Read any newspaper or watch any newscast, and it would be easy to assume that consumers have completely closed their wallets. All you hear about is inflation, higher interest rates, rising insurance costs, expensive groceries, gas prices, housing affordability, global uncertainty. All valid, I might add. Maybe it’s amplified because it’s a midterm election year and funny things happen leading up to the first Tuesday in November.
Yet, walk into many successful flooring retail stores and you may get a very different impression. Customers are still buying floors. Yes, I know. It’s more of the higher-end consumer who is less impacted by the above concerns. And I know not every retailer is rocking and rolling. If your customer base is pure middle class or a bit below, you are probably struggling. If you are not diversified, you probably have challenges.
But after attending the National Floorcovering Alliance’s fall conference, I realized it’s not all bad out there. Most of the 40-plus dealers are having decent years. Sure, they are among the cream of the flooring retail crop, are well capitalized and grow not because more people are buying flooring, but because they are taking market share. They block and tackle and don’t deviate from the playbook. They continue to market. They seek new opportunities. They learn from each other.
For example, AJ Rose in Boston is up double digits. Part of it is a new location, but even if you take that out, they’re still doing very well. Same holds true for Macco’s Floor Covering Center in Wisconsin and Fort Myers, Fla. “Residentially, we’re seeing single-digit growth,” said Scott Browne, co-owner, and new NFA president. “Retail has been strong, particularly higher end, which leads to higher margins. And commercial has seen double-digit growth across the board with contracts in the hopper.”
Flooring 101 in Ventura County, Calif., is up 7% year over year. Some of it is inflation-related numbers; some of it is bigger tickets being sold; and some of it is multifamily, which the company began to target last year and is now seeing the payoff, said Ian Newton, general manager. Hadinger’s in high-rent district Naples, Fla., is doing better, “because the people with money are still spending.”
Nebraska Furniture Mart is simply taking market share with a reputation for offering the best value. If you remove ancillary products from the mix, the behemoth is up nearly double digits. And Grigsby’s Carpet Tile & Hardwood in Tulsa, Okla., is parlaying longevity into double-digit growth with jobs “just dropping into our laps because we’ve been here forever,” said Penny Carnino, director of operations. The other key is diversification with a 50% commercial, 50% residential blend.
One of the most interesting characteristics of today’s economy is what economists have dubbed the “K-shaped” consumer. The concept is simple. Some consumers are struggling with higher everyday expenses and are pulling back. Others—particularly higher-income households—continue to spend because they have more disposable income, greater accumulated wealth and, in many cases, less sensitivity to price increases.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that since 2023, retail spending growth has been driven disproportionately by households earning more than $125,000. It also found that wealth has increased substantially more for higher-income households while inflation has had a greater impact on lower-income households.
That has enormous implications for flooring. A homeowner who is already prepared to spend $15,000, $25,000 or $40,000 on a flooring project isn’t going to abandon the project because the price of the flooring goes up another 5% or 10%. For someone with less disposable income, however, a $2,000 increase in the cost of a project can be the difference between doing it now and putting it off for another year.
By the way, those with money are still renovating. According to Houzz’s 2026 U.S. renovation study, more than half of homeowners undertook renovation projects in 2025. Median renovation spending remained at $20,000, but the high end actually moved higher: The top 10% of renovation projects reached $150,000 or more, up from $140,000 the previous year.
Think about what that means for a floor covering retailer. The customer who is remodeling an entire house isn’t looking at flooring as a commodity. Flooring is part of the overall design investment. If the kitchen costs more, the cabinets cost more and the countertops cost more, the consumer is not putting crappy flooring throughout the house.
There is a tendency in our industry to hear that consumers are “cutting back” and assume everyone is cutting back. They’re not. Consumers across all income groups are becoming more selective about what they buy. Selective doesn’t mean broke. It means they are deciding where they want to spend their money. And flooring retailers need to make sure flooring remains on that list.
There is plenty of money still circulating—it’s just not evenly distributed. The customer with $200,000 in the bank is dealing with inflation much differently than the person who is trying to stretch every paycheck. The successful flooring retailer understands that. He or she isn’t waiting for the economy to get better.
