Foot traffic was down, but average tickets were up. Tariffs generated a lot of noise, some disruption and a good deal of uncertainty, but ultimately did not deliver the knockout blow that some industry observers feared.
As 2025 draws to a close, flooring retailers interviewed by FCNews reported varied results. Some retailers reported gaining single digits while others saw business decline. The year, which began with promise, was bedeviled by persistently high mortgage rates and sour consumer sentiment. Although the Federal Reserve implemented three quarter-point rate cuts in 2025, mortgage rates held steady or rose slightly. The reason is simple. Thirty-year fixed mortgage rates primarily track the 10-year Treasury yield. That makes it a more direct driver of mortgage pricing than short-term Fed moves.
For flooring retailers who are by now accustomed to such agita, the year was confounding on some levels. “For us, 2025 was a roller-coaster year,” said John Taylor, president/owner of Taylor Carpet One Floor & Home, Fort Myers, Fla. “We had months that were up drastically and others significantly down. I really thought this year would be better for us over 2024, but we will end up off. The real estate market is off. People don’t seem comfortable making decisions.”
Coming off a sluggish 2024, Flooring America in Oklahoma City was anticipating a more robust 2025. “Unfortunately, traffic remained soft for the majority of the second half,” said Bobby Merideth, president. “September and October showed some signs of life. We do believe the fundamentals of a recovering economy are in place regardless of the tariffs.”
Pierce Flooring, with three locations in Montana, was not immune to the economic factors plaguing dealers elsewhere. As Greg Loeffler, COO, explained, “Overall, we will finish ahead of 2024 in sales production by a single-digit percentage. The factors which hampered our efforts for greater growth would include interest rates on home mortgages, uncertainty and low confidence in the economy, and political noise and conflict that creates nervousness in consumers.”
Some retailers said they tried to stick to the fundamentals of retailing to make the most of 2025. “We knew this year would present some challenges outside of our control,” said Alex Roberts, CEO of Houston-based Roberts Carpet & Fine Floors, with nine locations. “We opted to ignore the noise, put our heads down, work hard and continue to do what we do best—which is offer superior products and service to our clientele.”
Frazier’s Carpet One Floor & Home in Knoxville, Tenn., pulled out the stops to generate more business in 2025. “We kept the same strong buying power strategy by offering lots of stock options, which made it easy to run promotions and private sales with real savings for customers,” said Mitchell Parton, general manager. “Because we’re close to Dalton, we clearly displayed MSRP, regular and sale prices so customers could see their savings. Price increases meant we had to negotiate special deals and commit early to buying certain styles for better prices, reminding reps of agreements as needed. We boosted marketing with more ads on local sports and news radio, plus live in-store events with prize drawings to bring in more customers.”
In Anniston, Ala., a few hours south of Knoxville, Ted’s Floors & Beyond is putting the finishing touches on a year of modest growth (3%), boosted by larger average tickets. “Traffic has remained the same throughout 2025 as it was in 2024, which is not what we had anticipated,” said Ted Gregerson, president/ owner. “We were hoping for a spike in traffic, but it never came. What helped us to top $10 million for the second straight year was our average ticket size continued to increase. We do a lot of total kitchen and bath makeovers. Those are the two rooms in the house that homeowners are willing to spend a lot of money on.”
Similarly, Venetian Blind Carpet One Floor & Home, based in Houston, leveraged its niche with affluent consumers to carve out a 10% increase in sales from the prior-year period. “I attribute that to the luxury market being strong in the Houston area,” said Gary Touchton, general sales manager. “The bad surprise was our retail traffic was a bit off, but our designer/contractor business was strong. Overall, 2025 was a successful year and we have strong momentum for 2026.”
Tariff impact
While tariffs grabbed the headlines in 2025, most dealers said they were able to work around it and experienced little harm.
“We have positioned our company with valued partners that helped navigate us through the tariff situation, and we did not see an impact on our bottom line as a result of our vendors/partners keeping us in the loop every step of the way to help avoid any increases/costs,” said Darren Harrison, vice president of Sunshine Interiors in Lakeland, Fla.
Meanwhile, Ted’s Floors & Beyond’s Gregerson noted that while tariffs have not been an issue to date, one supplier just announced a 17% increase due to tariffs that will start in January.
Frazier’s Parton, meanwhile, said some of his smaller vendors and distributors implemented periodic price increases through Q2 and Q3. “We did leverage increases by adding more stock at times for pallet/truckload discounts,” he explained. “Most of those specials have dissipated in Q4. We did notice a 1.5% loss of profit due to additional discounts from the RSA’s trying not to lose jobs over pricing.”
In some cases, tariffs turned out to be a good thing by incentivizing customers to buy now rather than wait and face future price increases. “The tariffs in some ways helped us close deals faster but hurt us on lead times/ delays with some specialty imported vendors.”
Flooring America’s Merideth added, “We don’t believe the tariffs affected consumers’ decision to buy flooring, but it has opened their eyes to the value of high-quality, American-made laminate flooring. There was definitely an uptick in both sales and interest in laminate as a result of tariffs.”
