Who Else Wants to Make £100 Per Hour Measuring Other People’s Front Rooms?
Mark Hempshell – Chief Business Blueprint Editor
I think you’ll agree there’s far too much doom and gloom around at the moment. OK, so everything isn’t a bed of roses. But the media are making things seem a whole lot worse than they are. They’d have you believe small businesses are going to the wall every minute. When the truth is, most are still managing to tick along nicely... and some are even doing quite well.
So what do I think is the secret of succeeding with a small business in a slump? Almost without doubt... giving customers what they want to buy at a price they can afford to pay. Take pizza delivery and other takeaway food businesses. Apparently, business is booming right now. Because they’re giving people what they want – a modest treat – at an affordable price. Call it the ‘Domino’s Effect’ if you like!
The challenge, of course, is to find such a business you can actually start today. Well, I think I’ve found another one for you here!
This business opportunity is already proven and well established. It offers customers nationwide something they want to buy. But it does it in a slightly unconventional way. Which means you can deliver it to your customers at a price they can afford to pay – even in a recession.
It is a... mobile carpet supply and fitting business.
Before you say, look, I don’t know the first thing about fitting carpets – well – you don’t really need to! You won’t be doing any of the actual ‘hard work’ yourself. You won’t need a showroom, a big van, stock, tools or a large cash investment. It makes a great sideline business. Can you use a tape measure accurately? Yes? Well you can get started in this opportunity.
Why this is a great business for now
Ok, so carpets aren’t the most glamorous business to get involved in. But they’re a solid, real business. Something that, pre-crunch, was one of the biggest home improvement products going... worth £1,300,000,000 a year according to some research I’ve seen!
Yes, people have cut back on home spending right now. But they still want to buy things like furnishings, carpets and other home improvements. They just have less to spend on them... and want more economical options.
Here’s why this opportunity is so clever: Because this business is home-based and mobile you don’t have the massive overheads that conventional carpet shops do. So you can give people what they want – new fitted carpets – at a reasonable price. Yet you can still make a good income from it yourself. (Come to think about it, you could apply this same principle to selling a lot of other products and services in a recession.)
Bear in mind that price is not the only sales advantage of this business. You will also attract business from people who can’t get out to carpet shops, or can’t or don’t want to travel. For example, elderly people, disabled people, people at home with small children, etc., will all find this type of mobile service particularly attractive.
What you need to get started
Like I said, conventional carpet shops have large showrooms, extensive displays, lots of staff and hundreds of rolls of carpet in stock. Ultimately the customer pays for all that overhead. But by visiting customers in their own homes you can slash costs and offer much more competitive pricing.
All you need to get started is some transport, a telephone and some promotional literature – I’ll help you with that shortly. You will also need to line up some wholesale suppliers for carpets and someone to fit the carpets for you. Again – details of how to do that coming up.
You won’t need any stock. But you will need some carpet samples to show to your customers. Your suppliers will be able to provide you with some samples and brochures either free or for a nominal cost.
Sorting out some suppliers
This shouldn’t be too much of a problem. There are lots of wholesale suppliers of carpet around. They can supply you with more or less any carpet your customer will ever want, cut to the approximate size the customer requires, and delivered direct in as little as 24 hours.
This sounds a bit cumbersome compared to buying carpet from a shop, but there are big advantages. Firstly, you can offer almost any carpet a customer wants without needing your own massive warehouse full of carpet. Secondly, you only buy the carpet you actually sell. You won’t need any working capital and you won’t end up with a load of unsold roll ends later. It’s efficiencies like this that make businesses more viable in the credit crunch.
Once you get established you could always buy in entire rolls of carpet for stock. This will work out slightly cheaper, and you will also be able to take advantage of job lots and special purchases. However, you will need some working capital and storage space so, in the early days, don’t consider it.
There are various ways to find wholesale carpet suppliers. Have a look in your local Yellow Pages to see if there are any nearby. To get you started, I’ve listed a few carpet wholesalers in a special document pack – details of how to get it are at the end of this blueprint.
Sorting out a fitter
This is another thing that makes this business so efficient: By using self-employed carpet fitters you only actually have to pay for the work they do. You don’t need any full-time employees! Actually, although you usually only need one fitter on each job it makes sense to line up two or three – so one should always be available whenever you make a sale.
To find self-employed carpet fitters look in your Yellow Pages. Otherwise you could advertise for ‘Carpet Fitters Wanted’ in your local newspapers. This website has a useful directory of carpet fitters, as well as other useful info: www.carpetfitters.biz. By the way, don’t use DIYers or odd-jobbers – only experienced fitters who do good quality work.
