Selling Your Services to Tile and Flooring Companies.

A Little Bit of History

I found a job at a water jet cutting company back in 2007 that I thought was the ideal company to work for as I approached retirement age. I had worked as a design draftsfman for thirty years, working on many projects that lasted anywhere from six months to two years. The projects I began to work on at the water jet company only lasted a few days or so for the most part. Due to the expense of of the water jet, I quickly realized I needed to find ways to bring in enough work to keep the equipment running as many hours a day as possible. I had designed and created a couple of stone floor medallions for customers which got me to thinking about how to sell the floor medallion idea to flooring tile companies. I talked my boss into letting me purchase enough marble floor tile to create a 36" diameter Compass Floor Medallion.

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I remember how excited the flooring sales people were when I showed them my medallion. They took my business card and assured me that they would be in touch whenever someone was interested in having a medalion cut for their new flooring. After about a month of not hearing from anyone, I checked back. According to the sales people no one had been interested in having a floor medallion in their new floor. So ... I thought some more about it, and created a catalog of the floor medallions I had available, and added some drawings of a few new ones.

I printed up copies of the catalog and took them around to the floor tile companies. Now they had something to show customers. I also left the floor medallion at the most promising business for them to display.

It was at this time that someone mentioned that Weber State was putting new carpeting in the Student Union Building. I didn't know if the water jet would cut carpet, so I asked if they had any discontinued carpet squares, and they were kind enough to give me several pieces to experiment with. I cut a 24" square piece of cement board for a backer and placed two contrasting colors of carpet on top of it. After I rinsed the garnet off the carpet and let it dry, I put the cutout pieces back into the openings in the opposite colored carpet tiles, and added mesh to the back to hold everything in place.

Although I was too late to incorporate cut-outs in the Weber State project, both the architect, and contractor were interested enough that I was able to pick up a few projects from them later plus I had completed samples that I was able to show around gthe local carpet stores.

I also used the same concept to cut vinyl tile, stacking the tile to cut it, then inserting other colored pieces back into the tile. Leaving samples at stores for them to display also helped sell them.

This is a win-win situation for the tile companies as they are able to sell more tile to their customers; the tile for the floor, and the extra tile required to create the medallions, plus they can add their markup on the medallion sale. They just need to provide the correct number of tiles for cutting the medallion.

Download our Medallion Catalog in PDF format for printing.

Notes:

1. Each page (except a few) comes with the Medallion Layout on the front, and Tile Quantity Requirements on the back.

2. The ribbed back on porcelain tile is great for helping bond the tile to the floor, but can cause problems when cutting small pieces to fit into a medallion.