If you need to replace your carpets or floors, choose materials that are safe for your health and the planet.
EPA
studies have shown that indoor pollutant levels can be two to five
times higher than they are outside. To find the source of many of these
pollutants, just glance down. Installation of new carpet and flooring
can fill the air with hundreds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs),
including known and suspected carcinogens like formaldehyde and
benzene. It can take years for these substances to dissipate. In
addition, carpets are often treated with toxic chemicals for
mothproofing or to repel soil and moisture. Carpeting is also notorious
for trapping toxic lawn chemicals, VOCs, and allergens tracked in from
outside.
There are several sustainable flooring options that can...
Read more:
Eco-Friendly Flooring
Acid Etched Concrete
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Handscraped Hardwood Flooring, Laminates, Tile
California’s
Best Flooring Company
415.742.0723
Call For Free Samples & In-Home Estimate of All Types Of Flooring
Products
We carry thousands of products! We carry and all major flooring brands! California’s Best Flooring
Company is a state wide flooring company who is proud to offer its flooring
services to all the wonderful homeowners and businesses of The Golden State.
We
provide all types of flooring materials, flooring design expertise, and turnkey
flooring installations in California.
Customers can either shop directly on our sister website until our new site is
up and running:
We specialize in wood
flooring, solid wood floors, engineered wood flooring, laminate flooring,
carpeting, cork flooring, tile flooring, granite countertops, bamboo floors,
rubber flooring, natural stone, glue down vinyl plank flooring, and many other
types of flooring.
Many home owners have been
remodeling their homes lately, and wood flooring and carpeting seem to be the
two biggest factors they are considering as a home improvement. Homeowners should
not install seconds or some lesser quality flooring products in home. Due to
increasing home values, residents should make sure they only select #1 grade flooring material and carpeting for quality
and long product life. With California’s Best
Flooring Company, homeowners get the best flooring at the best possible price!
We specialize in taking
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and know our customers’ needs inside and out.
Please call or email today and potentially save yourself thousands of
dollars from locally-owned, fully independent franchise of the Best Flooring
Network.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
California's Best Flooring Company's New Office!
Good day, all!
California's Best Flooring Company is pleased to announce the opening of their new office space on San Francisco's historic Embarcadero waterfront:
Todd Stimpson
California's Best Flooring Company
201 Spear Street, Suite 1100
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.742.0723 office
415.830.2758 mobile
Call today for the lowest prices on Bausen, Max Windsor, Eleganza, Topcu, and many other great manufacturers! 415.742.0723, or www.texasbestflooringcompany.com until our new website goes live.
California's Best Flooring Company is pleased to announce the opening of their new office space on San Francisco's historic Embarcadero waterfront:
Todd Stimpson
California's Best Flooring Company
201 Spear Street, Suite 1100
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.742.0723 office
415.830.2758 mobile
Call today for the lowest prices on Bausen, Max Windsor, Eleganza, Topcu, and many other great manufacturers! 415.742.0723, or www.texasbestflooringcompany.com until our new website goes live.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Getting a Flooring Estimate without getting Ripped Off
How to Get A Proper Flooring
Estimate and Discount Without Getting Ripped Off
Whenever
we do a home improvement, we first find a contractor or company who is going to
do the work and ask them to give us a written estimate for the total cost of
the work to be done. Most contractors
will first present the customer with a lump sum price. Do not accept this and do not ask for a
discount on a lump sum price. Each estimate is comprised of three or four
items; the costs of labor, the cost of materials, taxes, and the costs of the
overhead and profit of the contractor.
When you ask for a discount on a lump sum price one cannot be sure where
the discount is coming from. As a home
owner you don't want the discount to come from the quality of the materials.
Secondly you don't want the contractor to discount the labor by hiring less
than perfect craftsmen. You want the
discount to come from the contractor's profit margin. A fair profit for the
skill and service of a contractor is 15-20% on each job or project. However, I am seeing many companies making a
killing off uneducated consumers on an average of 35-60% with terrible
craftsmanship or materials.
