TRADE PUBLICATIONS
 Famous Flooring

About four years ago, Tom Wiltgen and his wife, Peggy, quit their jobs and opened Famous Flooring in Caledonia. Today they're walking all over the competition.

Tom Wiltgen has been in the tile business pretty much his entire working life, from retail to distribution to manufacturing to sales. He started installing vinyl tile 16 years ago while in college, and eventually became an outside sales representative for Virginia Tile. During his day-to-day rounds of calling on area retailers, he kept notes in his head of the good qualities of all retailers he visited. The plan was to someday start his own business.

"When you're out in the field, you're selling product, not service from start to finish," he explained. "In retail, you can take it from conception to the end. There's more satisfaction when you develop relationships with your customers. I thought this might be an opportunity to show off a little bit of what I have collected from my years of being on the road."

Peggy Wiltgen brings 20 years of experience in marketing, advertising and sales. "Being in the flooring business, getting into homes, is such a personal, intimate business," she said. "We're crawling around on their floors and selling them the largest purchase they'll probably make in their lives. You never know a customer better than when you're helping them with what goes into making their home. You walk into their home and it's a serious business. To see the end result is really rewarding."

Peggy Wiltgen is so sold on her career she sports a license plate on her car that reads: TILE IT. "This business has all the makings of entrepeneurialship and art and design," she said. "I couldn't think of a better job. I love the medium; it's so artistic, and it's unlimited."

Famous Flooring offers the gamut of floor covering including ceramic tile, vinyl, hardwood, carpet and laminates. They sell anything you can walk on and then some: vinyl, hardwood, laminate, countertops and tilework for kitchen, jacuzzi and fireplace areas. The company specializes in custom work, particularly ceramic tile, which an artist can even personalize.

The Wiltgens recently tripled the size of their former location next door and opened a 12,000 square-foot warehouse and showroom, offering more floor space and a larger product selection. "We have probably the best showroom in West Michigan," boasts Peggy Wiltgen. Whether you're trying to get a feel for what your product choise will look like -- say, near the Jacuzzi, in the shower or surrounding the fireplace -- "you can see it in almost its finished state and really get ideas."

The company stays up-to-date on the industry by making regular trips to tile plants, carpet mills and conventions around the country all year long. They also have an in-house designer and a showroom sales force of a half-dozen or so, all of whom have college design backgrounds.

They have partnered with carpet mills which Peggy says gives them "a bit of preferential treatment.

"We align ourselves with mills that have local terminals; sometimes we can have carpet in two days," she said.

Famous Flooring currently works with at least 12 builders on a regular basis. Their staff works with builders in a number of ways: either directly with the homeowner-to-be, with a builder's designer or with the builders themselves. "As long as we stay within the budget, the builder's happy," said Peggy Wiltgen. "I have one builder who I know what price and material they like who tells me 'Just do it.' On our last project, the house sold in four days."

They can do take-offs from the blueprints to give estimates of floor covering needs, and if a homeowner-to-be goes over the allotted budget, Famous Flooring will deal with the customer directly and offer six-month, no-money down financing.

For the Wiltgens, it's all part of going the extra mile to make sure builders -- and homeowners -- are satisfied. "We always try to make builders realize we are the last people out of the house, and whatever touches we can put on the job will make them look good," said Peggy Wiltgen.

Another plus to going with Famous Flooring is that "we're very resourceful," said Peggy Wiltgen. "Our employees go the extra mile. We don't just give up." For instance, a new customer recently expressed an interest in what was later determined to be a discontinued product. When the Wiltgens traveled to Florida for a tile convention, they found out where the remaining tile could still be bought. "No matter how big or small the sale is, they are all important because that person will tell people how they were treated," said Peggy Wiltgen.

As with any flooring, Wiltgen stresses the importance of having a good installer. Builders may opt to have the job done by the company's core team of insured installers, all of whom have an average of 10-15 years' experience. "Having the right people do the installation is really important, especially something like tile. You can't put a rookie on a tile job," Wiltgen said. "A floor is useless if it isn't installed properly."