their showroom. They have been extremely loyal to PDI and appreciate the fact that they treat all of their employees like family. They are definitely one of a kind.
About the winner
kin·dred – “one’s family and relations.” synonyms: family, relatives, relations, kin, kith and kin, one’s own flesh and blood.
This is how the name Kindred Flooring came about. Kindred Flooring considers itself the premier local flooring designer in southern California. The family-owned retailer takes great pride in its large selection of flooring products—engineered and solid wood, laminate, waterproof vinyl plank (WPC), travertine, marble, porcelain and ceramic wood planks—along with decades of experience and expertise in the flooring industry. Combine this outstanding sales and delivery service and you have a retailer that local customers call “amazing.”
Kindred Flooring enjoys a similar relationship with some of its supplier partners as well, including Pacific Direct (PDI). “PDI is our go-to vendor for our laminate and wood flooring due to the quality of products, customer service, ease of doing business with them and, most importantly, they stand behind their product,” said Rachel Trenholm, owner, Kindred Flooring.
