When Scott and Sally Perron moved to Florida in 2012, they were both seasoned flooring professionals looking to start their own business in a new town. Two years later that dream came true, and today 24-7 Floors has expanded into several independent entities. What’s more, its 10-year anniversary—marked this past September—saw the business increase revenue fivefold since its first year in business.
So, what’s their secret to success? First, it’s all about adding value for the customer. To that end, 24-7 Floors has branched into four separate entities that each operate independently while offering services that work in sync with each other.
“We started as a full-service retailer,” said Sally Perron, co-owner, project manager and RSA. “It’s important on the retail side to offer project management. We know a lot of people don’t know how or when to call vendors on a project—the plumber, etc. So we end up doing a lot of project management, which adds to the services we offer our clients—plus ease of doing business.”
That mentality came in handy when the retailer decided to launch the pro side of the business. For 24-7 Floors, that entity (Floors 4 Pros) only sells materials. It does not sell labor. What’s more, the customer is anybody who promotes flooring to the end-line consumer. “Anybody who intervenes in the purchase of flooring, whether they’re referring it, designing it, installing it or selling it, that’s the client of a Floors 4 Pros,” explained Scott Perron, co-owner. “Believe it or not, most of those people don’t require the installation. They have their own manpower.”
However, even if the pro is only there for material, they have access to so much more in terms of service. “Floors 4 Pros is dealing with contractors and installers, so to give them a service where they can lead their client into a location where they’re buying all the materials and helping them from A to Z—between picking out the flooring, picking out the cabinet color, picking out the paint, creating the design—and then having everything ready and written up for them, they feel that that’s a big asset to them,” Sally Perron said.
Not resting on their laurels, it was only a matter of time before the Perrons decided on a new avenue that would bring additional value to their client base. Enter Dustless Demolition.
“One main issue we were having was dealing with outsourcing demolition,” Scott Perron explained. “A lot of what we do is removal of carpet, tile, etc., and we were at their mercy. When they were busy, they could be a month off. So we would be estimating a job, we’d call up the demo company and they’d say, ‘We’re two weeks out,’ and then the next time it was six weeks out. It made it very difficult—not that they were doing anything wrong, but we couldn’t count on the schedule.”
That’s when the pair decided to roll up their sleeves and figure out what it would take to tackle the issue themselves. “We decided to look into the possibility of buying the equipment and training teams. At first, I was skittish because of the liability. But in the end, we made the investment, and now we control the timing and it leads us to more work.”
While three business entities might seem like enough to keep the Perrons busy, it turns out, when it comes to growth, their motto is something more like “the more the merrier”—as long as it brings value.
So what was next on the agenda was the duo taking a hard look at the commercial side of the flooring business—and the opportunities it might provide.
Enter Joe Fiorella, a veteran of the commercial business and, as it turned out, father-in-law to 24-7 Floors’ service and warehouse manager, DJ Rubio. “We heard that, and then it was history,” Scott Perron said. “This is the next evolution of the business.”
Just a few months in and Fiorella is diving back into the industry he had retired from, but opportunity, he said, abounds. “There’s a tremendous opportunity in the area here,” Fiorella said. “There’s tremendous amount of commercial building going on, aside from the residential side, which is also expanding at a tremendous rate. But the commercial is huge.”
In the end, it was important to the couple to keep the businesses entities independent while also being able to work together if needed. This, the duo said, helps provide the best service to any client and their particular needs.
“24-7 Floors does the material and the install,” Scott Perron noted. “Floors 4 Pro does material only. The Dustless Demolition division does the demo. And you can take one or all three of those things. You can have us do the demo, you can have us supply the material and you can have us install it. You can have us design the whole project for you. In other words, we don’t appeal to only one kind of customer.”
(For the full story on 24-7 Floors, be sure to check out FCNews’ Surfaces issue, coming January 2025.)
