
Before we setup our website we decided to compare the price of buying carpet using the
traditional carpet outlets accross the UK, our findings were quite frankly were tantamount
to abuse.
We found that many shops were running carpet sales on the days when we arrived, with
huge sign’s offering 50% off carpet and a further 20% off carpet deals, we wasn’t to sure if
this was a good time to compare carpet prices as the carpet shops would be providing special
deals and we didnt think we would get a true reflection of the costs, we were so wrong.
Case Study 1 - ‘The Huge Carpet Stores’.
Carpet - (upto 70% saving on carpet)
The carpet we looked at here was being offered at a 40% off RRP, the carpet was a
lovely 80:20 wool twist carpet (beige), the carpet sales agent informed us that this carpet
had actually been renamed and in fact was from a we’ll known UK manufacturer of carpet
and the quality was top notch, the carpet was being offered at £67.00 psm.
(£40.20 psm inc. the offer discount).
We thought this was great, such value at such a great price, maybe our business model
was flawed, how could we compete with this type of discounting, safe to say our fears were
quickly quashed. We took our quote to smaller local flooring retailers and cross matched
the price we had received from the bigger stores.
Our finding’s were actually shocking, in short we found that all the smaller shops were
offering exactly the same carpet for between £19.00 - £24.00 psm, and this was before we
started to talk about a possible deal, that was on average 70% saving on the huge stores
RRP starting price and was 35% more than the alternatives after the sales price applied.
The savings didn’t stop there.
Underlay - (upto 80% savings)
We were offered carpet underlay to improve the life of the carpet, the options were
6mm £6.99 psm - 9mm £7.99 psm, so for the our job (50 sqm) we would have to spend
aprox £349.50 to £399.00 on top of the price of the carpet.
The underlay was not a branded underlay like Cloud 9, it was a non-branded alternative,
so we again took our quote to the smaller stores, we were quoted maximum £4.50 psm
but this was actually for top of the range Cloud 9, we were then offered a non-branded option
simpliar to the bigger carpet store for £2.50 psm, so our cost option’s to have carpet underlay
dropped massively to between £125.00 to 225.00 which gave a saving of around 80%
We thought we were done with the savings, again we were wrong.
Carpet Gripper & Doorplates - (upto 500% cheaper)
To complete the job we needed 6 doorplates and the whole job would need carpet gripper
prior to fitting the underlay and carpet, the costs from the huge store were £45.00 for the
gripper and £50.00 for the doorplates.
The alternative was from the local shop were that they didnt charge extra for the gripper
and the doorplates came in at £1.50 a strip (total £9.00) which was nearlly 5 times more
expensive from the huge carpet store prices.
Also, the huge store wanted to charge an additional £30 to deliver the carpet, which we
could not come to terms with as they were 1.5 miles away from the job location, again this
was not a charge that the local smaller capet shop would even entertain as a cost as they
simply felt it was all part of the service.
I’m sure you’ll agree, there is nothing wrong with making money on selling carpet &
accessories however we thing 500%+ profit is a little bit steap and is quite frankly tantamount
to abuse, we’re not saying for a minute that all huge stores operate to these massive profit
margins but simple that for you own peace of mind you should use our website to make sure
that your not one of the 1000s of customer every month that get ripped off by buying their
carpet from a huge carpet store that has huge profit margings to sustain.
try the new way and save cash on carpet today >> |