By Lindsay Gonzalez
(Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment in a series detailing how flooring dealers are enhancing their digital presence by partnering with FloorForce.)
When Tom Kolaskey, sales operations manager at Carpet Mart in Benton Harbor, Mich., left corporate America in 2017, it was, as he called it, “dumb luck” that he found his way back to the family-owned business. Working alongside his father and store owner, John Kolaskey, Tom immediately applied the skills and experiences he acquired in corporate America to the flooring store’s business model.
“When I was doing my research, I was really trying to analyze our local competition to identify opportunities or oversights that were just lacking or not present,” Kolaskey said. “I wanted to create something that was very unique and exciting; something that would inspire and motivate someone to get in their car and drive to our store.”
What Kolaskey saw was the need for a greater digital presence. Thus, he began looking into various digital marketing companies. Carpet Mart started its partnership with FloorForce around Thanksgiving 2018 when the company launched its first-generation website.
“When we initially signed up, we did not enroll in the Omnify program—it was just a basic website,” Kolaskey explained. “Then, I went down to the Mohawk Edge summit in Orlando, Fla., last December. I met with the [FloorForce] team in person, continued to do research and kind of monitored what they were doing—all of the bells and whistles and additional features that were available with- in the Omnify program. We signed up for Omnify in March of this year, and went live right around July 4.”
FloorForce currently assists Carpet Mart with all aspects of the flooring store’s website. “They created and now manage our website, they manage all of the digital catalogs, online reviews, online lead generation,” Kolaskey said. “They also post four blogs per month to our website and then cross post them over to our Facebook and Instagram pages.”
For Kolaskey, the benefits of working with FloorForce are simple: the company under- stands flooring. “FloorForce specializes in the flooring industry. They only design websites for flooring dealers just like us. Most of the team at some point in time and to some capacity came from retail in the flooring industry, whether it was field sales rep or working for a dealer to some capacity. They’re familiar with the ins and outs of it all.”
Kolaskey explained that partnering with FloorForce has also helped Carpet Mart capture more consumers online. “The whole shopping experience starts with your online and your digital presence,” he noted. “[FloorForce] understands what we need to be successful in today’s business world, especially as a brick-and-mortar retailer competing against online sellers. I feel completely confident that we’re working with a company that gets it.”