Your
First 5-10% Discount
The best
way to avoid this is as follows: first,
ask the contractor to break the estimate down into its 3 or 4 parts. (labor, materials, Taxes and OP: Overhead and
Profit). Remember some contractors will
apply a small profit margin on the material and a larger margin on labor. In a
written contract specify that the contractor use only craftsmen that have a
minimum of 5 years hands on experience in doing your particular desired task
and make sure that if the job is subcontracted out by the company you’re paying
that they warranty the work of the subcontractor they are using. For example, Home Depot hires out all of its
contracted work yet warranties the work itself.
You don’t want to come into a situation when someone says, “Oh that’s an
improper installation issue. I just sell the materials and you’ll have to go
find the installers yourself”.
Get a
labor square foot, per-unit installation price if applicable. Locking this in
prevents the contractor from charging more later on in a project should you
decide you want to do more work. Then
ask the contractor to break down the exact materials to be used by name, brand,
and specifications for the job and offer to go to the supplier and pay for the
materials yourself. All contractors mark
up materials. If you pay for the materials and pay the supplier to deliver the
materials, you avoid the mark up and you make sure you are getting the right
quality materials for the job (i.e. nothing gets switched out en route to your
house). Plus, you maintain control of
your money and this avoids the “Half-down up-front, never see you again
situation”.
It also
helps you from being over charged. For example: The contractor says you need
1,000 square feet of wood flooring and you buy 1,000 square feet from the
supplier. You have it delivered and you know how many boxes equal 1,000 SF
since you have the invoice. When the job is finished and you have too many left
over boxes then you were mislead as to the square footage of the project. If you have the labor rate separated in your
contract at a per square foot price then you can say, “Hey I have 200 square
feet left over of material and you charged me $2.50 a square foot for labor to
install it I am subtracting 200 x $2.50 = $500.00 off the final balance of the
job. I always write on my contracts
exactly how many boxes are going to come to the house. Watch the installers toward the end of the
job; They will start moving extra material to their trucks to avoid you from
seeing this overcharge as well since they get a paid cut for this extra ghost
square footage as well. Remember all material
is yours if it comes to your home! Count all the boxes. If the contractor gives
you any problems about not paying once he or she is caught, then just remember
this phrase, “Theft of Services”. If you
pay a contractor for work that they do not perform then you can file a
complaint with the local district attorney’s office for theft of services. Don’t be afraid to use this term if the
contractor tries to collect on work they didn’t do or add square footage that
never existed.
Note: The
best way to find a supplier is to contact a products manufacturer. They will then give you a list of certified
distributors/suppliers of their product.
All contracts then go to these distributors to get the material they use
in your home. Some suppliers will not accept
payment from the public but many will.
It’s worth the try of at least a phone call to see how much they charge.
It is safe to say the contractor will always mark materials up 10-30%. So if you have to use a contractor to procure
the materials no matter what get a 5% discount here.
Your
Next 5-10% Discount
Now that
you have specified and control the materials to be used for the job, the next
discount will come from the labor line-item. Most labor is marked up 15-25%. Wow, I know
right? Ask for a 20% discount on this line items total. Settle for 5-10%. Never settle for no discount as the meat of
all profit for the contractor or sales rep commission is hidden here.
Your
Next 5% Discount
Part
three of the estimate should be a tax line item. Taxes should only be calculated on the
material costs only. The reason
contractors give you a lump sum bid is so they can tax the whole project. It is illegal to tax a home owner for
labor. There is no sales tax on labor!!!!
Contractors and retailers don’t pay taxes on labor in a contract to the state
or government and neither should you. By making the contractor or salesman
separate taxes you will get a discount.
Salesmen and contractors tax the whole project and keep the added tax
they charge you on labor as straight profit.
Or they give you a discount of, say, 5% to get you to sign the
contract. What they don’t tell you is
they over charged you tax in the first place.
