This was sent to me by Dan Willis, manager of our service company in Indy. It's another view of what has caused carpet to drop in popularity. Dan is optimistic about carpet's comeback and here are his reasons:
Reading Floor Covering News recently brought back memories of my youth. In 1969 my dad worked for West-Point Pepperell as a Mill Rep in Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois and later for Cabin Craft, Galaxy and Patcraft. Our family car was a station wagon filled with carpet samples. People were covering hard floors as fast as carpet could be produced and sales were thriving thanks to new housing construction.
Why were people covering up those hard floors? Simply because wood and tile were slippery, cold and loud. Carpet was inexpensive compared to hard floors and shag carpet became popular because it was soft, fuzzy and warm. Have you noticed that the new word in the carpet industry this year is "soft?" And have you looked at the price of hard floors? These are signs that carpet is coming back. People are tiring of dust bunnies, scratches and noise.
The Baby-Boom generation wanted change from their parents’ carpeted homes so they bought hard floors. Now they're caught up in nostalgia and are looking for things that remind them of their childhood. As they age, they don't want to be shuffling around on noisy, hard, slick floors. And the Boomer's children want to break away from the hard floors of their parents' homes and are starting to seek the warm, quiet environment that belongs exclusively to carpet.
As an industry we've been putting a lot of time and effort into learning how to maintain all of the popular hard floors on the market. That's a good thing, but don't forget where we came from. We're carpet cleaners first and foremost and don't let our customers ever forget it. The tide is turning and we'll have more carpet to clean than hard floors at some point in the near future. Everything happens in cycles or trends.
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Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.
