Airdrie Carpet - The Flooring Store has won gold in the flooring store category in the 2022 Best of Airdrie Readers’ Choice Awards.
The family-owned business got its start in Airdrie in 1993. Upon his parent's retirement in 2016, current owner Kyle Twells took over operating the store.
Recently, Twells has boosted the flooring stores' social media presence, which is why he believes the businesses took home gold this year.
“Every day we’re posting, so I’m guessing the social media [prevalence] had some aspect to it,” he said.
Although social media may be new to Twells, running the family business is not, as it’s a position he’s been groomed for since he was young.
“I can remember [being] seven years old and sweeping the showroom floors, to being 12-years old, after school, going out and helping the guys on the install side of thing,” he said.
Twells enjoyed the installation side of the business so much, he decided to make a career of it. He attended SAIT upon his graduation from high school, and quickly became a journeyman floor-covering installer afterwards.
After his parents’ retirement, Twells switched from floor installation to operating the store. Although Twells is now the official owner, his parents remain involved in the business and they are thrilled about this year's Best of Airdrie Readers’ Choice Award, according to Twells.
“My dad still comes three days a week to have a coffee with me and see how things are going, and help out in the warehouse. If we need to go away for a week, [my parents] come in and watch the shop,” he said.
Meanwhile, Twells’ mom assists with the accounting side, and is currently training Twells and his girlfriend on how to handle the flooring store’s accounts.
However, when his parents retired, they sold the original flooring store building. Currently, Twells is renting a smaller warehouse to operate the flooring store. In the future, he is hoping to purchase a more extensive warehouse to continue expanding the business.
“I see a slow, comfortable expansion, nothing too crazy vertical where you take on too much soon and you can’t really back out if something happens,” he added.
Twells’ expansion plans will remain rooted in Airdrie, as the lifelong Airdronian has no ambitions to tackle big-city life.
“We’re very community-based. I grew up here as a kid. I went to school here, I played hockey here, so I just want to continue to serve the community,” Twells said.
Part of serving the community includes getting Airdrie residents the best value for their dollar, something that has been a struggle this past year due to inflation.
“A lot of our costs are up 30 to 50 per cent, so it’s definitely been a struggle trying to get a value on product and still give somebody a half decent floor,” Twells said.
Despite the increase in costs, the flooring store is busier than ever, according to Twells.
“As far as growth goes, Airdrie just seems to be ever-expanding,” he said. “We don’t really do a ton of advertising, but our walk-in traffic and everything has definitely increased through the pandemic.”
Twells thinks the increase in traffic has to do with the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions keeping everybody at home for so long, which inevitably led to an increase in home renovation projects.
“A lot of people weren’t travelling [so] a lot of that money went into renovating and fixing up the home and stuff they could do there,” he added. “We were very fortunate throughout the whole pandemic. We didn’t really suffer like other businesses did. We were open the entire time and we’ve been chugging along ever since.”
Twells said a key to the store's success all these years is putting customer satisfaction first. In fact, the store's signature is prioritizing customers.
“That’s kind of everything that we stand behind. At the end of the day, customer happiness is our number one,” Twells added. “I think that’s why we’ve been successful is just to focus on customer satisfaction and making the customer happy.”
