Floor Focus

Maintenance is a critical link in the chain of our industry’s success. It can help us not only extend the life of the products our clients invest in, but as a result, it can also extend the life of the precious client relationships all our businesses depend on. Maintenance can make or break our promise of superior product performance to our customers.

With proper maintenance, clients can keep the product on the floor without premature replacement. Longer product life also reduces the need for disposal in a landfill—increasingly difficult to do.

Many customers associate maintenance with the end of the sales cycle—after the sale is made, after the flooring is installed. Yet our experience suggests that the most important time to consider the benefits of maintenance to the lifecycle of the carpet is before the carpet is even specified. Cost avoidance is achieved by selecting the proper carpet, installing it properly and pre-planning and budgeting for an ongoing maintenance program.

Carpet specification and installation methodology have such a big impact on the ultimate success of maintenance that preventative maintenance professionals can help increase product performance and customer satisfaction as much before the carpet is installed as after.

Maintenance professionals are uniquely positioned to help mills, distributors and dealers evaluate the effect carpet and installation decisions will ultimately have on successful maintenance. Many factors should be taken into consideration: use analysis; traffic type and volume; probable soil types and projected volumes; type of carpet construction (gauge, density, pile height, weight, fiber type, dye process, primary and secondary backings); and installation method.

Unless the right decisions are made at this early point in the process, it will become more difficult and costly later to properly execute a successful maintenance program, one which maximizes the life and appearance of the carpet. In fact, one of the most important aspects of this stage is planning for, and budgeting for, an ongoing professional preventative maintenance program. Flooring can “ugly out” and require premature replacement if a budget for a comprehensive maintenance program is not established and adhered to.

Among the criteria Corporate Care follows to ensure proper maintenance are these:

• Use of a variety of maintenance processes appropriate to all types of flooring, traffic, and soiling.

• Zoned maintenance programs with unique processes depending on traffic type and volume, carpet type, soil type and volume.

Another key issue is the distinction between maintaining carpeting and merely cleaning it. Cleaning is the removal of apparent soil. Maintaining is a planned ongoing process to retain carpet at a high appearance level, reduce lifecycle costs, and maximize return on capital. Soils, whether visible or not, will permanently ruin a carpet if not correctly and completely removed—not merely shampooed or vacuumed, even on a daily basis. Obviously, responsive and proactive customer service is essential to successful maintenance programs.

When all segments of our industry work together as partners, our collective product performs better, we retain our collective customers longer, and we succeed as a group even in this most demanding economy.

Mark Strum, one of three principals of the Houston firm Corporate Care, is a 19 year veteran of the commercial floorcovering industry. He’s served on the local board of IFMA and is a member of the Cleaning and Maintenance Subcommittee for the Carpet and Rug Institute. You can e-mail him at: mstrum@corporatecare.com.