The flooring industry is a challenging one, and as a company, Pavilion Floors tries not to leave any one individual sitting on an island without the support of the entire team. We take this approach from ownership, to management, to support, and all the way into the field during installation.
A Massachusetts company, Pavilion Floors has a strong strategic partnership with Creative Office Pavilion of Boston, the Northeast’s largest Herman Miller dealer. This partnership allows us to rely on their 30-plus years in business as well as the experience of more than 260 employees. Creative Office Pavilion, or COP as they are known in our marketplace, founded Pavilion Floors in 2002. They had a long-standing client who was so happy with their office services they were asked, “What else can you do for us?” Management then realized that every time furniture was being replaced, the space was shared with a different company replacing the carpet. This realization caused Pavilion Floors to become a reality.
The principals of COP and Pavilion Floors established an executive committee to lead their company and handle the day-to-day aspects of the flooring division. There are four executive positions: senior vice president of sales, senior vice president of specialty flooring, vice president of finance and vice president of operations. Although we each have our lanes of responsibility, we meet on a weekly basis to discuss and challenge every decision that is being made within the company.
Pavilion Floors is a sales-driven company, so we have positioned our sales executives to succeed by creating a team dynamic. This starts with our estimating department. Every set of drawings, every bulletin, every addendum, goes through this department for an evaluation of the scope of work and quantity surveying. Although the estimators are responsible for the scope, they are by no means doing this on their own. We have set up divisions with experts in their associated field. When the estimating department reviews the project, they have a ceramic, wood, epoxy and, of course, a carpet/resilient team available to approach with questions on details or get advice on complicated projects.
This support group does a great job of keeping the sales group up to date on projects while earning the confidence from the sales executives that their job is being done. From our project coordinators to our project managers, each submittal is processed and a close-out document is prepared along with everything in between; they are the orchestra and the sales executive is the maestro.
Pavilion Floors takes pride in our INSTALL-certified union labor force; after all, they are the artisans who create the portrait on the floor and leave a lasting impression of both the project and our company. Our team of field supervisors spends the day going from job site to job site working with the installers on scope and quality control. We also take pride in having all in-house labor. We do not sub-contract any labor and this is true across all disciplines including ceramic, epoxy and leveling. This policy allows us to control and manage the schedule, quality control and, most importantly, our reputation.
Pavilion Floors has a professional accounting department that keeps a keen eye on change orders and accounts receivable. As mentioned, we are a sales-driven company and we want our sales executives selling. Our finance department handles retention, change orders, and collections with the occasional help of the account’s sales executive.
Our sales group is the face of Pavilion Floors; they lead their team and are on the front lines with our clients. Although we have provided the sales executives with a team of experienced support personnel, they are responsible for their projects from cradle to grave and are expected to know every aspect of the project. We have provided them with all the tools they need so they can focus on what we expect from them; a successful sales experience with satisfied clients. We have created a positive environment within our sales group which is more collaborative and less competitive.
In only 16 years, we have grown our business from one client to become one of the largest and finest union flooring contractors in the Boston market. How have we accomplished this in such a short time? We feel there are three major contributing factors. First, we strive to be the best instead of the biggest. Second, never be satisfied and third, surround yourself with great people.
We never really set out to be the largest in our market, but we did, however, want to be first rate. We continually strive to achieve this goal by giving our clients the highest quality service possible. After all, we are a service business. We don’t manufacture flooring, but we do sell the same products as our competitors. As noted, we brought in experts in each field because we knew that when a building is being built, we should be the only flooring contractor in that building. This feature provides a huge benefit and value to our general contractor as it gives them one point of contact for the entire building and a cohesive installation program.
Pavilion Floors’ management team has self-challenged to be better today than we were yesterday. Whenever we push to improve process, technology and logistics, the results trickle down to all the team members. Every day we question our processes, from estimating to how we receive and ship products from our warehouse. We went from a paper intensive company to virtually paperless, which eliminated many costly errors and improved productivity. We joined the Technology Committee at the Fuse Conference this past year which now allows us to collaborate with a dozen flooring contractors around the country and share new ideas on the use of technology. During these meetings, we have discussed examples of scheduling and payroll software to electronic time and material slips vs. the erratic paper slips that are often lost and forgotten, which results in mistakes and job errors.
I would suggest that the biggest reason for our success is our culture and the quality of our people. We have tried to surround ourselves with passionate, loyal and dedicated individuals. We have a clear and defined career path at Pavilion Floors which starts at either estimating or the project coordinator level. This allows us to introduce someone to the industry without prior flooring experience but who has shown they are motivated and want to grow in a career. This allows them to advance within the organization taking their newfound experience from their department with them as they progress. The best part of these entry level positions is that we provide both junior and senior levels so that if the team member shows a special aptitude or passion for the role, he or she can make it a long-term career.
Pavilion Floors is a broad-spectrum, forward-thinking company serving a wide range of clients in both the private and public sectors from hospitals and universities to office complexes and luxury condominiums. This diverse palette of projects is supported by a dedicated, experienced team that fully understands the design, specification, and construction processes and how to utilize all the resources of a regional industry leader.