So you will get an average of 5% discount in taxes if you make the
contractor break out the bid and only tax the materials per law. Some flooring “empires” will not break out
their bid since this exposes this trick they use in over charging their
customers. Also note: when you pay for the materials you know what the taxes
are and you control this number. If you buy the materials, taxes are no longer
a factor for the contractor to charge you.
Overhead
should be 5-10% of the overall total labor price. Not the materials! As you
went through the trouble of handling the payment and delivery of the materials
this is no longer a factor for the contractor’s profit or overhead
factors. Anything higher than 5-10% is a
red flag the company is not efficient and you should avoid that company. Companies
that say they need anything above 10% for overhead will not be in business long
which means how are you going to get a warranty a year from now? Tell this to
the salesman and see what excuses they make up not to mention the look on their
face when they don’t have an answer as they just got caught over charging you.
Breaking
Out The Bid In Its Basic Elements:
Labor/Installation:
$2.50 a Square Foot x 1,000 SF = $ 2,500.00
Materials:
1,000 SF x 5% waste add 50 SF =1,050 x $2.99 per SF= $3,139.50
Tax:
Materials: $3,139.50 x .085%= $266.86
O&P:
Usually buried partly in the materials and mainly in the Labor section already
so be wary of this line item.
Total
Cost of Project: $5,906.36.
If the
contractor does not want to give you a breakdown as described above walk away!
When contractors file their taxes the state and federal government asks for
this breakdown and they can't say no, so why shouldn't you get this same
information? It is your home and you're the boss since you are paying.
If you
get a break down of the actual square footage of a room, as in a flooring bid,
the labor price should be x times the exact room square footage amount. Most salesmen in a lump sum bid will add a
5-to 10% waste factor to a bid and thus mark up the labor as well. There is no waste factor in labor for a room
size. A room size is what it is. It is a
fixed number. The only waste factor is
in the materials that are used not labor and if your room is a perfect square
the waste factor for the materials should only be room size, times 5%, times
the price per square foot of the material.
When you
don't get a bid that is broken out then you set yourself up for overpaying for
a job from the start. When you ask for a
discount from a bid that's a lump sum price beware the discount may be tax that
you shouldn't have paid anyways, a discount from added labor that was above and
beyond the actual square footage anyways, or even if you get a discount you may
then have the quality of the material or craftsman's switched out on you. This is your project take time to control the
different aspects of it. This will also
help to avoid cost over runs and weed out any contractors that are rip offs as
unprofessional contractors want to only deal with people they can get easy
money from. Professional contractors are used to abiding by these terms and
conditions and will not shy away from your requests for a break down as they
have nothing to hide and plan on staying in business.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Words Used to Manipulate Home Improvement Consumers
Words That Are Used To Manipulate Us
When We Engage In A Home Improvement Purchase
The English language is an integral
part of shopping and everyday commerce.
Businesses know and understand this well. In fact there are even books written for
words that can sell to you, the customer.
We may not pay attention to these words and you may be tricked by them
into making a purchase that isn’t as good as you were led to believe. So in the war of words, here is a quick
manual for consumers when it comes to shopping for home improvement
products. Since I am a flooring expert I
will correlate many words with the flooring industry, but I am sure you have
seen these words and phrases used in other industries.
The total number of words that are
used in the market place far surpass what I will cover in this article, but the
true purpose of the article is to get you to pay attention to the words that
are used against you.
Words that are used to mislead you
Surplus: Something that remains above what
is used or needed.
Overstock:
to stock to excess.
How many of you have seen signs for
flooring companies or the company itself uses the word surplus or overstock in
their name to sell their products. There is no such thing as surplus or
overstock flooring. With inventory
controls and the high costs of making a mistake in ordering materials, who
makes a big enough mistake where a store has thousands of square feet of
flooring that is surplus? Every builder and home owner I know measure every
square foot to the inch, so I know the surplus isn’t coming from them. When the
US
military says they have 10,000 boots as surplus I believe it. But not when a flooring store uses it to
promote the idea of discounts or cheaper pricing. How can a flooring company
that buys containers of flooring direct from China or from their distributor
knowing what they are buying (and in abundance) label their product a surplus
or overstock? Where’s the surplus coming from?