In most cases, the fitter will have a standard rate for fitting carpet worked out by the square metre. This will be the same for every carpet they fit – with the exception of stairs for which they normally charge extra. Fitters may also charge extra for accessories like gripper rods and door bars and any special work like joining carpets. Make a note of these charges as you will need them later when giving quotes to customers.
What types of carpet to sell
Now a bit of technical info on carpets. Stay with me here – this isn’t quite as complicated as it might seem. You won’t need to become an expert on carpet types! Here’s a quick five-minute briefing on what you need to know about the main types of carpet on the market...
Machine Woven Carpets: Made by looms that weave together carpet yarn and backing. Mainly higher-end, expensive carpets such as traditional Axminsters and Wiltons.
Tufted Carpets: A pre-woven backing has yarn tufted into it. Tufted carpets come in a number of forms, but the most popular are either twist pile, velvet pile or loop pile. All these are very economic and so these are very popular carpets.
Fibre Bonded Carpets: Made by bonding fibres to the carpet backing. Mainly used for commercial carpets and carpet tiles, less popular for home use.
Synthetic Carpets: These are carpets made from synthetic fibres, mainly nylon and polypropylene. They are available in many styles and colours in all pile types. They are very hard-wearing, even in high traffic areas, easily steam cleaned and very stain resistant. However, the pile may not be as soft underfoot as wool or wool blend carpets. Very economical and popular carpets.
Wool & Wool Blend Carpets: These types of carpet are hard-wearing yet comfortable underfoot. Wool and wool blend carpets tend to be more limited in the patterns and colour choices available. They are available as twist pile, velvet pile or loop pile. Wool and wool blend carpets tend to be the more costly options than fully synthetic carpets, although this varies greatly according to the blend.
Trade tip for making everything simpler: Go into any large carpet shop and you’ll find what appear to be hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds!) of different carpets in different materials, patterns and colours. You might wonder how you are possibly going to offer your customers all these carpets.
Fortunately, you don’t have to! Because it is a general rule in the carpet business that 80% of customers choose from just 20% of carpets on the market. So by offering just a small selection from a vast possible range you can serve the majority of customers quite easily.
You only need to offer a limited colour choice: So OK, you can get carpets in just about every colour including pink and bright orange stripes... yes, you really can! If your customer wants unusual carpets like these you can get them from your wholesale suppliers. But in truth hardly anybody wants carpets in those colours. Here are the five main carpet colour groups that will cater for at least 80% if not more of the enquiries you get:
Natural shades – Blue shades – Green shades – Brown shades – Red shades.
Advertising your business
Now, as this is a fairly competitive business I think you will need to put a fair bit of effort into advertising and marketing. Fortunately, there are lots of different ways and most of them are fairly cheap.
Shop window card advertising is a very cheap way of pulling in business. You won’t get hundreds of leads but just a handful a month is all you need.
Another very effective method of local advertising is door-to-door drop leaflets. Drop them yourself or use a distribution firm. When you do this target your drop areas carefully. The ideal areas are average/middle income areas with small/average-sized homes where people are looking for good value. And make sure your cards and leaflets are of good quality. Poor quality items will give the impression you do poor quality work!
Good tip: When dropping leaflets a good idea is to do call backs the next day. Knock on the door and ask people if they have received your leaflet, and if they are thinking about a new carpet. Lots of people receiving leaflets are interested in what’s on offer but never get around to calling you. (By dropping a leaflet first it makes it a bit easier than cold calling too.)
Newspaper advertising is another good method. Use local newspapers – since you don’t want or need orders from all over the country. All you need is a small classified or display ad. – nothing fancy.
The next important advertising method is the good old Yellow Pages directory. This is a place a lot of people go shopping for home services, so it is a winner for this type of business. Now one snag of advertising this way is that you may have to wait up to a year to get into the next print run. So in the meantime test different ads in newspapers and then put your best-pulling one into the Yellow Pages.
Free sales copy. To help you get started, we’ve put together some professional sales copy. You can use this copy as a window card, poster, leaflet or ad. To download a copy – and some other useful free stuff for this business – go to: www.canonburypublishing.com/carpet
Don’t forget word-of-mouth advertising. Tell all your family, friends and work colleagues you are setting up a mobile carpet fitting business. Some of them are bound to know people who want a new carpet. When you’ve fitted a carpet for a new customer give them some of your leaflets and ask if they would please recommend you to their family, friends and work colleagues. This can make for great free advertising.
How to handle enquiries professionally
It’s true to say that running this sort of business involves a certain element of salesmanship, but don’t be scared off by the idea of selling. Remember, you have a very strong hand when selling carpets on a mobile basis. You can offer very competitive prices yet exactly the same quality of product and service as the big carpet shops.
