Lake Tahoe, Nev.—This year marked the 35th anniversary of the National Floorcovering Alliance (NFA), and while much has changed over the years, what has remained the same are the rebates and networking opportunities on which the group was founded.
About 75 floor covering retailers have called themselves NFA members at one time or another since 1991, and almost all have brought value to the group in one way or another.
Ian Newton, the current NFA president and general manager of Flooring 101 in Ventura County, Calif., has been attending NFA meetings regularly since 2008. He talked about two of the biggest changes over the years. “Today, there are a lot more second-generation members in the group, a much younger demographic,” he said. “And the meetings have changed from being just product focused to include other relevant topics like technology, although product and the roll/pallet buys are still an important part of what we do. There are more business opportunities being presented to the group, more education, which brings a lot of value. There is also more structure to the meetings than there was in the past.”
Penny Carnino, director of operations, Grigsby’s Carpet Tile and Hardwood in Tulsa, Okla., recalled the early days. “At one point there were two different factions within the NFA,” she said. “There used to be those on the retail side and there were many more builder dealers [than today]. And we would do separate breakouts in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. But over time, just about all the builder dealers dropped out for one reason or another, although there are many members that service that part of the business.”
That’s not to say every dealer in the group today is strictly residential retail, Carnino explained. “CFM’s business model (wholesale, to the trade) is different. L&L (builder) is different. General Floor is different. Even though they have different business models, we gain such great information from sharing our relationships with each other.”
One thing that everyone can agree upon is this group is looking for more technology. “They do business differently than the old school,” Newton said. “And that’s indicative of how our markets are today. How we reach our consumers has changed.”
In illustration, two focuses of this year’s spring meeting were marketing and AI—which are intertwined. While most members said they are currently using AI to varying degrees, they all admit they are still learning. For example, Great Lakes Carpet & Flooring in the Orlando, Fla., area recently produced a commercial that was totally AI driven. The commercial featured dogs walking through the showroom and talking about pet-friendly products.
Dave Chambers, flooring director, Nebraska Furniture Mart, led a breakout session on AI. “I specifically talked about the LLM (the long language model), ChatGPT, Copilot, Grock, and really showcased the difference between using AI as an assistant versus how to leverage AI as a strategic thought partner. We showed different ways of formulating prompts and using particular frameworks to solve business problems. We actually did some live. We asked the group for a true business problem they were dealing with and used AI to come up with three different strategies for them to implement in a matter of 30 minutes.”
Chambers added that Nebraska Furniture Mart leverages AI in every aspect of its business from efficiency models to marketing and advertising. “It’s become its own entity at NFM,” he said. “It’s not a flavor anymore. It’s built into everything we do on a day in and day out basis.”
Jessica Arscott, vice president, Floortrends in Ontario, Canada, led the marketing breakout which, not coincidentally, was tied to AI. “My focus was on practical applications of AI that people need to be implementing to help their marketing,” she said. “That means changing from traditional search engine optimization to optimization that will get them picked up in the conversational questions that come through places like ChatGPT.”
Sam Locher, vice president of business development and marketing at AJ Rose in Boston, co-presented the AI breakout with Chambers. “We had real life examples of next level, not just helping write an email, but trying to do some demographic research and how to use AI to really dive into shopping your website.”
He noted that AI has become part of the framework at AJ Rose. “Just taking shortcuts on things that would normally bog me down that I can get a jumpstart on,” he said. “And also giving me some different perspectives on things without having to tap somebody else. It’s also helped us with marketing. And we’ve also started to get leads where people have said they actually found us through ChatGPT.”
2026 off to solid start
Despite some headwinds in the first quarter—namely regional weather issues and higher fuel prices as a byproduct of the Iranian war—NFA members said they are happy with business through the first quarter and are optimistic about a stronger 2026 than 2025. “There has to be a tremendous amount of pent-up demand for flooring because of how the market has been over the last 24 months,” Newton said. “Generally the group is pretty positive overall.”
AJ Rose’s Locher classified the first quarter as “generally strong. The first two months were up residentially, so we’re happy with that. And we are still up even though we had to close four or five days due to the heavy snowstorms.” He attributed the positive quarter to the fact people are finally adjusting to the new rates and have decided to move on with life.
