Chicago—Shaw Floors is helping retailers grow their businesses through more competitive consumer financing thanks to its new partnership with Wells Fargo Retail Services—Shaw's exclusive consumer financing provider effective January 1, 2019. 

“Consumer financing triples—sometimes quadruples—the size of the ticket,” said Adam Ellis, retail incentives manager, Shaw, who promoted the new program to Midwest retailers at the SHAWcago Market, which was held at the Sheraton Grand Chicago Hotel January 16-17. "I tell our salespeople and our customers that outside of flooring or transportation this is the best tool that we offer our customers. If they sell a $10,000 job instead of a $3,000 job, its good for the retailer, it's good for the retail sales associate [RSA] because they make better commission, and it's good for our company. It's a win-win for everybody."

Shaw and Wells Fargo designed the program to help generate profitable revenue for flooring retail partners while providing competitive and affordable rates. The new program provides retailers benefits such as live training, a robust online resource center with reporting capabilities, seasonal promotions, quick electronic funding to bank accounts, and excellent national consumer approval rates. 

"Ease of use has been the biggest surprise," Ellis said. "Under the previous program that we had, you had to fill out a paper application and the the retail sales associate had to go to the online resource center fill that out. Consumers didn't want to share their household income [with the RSA]. It would take about 30 minutes. In this program, if you have a tablet. It's so easy. You can hand the tablet to the consumer, have them fill out their information—they have the privacy that they want—they can get approved within two to three minutes. Then they hand the tablet back to the retail sales associate and they can process transaction right there."

To date, Ellis said the company has around 800 retail customers enrolled in the program, and Shaw has a goal to enroll 2,000.  "We have about 1,700 aligned retailers, but we want everyone using this program, no matter their affiliation," he said. 

For more information, visit ShawNow.com.