You could hire professional salespeople to do the selling and pay them on commission – about 20% is usual for anything like this. But generally, you will have much better results if you do it yourself. Customers actually prefer to deal direct with the owner of small businesses like this.
The sales process starts the minute you take the first enquiry call. Never give a quote over the phone or by e-mail! It is impossible to quote properly for a new carpet over the phone and chances are, if you do, you will fail to make a sale. Instead, offer the customer a free measuring up service. Try to arrange this as soon as possible (within one or two days) while the customer is still enthusiastic and in a buying frame of mind.
Offering a free measure-up is a great way to close the sale too. This is not just a visit to measure up. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate the product (i.e. the carpet) to your customer and persuade them to buy from you rather than a shop!
Be led by the customer here. Ask them what type of carpet (i.e. wool, wool blend or synthetic fibres) and colour they are thinking of. Most customers will already have a fairly clear idea of what they are looking for as they will have bought carpets before, or already been looking around the carpet shops. So you do not necessarily need a detailed knowledge of carpet. Remember: It is much easier to sell a customer what you know they want... than try to sell them a type or colour of carpet that they probably do not want!
Once you have discovered this, pull out samples of the carpet you know they are interested in – perhaps offering a selection of similar colours and types for them to choose from. Hold the samples against the old carpet. Let the customer handle them too. These are simple, proven ways of maximising sales.
Trade tip: Although you should generally let the customer sell themselves what they want, do not let them choose something that is blatantly unsuitable, i.e. a carpet that is intended for light wear situations such as a bedroom for a heavy wear area such as the stairs. Ultimately they will be dissatisfied, and this will not get you the recommendation business that can be so valuable.
Measuring up and pricing
Now the customer has decided what they want more or less, you need to measure up. This isn’t difficult to do. But it does call for careful measuring. When you order the carpet it will be cut to the approximate size needed, so if you make a mistake it can be expensive!
All you will need is a good quality tape measure, preferably one that measures at least 10m, a pencil and a copy of our measuring up grid. You can download a copy of this measuring up grid free by going to www.canonburypublishing.com/carpet
Draw a plan of the room on the grid. Then measure each wall of the room carefully and mark the measurements on the grid.
Trade tip: Bear in mind that not every room is perfectly square or rectangular, even if it looks square and, in fact, they very often are NOT. So be sure to measure all the walls of a room just in case one side is slightly longer or shorter then the other!
Trade tip: Bear in mind that most carpets come in various widths as standard – such as 2m, 3m, 4m and 5m. Although not every carpet make comes in every width. If several rooms are involved you can piece each room together to make the most economic use of the width. Try and avoid having to make joins where possible. The fitter will charge extra for these and they do not always look neat.
If the customer requires new underlay, this can be obtained from your wholesale supplier and priced up in exactly the same way. Remember, your fitter will make an extra charge for fitting this too.
Once you have the measurements work out how many square metres of carpet are needed by multiplying the longest length of each side of the room. Get the price list for the carpet the customer has selected and work out the cost of the carpet. Most trade price lists will show a discounted trade price to you, and a suggested recommended retail price. You can use this RRP or charge whatever you think appropriate. Now add on the cost of fitting given to you by your fitter and work out the total cost for the customer.
Closing the sale
Here are a few hints and tips – that have proven themselves successful the world over – and will help make the whole process easier and more pleasant!
• Dress neatly for the measuring up – a jacket rather than working clothes. It really does make a difference.
• Listen more than you speak. There’s no need to be pushy. Remember, people must be interested in buying a new carpet or they wouldn’t have called you in!
• Demonstrate your samples in the room or rooms that is/are going to be recarpeted, not in any other room. It is much easier for your customer to envisage what their newly transformed room will look like.
• Where applicable, ensure that both partners (husband and wife or whatever) are present. It is easier to get a decision if both decision makers are at home.
• When pricing, price everything at the most expensive option available first. If the customer thinks that is too much it is easier to offer them a cheaper alternative to close the sale. The great thing with carpet is that there is nearly always a cheaper alternative.
• Selling new underlay can be a good profit-earner as the mark-up is as much as carpet if not more. However, if the customer is concerned about the price suggest they re-use the old underlay if suitable. It is better to lose the underlay sale alone than lose the entire carpet sale.
• Try and persuade the customer to order there and then if possible. If they have time to ‘think about it’ they are less likely to order – and there is a greater risk they might buy from a carpet shop.
Once the customer decides to go ahead ask them to sign an order form and request a deposit from them there and then. Advise the customer they’ll need to pay the balance direct to the fitter on the fitting day.