In Naples, Hadinger Flooring president Susan Hadinger described the first quarter as encouraging. “Naples is not gangbusters, but I think good things are on the horizon.”
Things are good all around for Macco’s Floor Covering Center. “Our fiscal Q1 ended Feb. 28, and we’re up on retail, both in Fort Myers, Fla., and all Wisconsin locations,” said Scott Browne, president. “Our commercial business is up double digits. So it’s been a really strong start for us.” Why? “Commercially, we specialize in healthcare and education, and we’ve had contracts in place that were postponed or held off a little in the last six months of 2025. Retail, I think it’s pent-up demand. I’ve had customers come in saying, ‘I’ve got a bigger tax return this year.’ So they came in early to make investments in the home. We also ran one of our largest Premier Flooring Center invitation sales in our 25-year history, which just happened the first couple days of March. So it’s going to set us up for strong success in Q2 as well.”
Chambers said Nebraska Furniture Mart opened the year with a “great” January, slid a little going into early February, but rebounded due to a strong President’s Day promotion. “That was a big holiday weekend for us, which brought us back going into March. So it’s been a good quarter.”
Grigsby’s has seen “some really great retail traffic,” Carnino said. “Our numbers are pretty flat, but I think it’s because we still have so much commercial work out there that we haven’t been able to close and get on the books. When those numbers finally get on the books, I think it’s going to be great. But retail has been really strong. It could be some pent-up demand. I think initially consumer confidence in our area, being a red state, has been pretty good. I’m expecting good things the rest of the year.”
California always seems to be a different animal, and this year is no exception despite a solid first quarter for Flooring 101.
“January was a strong month for us, the retail side of it,” Newton said. “We were probably flat in February and March has been a little slow. Foot traffic is definitely slower. Our saving grace would be on the multifamily side. We started hitting multifamily pretty hard in the last year and a half, and that has attributed to a lot of our growth. We’re still seeing higher tickets and more expensive goods being sold. The middle’s gone away. So you have the low end and high end.”
In Canada, Floortrends’ Arscott has faced some headwinds with new home construction in Ontario being depressed right now, as it was throughout 2025. But retail and commercial have been positives. “Those segments have been carrying us through,” she said. “So things are actually promising for 2026.”
Interestingly, NFA members have not felt the effects of the higher fuel prices—at least not yet. “I think the biggest indicator is going to be oil prices and the mills’ cost increases passed on to the consumer,” Browne said. “Eventually the consumer will say no. We try to shield our customers from tariff discussions and things like that, but eventually when the cost continues to rise, it could become a problem at retail.”
The worst thing for the market is the unknown, Newton said. “Uncertainty is the biggest fear that everybody has. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there with the war, prices and tariffs. It obviously affects the retail market.”
Predictably, the two largest flooring manufacturers announced price hikes during the NFA meeting ranging from 8% to 10% on residential carpet. “Oil goes up and that’s the first thing you hear: ‘Oh, freight’s a problem; we’re going to raise prices,’” Carnino said. “I personally think that’s premature on their part. They were talking this morning about a ceasefire and oil went down 10%.”
In other NFA news:
• NFA elections are coming up in the fall and as such, the current board will rotate off. As a group, the board can tout many accomplishments over the last four years, most notably:
• Adding some strong new members, such as: Jordans in Vancouver; Thornton Flooring in South Dakota; and USA Flooring in North Carolina.
• Bylaw changes, such as requiring five votes to block a potential new member from joining the group as opposed to one vote, and updating the succession plan to allow members to turn over more than 50% of their ownership to a sibling, niece, nephew or spouse’s child without having to reapply for NFA membership.
• Expanding the roll buy to multiple categories (polyester, decorative) to make it more meaningful to more members.
• Molyneaux Home in Pittsburgh is back in the group following an ownership change, necessitating the need to reapply. “That’s the rule if the sale is more than 50% outside the family,” Newton said.
• Cali continues to go above and beyond for the NFA, members say. “They’re starting to add some local representation and, as a group, we have grown with them tremendously,” Carnino said. Newton added: “I think we have the opportunity to grow even more. Cali gets what we’re about and what our needs are. I guess you could say they bring it. They work with each individual member’s needs in their marketplace.”
