What sets us apart from most carpet stores is the way we approached the flooring industry. Most companies develop a retail store to sell the carpet, and then subcontract somebody to install it. We did the complete opposite. My father, Peter Lovetere began installing carpet when he was 18 and never looked back. He thought it was a good trade because of the little overhead and the high demand for insulating floorcovering here in New England. He installed for many years before purchasing equipment and renting space for a workroom to add fabrication to his services. Up to that point, he had installed for the types of retail stores I spoke about in the first two sentences. About 15 years ago, after he refined his skills and became an expert in the trade, he started doing high end work for design showrooms. The kind of materials they sold were of the best quality so very few installers risked working with such expensive carpet. After only a few years he had mastered the art of installing and fabricating Wiltons and Axminsters, the Rolls Royces of the carpet world. For those 15 years he had collected the small pieces left over from being such an accurate installer. Those small pieces are known as carpet remnants. Most carpet stores don’t tell you when they have to order surplus in order to create seams for your carpet installation. Those extra pieces either go back to the showrooms to be resold, get stored in a warehouse only to take up space, or stay with the installer who can either throw them away or keep them. My father chose the latter.
Two years ago he was contacted by Channel 5’s Chronicle because they wanted to do a segment on bargains around Boston. They had received an anonymous tip from someone who had bought a remnant from him, had it cut to a custom size, then fabricated. They came to his workroom, filmed the segment, and it aired in November of 2009. With that came a deluge of business, people wanting to take advantage of the tremendous deals being offered. He was unprepared for the amount of popularity for his two man operation. Things eventually quieted down, but the segment aired again one year later in November of 2010. This time, he knew what was coming. He vacated his old location and opened up in a bigger, more customer friendly building just less than a mile away. Not only does he offer custom area rugs he makes out of remnants, but now offers everything else a carpet showroom would; wall to wall carpet sales, mill orders, installations, and more. He brings a new perspective to the sale of carpet, because he knows all the trade secrets the traditional stores don’t want you to know. He doesn’t exercise a huge retail markup because he doesn’t need to sub out the labor. Best of all, he is the best in the business at what he does. With 32 years of experience, there is nothing he hasn’t seen.
This backward approach to a retail store was not the way he had planned it, but after turning 50 last October, he knew it needed to be done. There are just so many floors you can cover before exhausting yourself physically. Without knowing it, he has actually created an entire new way of buying carpet. The dawn of the Internet age has created an entirely new brand of consumer, one with the knowledge and information to ensure they are getting the best deal possible. Carpet remnants, once a trade secret, have become mainstream because of bloggers wanting to share their bargains. Most carpet stores despise this but we encourage it. We guarantee that we can obtain any carpeting material you find on the Internet at the lowest possible price. What makes it even easier is that just about every carpet mill has a website with an online showroom where you can browse their entire product line. Do your due diligence at home, then come visit us to do all the work for you. It really is that easy.
I will be sharing more trade secrets in future posts so please stay tuned.