Seconds is a different story. Seconds
in the flooring industry means there is something wrong with the flooring in so
much that the manufacturer does not want to put their name on it. Be it a color variation, twisted or not so
straight boards, delamination and finish problems, the formaldehyde emittance
is too high for industry standards (the glues to bond most plywood engineered
floors emit this in low levels), the color changes color in the sun after time
and so on and so on. If you ask the
sales rep why it is seconds the majority of the time they will say it’s a color
variation because they really don’t know themselves. I wouldn’t believe it. For
the headaches and not really knowing why something is seconds I would run away
from seconds unless you’re a flooring expert. You will spend more money using
flooring that is seconds than just buying the factory approved product. I have known many contractors who have had to
buy 150% or more of material just to finish one area as they had to discard
material that didn’t lay straight.
Factory Direct: Direct: proceeding in a straight
line or by the shortest course.
Factory Store: A store that is owned & run by
the manufacturer.
Distributor: A wholesaler who has exclusive
rights to market, within a given territory, the goods of a manufacturer or
company.
Dealer: a person who buys and sells
articles without altering their condition; trader or merchant.
These are used all the time in the
flooring industry. Used and abused. There are only a small handful of
distributors that get their product factory direct compared to the number of
stores that say they are selling to you factory direct. The usual chain of events in a factory direct
purchase should be: Manufacturer: Approved Regional Distributor: Flooring
Store. Only three Mark ups. This is how I have positioned my company;
http://www.californiasbestflooringcompany.com.
When
this phrase is abused you get:
Manufacturer: Approved Regional Distributor: Another Distributor:
Flooring
Company: Smaller Flooring Store, Dealer, Builders: Fully five Mark ups!
Not every company or distributor can get
every flooring product, factory direct. If they say then can then I
would not
believe it. Manufacturers preselect who
they want to distribute their product in a selected region. That
distributor then picks reputable companies
in which to sell their represented manufacturer’s goods. It’s a form of
quality control. So by the time your builder or installer
tells you they can get wood flooring factory direct I’d need some
proof.
To follow the chain of anything
factory direct you go to the manufacturer’s website and look for approved
distributors. Then you call the
distributor in your area and ask them what flooring store offers the product
you are looking for. Some distributors
are the flooring store thus being a one- two mark up. This is the most cost
effective way. Work from the source out not start at the store and work
backwards. So the next time a flooring
company or someone else claims to be a distributor, misleading you the consumer
into thinking you’re getting a product direct form the source, verify this,
contact the manufacturer.
Outlet: a store, merchant, or agency
selling the goods of a particular wholesaler or manufacturer.
Wholesale: the sale of goods in quantity, as
to retailers.
As far as I know there is no such
thing as a flooring outlet store in the true meaning of what an outlet is. Clothing stores have outlets where the
factory makes mistakes and the outlets then offer the products at a discount.
For example Polo clothing and Coach Hand Bags have outlet stores that just
offer their products. I don’t know of one factory-represented flooring outlet
store; anywhere in California. The next time someone claims to be an outlet
then ask them why they carry more than one brand and which factory or
manufacturer do they represent. I can
say with certainty that if you call a flooring manufacturer and ask them where
their flooring outlet is in California.
They are going think you are crazy; they may even laugh. They are going to probably ask you if you
mean distributor but an outlet and distributor are two different things. Bottom
line is there are no factory direct flooring outlets in California.
The word Wholesale is ridiculously
over used. Forget the word all
together. Flooring is sold per job pack,
per pallet price, then container price, and then multiple container
pricing. Job Pack is usually under
800-1,000SF, Pallets are 1,000- 2,500SF depending on the material, etc. Containers
are usually 9 or more pallets, and multiple containers reach up into the
hundreds of thousands of dollars. As a
consumer, the best price you can get, call it wholesale, discount, whatever it
is, is pallet pricing. This is your
commando word to fight the enemy. You
want pallet pricing on everything you can get since there’s no way you’re ever
going to need a container of flooring with 20,300SF. This is the term we use and so should
you. I don’t go to my supplier and say,
“Can I get some wholesale tile.” I ask what’s the pallet price and how much do
I have to buy to get it for xyz.