Trade tip: In the carpet fitting business it is usual for the ‘deposit’ to equal the trade cost of the carpet plus your profit margin. The ‘balance’ is actually the payment to the fitter for fitting the carpet. This keeps things nice and simple. Incidentally, DON’T explain this to the customer because it will give away your profit margins and, quite honestly, there is no need for them to know this little trade secret!
Arranging the job
All you need to do now is make the arrangements – it should only take you a few minutes at most. First, call your chosen fitter. Ask them when they can do the job. Most fitters can fit a carpet within a week. Call your customer back and confirm the date.
Now order the carpet from your wholesaler. Get them to deliver it direct to your fitter. Most fitters have a large van so that won’t be a problem for them. And most suppliers can offer delivery on a specific day, usually guaranteed 24 or 48 hour delivery. Don’t have it delivered too soon as most fitters have a limited amount of storage space. Also, avoid having it delivered direct to the customer. If they’re not in when it arrives, or the carpet doesn’t arrive on the day it should, that will cause unnecessary problems.
In most cases, that’s all you need to do! The fitter will fit the carpet and collect the balance (which effectively is their payment for doing the job) direct from the customer... keeping the admin, to an absolute minimum and helping make this business even more efficient.
A nice touch is to call the customer that evening and ask if they’re happy with everything. This is a good way of encouraging them to recommend you – and getting the all-important repeat and recommendation business.
Back-of-an-envelope profit calculation
There are lots of different price and size permutations for carpet. So every job is going to be different. But let’s look at a typical job, to give you an idea of what you could make.
For example – a typical living room carpet. This might be 4m x 4m which, if you prefer old measurements, is about 13ft by 13ft. That’s 16sqm of carpet.
Say your customer chooses a carpet which retails at £25 a square metre. There are much more expensive ones and much cheaper ones, but that’s a good rule of thumb.
So you would quote them £400 for the carpet plus the cost of fitting which is payable direct to the fitter. Allow £5 a square metre tops for that. To keep things simple let’s assume they’re reusing the existing underlay here. Also that no additional gripper rods and door bars are needed. (If they are, the fitter can supply them.)
You could probably order that carpet from a wholesaler for £12 a square metre delivered. So it would cost you £192, and you would sell it out for £400 – making you £208 for the job.
So OK, that’s not an enormous amount of money. But look at it in hourly terms. The whole job will have taken you no more than two hours to measure up, sell and do the admin, for. So essentially you’re looking at over £100 an hour... not bad at all!
As I said there’s no such thing as an average job. A small bedroom would earn you less. Then again, you might get orders for two or three rooms or even a whole house, which would make you considerably more.
Other profitable opportunities
Once you’re established in the mobile carpet fitting business you’ll find that there are various other related products you can offer on exactly the same basis. You don’t have to, but it makes very good sense. Because customers for one product will be customers for another. So you may be able to get many orders from the same customer at the same time or over a period of months. That means less advertising and higher profit margins – great credit crunch busters.
Here are a some of the other products you can offer and, briefly, how to offer them:
Vinyl: Most people have a need for vinyl flooring somewhere in their house, usually in the kitchen and bathroom. The good thing about vinyl flooring is that it is a good budget alternative. It is cheap to buy and cheap to fit, so even in a recession there is a good demand for it. Most carpet wholesalers also sell a range of vinyl and most carpet fitters can also fit it for you – although always check whether they can or not when you set up an arrangement with them.
Laminate Floors: So OK, laminate flooring is a bit early 2000s perhaps, but there’s still a good demand for it. It comes in a range of finishes and qualities from economy to high quality so you can easily offer something to suit any customer’s budget. There are plenty of trade suppliers around, and some laminate flooring retailers will offer you a discount if you are ‘trade’.
The only slight snag with laminate flooring is finding somebody who can fit it to a good standard at a reasonable price. Ideally, you don’t want to hire a qualified joiner as this can work out quite expensive for your customer. Try and find a good handyman... but do make sure they are experienced in laying laminate flooring.
Ceramic Tiling: Generally ceramic floor tiling is something you should regard as a more upmarket service, to offer to your better-off customers. Good quality ceramic tiles and good quality tilers don’t come cheap. That said, it’s a simple enough bolt on to offer. Source the tiles, get a trade discount on them, then pass the work on to an experienced tiler. There are plenty of tilers, some of whom have been made redundant from the building industry, looking for work like this right now.
P.S. Don’t forget to download your FREE carpet business document pack. This pack includes a measuring up grid to help you measure and cost a job, sample sales copy to use as a leaflet or poster – and a list of selected carpet wholesalers. You can find it here: www.canonburypublishing.com/carpet