Community Spotlight With John Long of Floor Coverings International

John Long:, Nathan Ross:

 

Nathan Ross:  00:00

Hello and welcome to the community spotlight. I'm Nathan Ross with Prestigious Painting and I'm here to introduce you to people I know and trust in our community. Today I'm joined by John Long with Floor Coverings international. How are you John?

 

John Long:  00:13

Oh, We're doing well, Nethan.

 

Nathan Ross:  00:14

Good. Thanks for joining me.

 

John Long:  00:16

Thanks for having me.

 

Nathan Ross:  00:17

Tell everybody listening where you're from.

 

John Long:  00:20

Yeah, so I'm from right here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, born and raised, moved up north. [inaudible] up North Alexandria up North Louisiana for about six years. And Ralston came back home a few years ago.

 

Nathan Ross:  00:33

Awesome, man. So tell us about Floor Coverings International and what you guys provide?

 

John Long:  00:39

Yes, the Floor Coverings International is a national franchise, we have over 150 locations across the US and Canada. And here locally, we're, I'm actually one of the local owners of the company. It's a family owned business. And what's really great about this particular company is the care that we give to our customers.

 

And that is anywhere from putting carpet in to putting hardwood tile, doing showers, backsplashes, and we come back, make sure that every detail is not left unturned, and make sure that the foreign project is done correctly, the first time. And if there are ever any issues that we do take care of those issues.

 

Nathan Ross:  01:20

Yep. And I can attest to that John and Floor Coverings International installed some carpets in my house. And I was actually just really impressed by the process from start to finish both from like the time you showed up, and we did an estimate, through your presentation all the way to getting it installed, which was really painless, really quick.

 

And then you made the time to come back personally inspect every part of the job, even though we both knew it was done, right. And gave me your warranty and everything and also some really cool floor stain remover that's like you can only get from John.

 

John Long:  02:00

Absolutely.

 

Nathan Ross:  02:00

So it was a great experience. And so that's why I feel great about referring to you know, besides other reasons, but get back on track. What is it that you love about doing business in Baton Rouge? Like why did you choose Baton Rouge to do business?

 

John Long:  02:17

Yeah, so I choose Baton Rouge to do business? For a couple reasons. Main reason is this is definitely a growing area, despite what you hear in the media. There's definitely still a lot of people that are living here, people are actually coming back to Baton Rouge now. They're actually coming back to the south part of town and to Prayville and Gonzalez and Livingston Parish in those areas.

 

And one of the reasons I chose to do business here was I just saw such a great opportunity with being able to help this community and give back to my home to where I was born and raised that it's such a good feeling to be able to help people out no matter what the situation is whether we do business or not. It's just wonderful to give back to my community.

 

Nathan Ross:  03:00

For sure. So what is it that landed you in the flooring business?

 

John Long:  03:05

Yeah, so kind of what got me here in the foreign business. So I used to be an estimator for an industrial construction company and my dad and I got to talk and one day he kind of came to me with the business proposition I wanted to see if I was interested in getting into a franchise and Floor Coverings international kind of fell on our laps and one thing that I really loved about it was just the amount of support and the training that goes into this flooring company.

 

It's unlike any other we don't we have our reps that come in and help us out but we also do training online in fact, we spent about 400 hours here on training alone which is everybody thinks so will 400 hours well it really is a lot of time and effort put into it and I really love being able to educate people whether I'm doing a flooring project for him or not I just enjoy talking about flooring, it's really become a passionate and a hobby for me.

 

Nathan Ross:  04:02

Yeah, I can attest that you're extremely knowledgeable about flooring, you know when I bought a house and we were inspecting things, we're looking at the different flooring in my house. I was there and even my realtor was very impressed by some of the things you were able to point out to us and get to the bottom of very quickly. So you know if you have any questions about flooring, this is the guy that you want to ask because like you said you've got a ton of training under your belt but you've also got a huge support network in your franchise of a national company that has other franchisees and then years and years and years of expertise.

 

John Long:  04:45

Absolutely, yes.

 

Nathan Ross:  04:46

So that's a big strength that you have.

 

John Long:  04:49

For sure, if I don't know something it's not like I'm just guessing out of thin air, I call up any franchisee anytime day or night. We have guys have been in the company itself has been around for 30 years, and you have companies that are anywhere from $100,000 companies all the way up to $7.2 million, your businesses. And you can call up anybody anytime you ever have questions about flooring, and somebody's gonna know the answer.

 

Nathan Ross:  05:15

That's a great thing to have. So what else do you do when you're not educating people on flooring business?

 

John Long:  05:23

Yeah. So when I'm not when I'm not educating people in floorung business, I really enjoy spending time with my friends. One of my really, passions is working with classic cars, have a 1979 Ford F 100. I'm currently in the process of restoring it's been my family since 1980.

 

Nathan Ross:  05:43

Wow

 

John Long:  05:44

And that's one of my my really great passions is doing that. And also being able to help others out with their vehicles and things of that nature.

 

Nathan Ross:  05:52

Oh, yeah, he's definitely made that offer to me before when I've had cars, it knew me to come look at it. So what is to wrap this up? What's something unique that we haven't talked about that Floor Coverings International offers?

 

John Long:  06:06

Yeah. So what's really unique about Floor Coverings International is, so we don't necessarily have a huge brick and mortar store. Like some of the local stores here, the big box stores. What's great about us is instead of having to go out and fight all this bad news traffic, going across a bridge.

 

Nathan Ross:  06:24

Nobody wants to do that.

 

John Long:  06:25

No, I mean, spending, who wants to go spend 45 minutes driving across town multiple times, just to get some flooring samples just to have somebody come up to your home. So what's great about us is we actually have a mobile showroom, where we actually show up to your house with 3000 SKUs. And people think, oh, well, this has to be a massive and it's not, it's a little Ford Transit Connect. We have 3000 samples in there. Now if we're working with a customer with tile, we can customize anything for that particular homeowner, and bring the samples right out there to that person.

 

Nathan Ross:  06:57

That's pretty cool. I've seen it in action. And it's impressive what all y'all can fit into there. It's like a custom set up with all these racks. And you have all these samples. So it saves again, I mean, saving you all that trouble of having to go to a showroom and pick stuff out and not be sure how it looks in your house.

 

John Long:  07:16

Exactly.

 

Nathan Ross:  07:17

It's a big deal.

 

John Long:  07:18

It is it's a big deal.

 

Nathan Ross:  07:19

Well, I trust John, I hope that if you're looking for flooring, or if you know someone that does, you'll give him a call. I know that he'll do a great job for you. Can you tell people how they can find you online or?

 

John Long:  07:32

Yeah, absolutely. So we have a Facebook page as well as a website. All you gotta do is search Floor Coverings International. That's coverage with an S or our website is southbatonrouge.floorcoveringsinternational.com. You can also give us a call, anytime day or night at 225-800-7250. You will always get a hold of somebody on that particular phone. And that's a great way to get ahold of us.

 

Nathan Ross:  08:03

All right. Well, thanks, John.

 

Nathan Ross:  08:04

Thanks, Nathan. Appreciate it.

 

Nathan Ross:  08:06

Thank you for joining us on community spotlight. If you know someone that you'd like to see in the spotlight, give me a call or send me a message and maybe there'll be next.