Hello Chaps, Decided to take my nan to Paul Simons today to get some new curtains for our front room. Went in and saw they had carpets on there as show... I went there a few weeks ago and they didn't have any carpets on show there at all, or even that they sold carpets and vinyls. I spoke to the manager briefly and asked him whether they had any fitters, he said we have one for the whole shop but the carpet part of the shop is booming. I asked him whether he was taking on any fitters to do the fitting for them, so I gave him my card and off he went. I then looked at some of the carpets and they are advertising that they do free fitting on all selected carpets. New shops popping up everywhere round my area, three in the past month. Seems to be picking up quite a bit for other shops. Cheers, Michael
But mike its not all good news. I live quite close to teddington and recently saw the teddington carpet shop is closing. Teddington is quite a wealthy area and they were in the high street but i checked out the rent and it was quite high but when i spoke to one of my reps he said another 2 shops have gone within a 5 mile radius of me, so 3 shops recently gone. Maybe rents were high, maybe they didn't cater for their markets but realistically its a sign of the times.
Seems that they're just diversifying to get a share of a wider market. If they can get a few carpet sales while someone's thinking of curtains they're onto a winner. Bet the rates won't be very good though. They'll still dictate to a business what they'll pay as opposed to getting a price for the service then going with whoever they have most confidence in.
