Portsmouth, N.H.—Jeff Katz, the founder and owner of Dolphin Carpet & Tile, passed away on July 21. He was 77.
A member of the National Floorcovering Alliance (NFA), Dolphin has been in business for five decades and operates nine locations in South Florida.
In a statement sent to NFA members, Cary Cass, general manager, wrote: “Jeff poured his life into this company for 53 years, and he cared just as deeply about the relationships he built within the NFA and with our vendors. He believed in what this alliance stands for—the trust, friendship and shared commitment to doing things the right way. Long before yesterday, Jeff made sure a strong, trusted structure was in place so that everything he built would continue.”
Katz’s path to flooring ownership was somewhat unconventional. In the early 1970s, as a final year law student at The University of Miami, Katz was working as a clerk for the law firm Ser & Keyfetz. At the time, the firm needed new floor covering. Katz, who grew up in the flooring business working for his father’s business in New England, told the managing partner that he could sell him the floor covering. He made $3,000 on that one job.
A year and a half later, Katz quit practicing law, flew to the Chicago market and told his father that after years of prep school, private university and law school he was going to get into floor covering full time.
Katz started the business out of his garage, calling it Jeff Katz Carpets. Katz said he initially rejected changing the name to Dolphin Carpet (which a close friend had advised), because, as a New Englander and fan of the Patriots, he hated the Dolphins football team (a division rival) because they were routinely beating the Pats back then. However, in 1976, Katz decided to change the name to Dolphin because the Miami football team had won two of the three prior Super Bowls and the business would receive instant name recognition.
When he started Jeff Katz Carpet the business did $750,000 in sales the first year. But following the rebranding, the retailer expanded beyond carpet into tile, hardwood, laminate and luxury vinyl—and business really took off. By 2015, Dolphin was doing $25 million at 10 locations (it now has 9).
Katz once told FCNews, “Around 1993 or 1994, we went to the tile show in Miami Beach. We decided we had to import ourselves if we were going to be competitive. And that led us to importing laminate and at one point wood. Miami is such a competitive market; you have to import goods. That allows us to keep healthy profit margins, which supports our advertising.”
The company’s success led to the opening of a second store in North Miami; in the 1990s, Dolphin expanded to Davie. From there Katz felt Dolphin needed to maximize the “advertising umbrella” and expanded the business to cover all of Miami-Dade and Broward counties, becoming one of South Florida’s largest flooring retailers.
In an interview with The Miami Herald in 2017, Katz said the retailer’s success took a lot of hard work. “I think part of it was that growing up in a small New England town, I realized that if you don’t satisfy customers, you are out of business. From the time I started the business, I always tried to satisfy customers and do the job right at a fair price. If a customer has a legitimate complaint, I take care of it as soon as possible.”
In an email to Dolphin staff following Katz’s passing, Cass reassured employees that the retailer has a good “structure” in place for the future.