Sale and Discount Teasers
Save up to XX% Off!, YY% Discount!,
Price Break! Price Blowout! Prices Slashed, One Day Sale, One Day Only, Giant
Closeout Sale, Everything must go, We Must Move Our Inventory, Buy more save
more, Huge Discounts, Buy One Get One Free, Store Wide Clearance, Liquidations:
In sales these are called teasers. Whenever I see up to 50% off I think 50% off
of what? One million dollars? Prices change for suppliers and costs fluctuate
in the market. Yes, price increases get pasted on the public but not as extremely
as some companies would make it. I never
really have sales as my flooring company offers just low pricing year
round. Here is the scenario and you tell
me where the huge discount comes from:
The flooring manufacturer has a price that they set and sell to the
distributors. The distributors then mark
it up with a little wiggle room to only those who buy bulk. At this point this is a two markup scenario.
If a flooring company is sharp, they find a way to be in this position. If you as a consumer are dealing with, let’s
say three companies that are in the three markup situation then how can one
company offer a huge discount over everyone else when everyone buys form the
same distributor in that area? They can offer a huge discount because they
normally are over-charging customers to begin with. This is why they can offer 50% off and still
be profitable. Discount only really
truly comes into play in flooring when a product line is discontinued and the
manufacturer is going to discontinue that product. Even then you have to ask yourself why would
they discontinue a profitable item. Is there something wrong with it?
Going out of business sale:
If a company is truly going out of
business, wouldn’t you want a warranty on a product that you’re spending
thousands of dollars on? Some would say,
“Oh well, in flooring you get it from the manufacturer for the product”. True,
but trust me it helps when the person you buy the product from can help you get
your warranty. A flooring company that
sells thousands and thousands of dollars of a manufacturers product can have
some pull in helping you, the consumer, get your warranty if you come into
problems.
If you’re making a large purchase,
check to make sure the company is not in bankruptcy. (Store Wide Clearance=red
flag) Companies don’t have to disclose
to the consumer they are in bankruptcy as it is public information and it is up
to the consumer to do their due diligence.
If you do business with a company in bankruptcy or are buying from a
store wide clearance sale, get your product on the spot--don’t wait for
delivery or you may find your check cashed and store locked the next day. Depending on where you live and the company
is head quartered the bankruptcy court may vary.
I know this has nothing to do with
home improvements but it’s my all time favorite. Ever see the signs at pawn shops and other
places that say, “We buy scrap gold.” There’s
no such thing as gold that is scrap; gold is gold. The word scrap is meant to devalue the gold
you are trying to sell so you get less than fair market value. When they melt it down and reform it is it
marked, “Previously Gold Scraps”. No it’s not! Try going to these places and
asking them if you can buy scrap gold one oz bars. Somehow I don’t think they
will give you a discount.
The financial and banking industries
are examples of where you have to have a license or be what you say you are or
you risk fines and jail time. The flooring industry in California and many other states do not have
this federal regulation of checks and balances over the use of words to protect
consumers.
Remember: it’s ok to let words pique
your interest in a product or service, but don’t let it sway you away from the
most important aspect at hand: the final price and value of what you need or
want. Every industry has its phases and words and they have a purpose. Just verify the company you are dealing with
uses the words to convey their correct position and meaning in the marketplace.
Please visit www.californiasbestflooringcompany.com
for all your flooring needs!
Monday, February 6, 2012
Local Hardwood Flooring Online
Until our new website is running and secure, we can handle all your flooring needs at www.texasbestflooringcompany.com,
our sister company in the Best Flooring Network. Be sure to mention
you're ordering from California so we can assure you our V.I.P. service:
Best Value, Best Installation, Best Price!
Texas Best Flooring Company
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