Interview with Christine B Whittemore, author of Flooring The Consumer blog and Social Media Expert

Christine B. Whittemore is Chief Simplifier at Simple Marketing Now, a marketing consultancy firm which she formed in March 2009, focused on integrating traditional with social marketing. Christine previously worked for the flooring industry, specifically carpets, for 6 years as director of in-store innovation for Wear-Dated carpet fibre by Solutia Inc.
She also blogs extensively about marketing solutions for the flooring industry, at Flooring The Consumer. She focuses strongly on marketing for the woman consumer, since, as research shows, women make or influence over 80% of purchase decisions.


As a marketing consultant advising businessmen, Christine addressed in particular the issues of disconnect between consumers and manufacturers and how to present choices to consumers, first in the upholstery business where she started out, then subsequently in the carpet industry where she felt the same dynamics. What began as industry summit presentations and newsletters became a regular column in Floor Covering Weekly, a major US trade title and an exploration and study of the possibilities offered by the internet as a free, fast, and effective marketing tool to educate and share ideas and insider knowledge.

“I had had great success in apparel and upholstery with paper newsletters, but they were becoming preposterously expensive to print and mail out, so I started learning as much as possible about blogs where the creation of content was practically free.”
She encountered skepticism to begin with, with many peers wary of internet as a marketing tool.
“I remember mentioning blogging and blogs to some of my associates and being poopooed that they weren’t serious tools. The flooring industry is a mature one”, says Christine, echoing my impressions that many see a huge divide or barrier between traditional marketing and online marketing, as though they are somehow incompatible, or separate entities, when in fact, when used together they can be especially powerful tools for reaching out to consumers.


Clyde Flooring, a site set up by Richard McKay of McKay Flooring Ltd.

“The current focus in both hardwood and the soft/carpet coverings market however is on product rather than on what the consumer does with it. Furthermore, so many businesses in the flooring industry seem to hire mostly insiders, which leads to a paucity of thinking and perspective.”
Overall, she concludes, the focus has been physical rather than digital, as if somehow the consumer isn’t shopping differently now to ten, twenty years ago, when there is evidence to hand that this is no longer the case. Digital retail is the inevitable future, or even present.
How does one explain to clients, manufacturers, retailers, the advantages of having and maintaining a blog, or some kind of social media presence?
“I launched Flooring The Consumer under the radar, in June 2006. Once it was set up I mentioned it to associates and got their buy in. I used it in presentations when talking about marketing to women, but the transition from integrating offline to online marketing took a long time. It was about bringing it up in conversations, talking about it at tradeshows. I printed business cards with the address of the blog and gave them to clients at fairs. I now have close to 1500 subscribers.. The blog is the single best way to raise one’s digital awareness, to bring your company to life.
Many ask “why bother with a blog, if you have a website”? The answer is simple, but the putting into practice is the challenge. A website lays out information on the table. A blog is a conversation, an exchange of ideas, a form of discussion between manufacturer and consumer. It bridges the divide and becomes a more personal approach, which plays on the factors of trust and loyalty between customer and retailer, consumer and manufacturer. In a sense, its like reverting back to the age of the local shop and tradesman, using the technology of the 21st century.
Social media marketing, of course, is not simply about opening a Twitter account and tweeting about what sandwich you had for lunch as a means of “bonding” with the consumer. It is a time-consuming process and needs careful study and review in order to be effective and to target the right consumer in the right way. It might not benefit everybody.
“I see two big problems with social media, says Christine. Firstly, for large flooring companies, the medium requires that they become intimately involved in it and that they engage in it for the long run. They cannot delegate their social media to an outside company; it needs to come from them in order to be authentic. This means relinquishing some control over their communications and that social media be integrated into their overall strategy – that they be willing to actually talk, communicate with and respond to customers. That takes a lot of thinking through.
Secondly, there’s a problem for smaller organizations. How do you find the time to do it all? This is a big issue for traditional mom/pop stores, independent traders etc. who have been clobbered psychologically by the
economic environment. The days when the consumer came to them and all they had to do was deliver/install the product are over.
But, in the bigger picture, for small to medium entrepreneurial organizations, these tools allow you to reach more people than you can imagine at far less cost than traditional vehicles and more effectively because you can target specific consumers. A great example is Carpets by Otto, a small family business which with a few changes and more personal additions to their web page have reached out to the customer and presented themselves as a clients’ “friend”, giving a sense of community which is very attractive for a consumer searching for a local retailer.



Carpets by Otto Website

Another problem that many in the industry have raised with regards to emphasizing online presence is that flooring is ultimately a tactile product. They then use this as an excuse not to improve, update, maintain or increase their website/blog/online presence. I put this to Christine:
“What I think is scary for many flooring retailers is that all of this requires some deep thinking about what value they bring, then they have to adjust their organization to deliver it. The reason flooring retailers may be slow at getting round to online marketing is that many flooring retailers got into business because they were installers. They have a strong technical knowledge base. But, they aren’t customer focused. Not that they give bad service, but they aren’t focused on ‘walking in her shoes’ and understanding the process/experience from her perspective. Life was easy for many years, with business literally walking into stores without too much encouragement. Now they have to do what I call ‘retail outward’ and do things they aren’t comfortable or knowledgeable about.”
Consumers are much more picky now, and can find a huge range of information online before they approach a retailer, both when it comes to price and quality. They are aware of choices and can find deals online that they won’t necessarily find in store.
“All these arguments are reasons for getting into social media. Can’t do much with your website? Then start a blog and let your personality shine through. Yes, flooring is tactile, but as an industry we do more to sell it as a commodity than we do to showcase it as a design product for the home. So far, most of the social media efforts from flooring are about shouting “Cheap, Cheap, Cheap Carpet and Floors!” Who wants to engage with that?
Consumers are sceptical. They don’t want to be taken advantage of and too often walking into a flooring store is like walking into a used car lot with the hard sell focus. Not pleasant. Flooring is an investment piece. Even in a recession, consumers are willing to pay a bit more for good value and quality.
At last year’s National Floor Show, great efforts were made by companies such as Ryalux to emphasize flooring as a design element, a long-term investment that fits into the whole context of home and family. People had their company designers on the stand, mingling with clients and buyers. Imagery was strong and there was a lot of attention paid to marketing concepts that looked at flooring as an integral element in the home. Somehow, this still hasn’t translated to many company websites or blogs.
Christine elaborates, “Design should be key, it should be emphasized. I believe that’s what consumers want more of. I don’t think retailers necessarily believe that. Phil Pond at trend forecasting company Scarlet Opus (who spoke at the NFS) says that manufacturers have convinced themselves that consumers only purchase beige carpet. However, the only option that consumers are given is beige carpet.”
How does Christine monitor the success of social media for the flooring industry?
“In 2008 I couldn’t find a single reputable sign - other than myself (!) - of flooring in social media. As I got my business going, I started coming across more signs of flooring activity. Much of it I attributed to the winter convention of a prominent flooring retail cooperative which instructed its members to go forth and be social. They all went off and started Facebook and Twitter accounts. As you can imagine, many of those are languishing because they don’t have much of a clue on how to be social and to sustain the effort. However, I started noticing possibilities and some success stories.
I decided to organize what I found by platform and document it in the Social Flooring Index. As a quick first step to evaluating, I’m paying attention to followers/fans, etc. I’m using some of HubSpot’s tools to get a quick read on ranking. And now, I’m getting more immersed in monitoring the level of truly social behaviour. I also want to segregate the blogs, for example, in terms of the subjects they address. There’s a lot of traditional behaviour taking place... hard selling, shouting, not much interacting, but also, some who get it!
So, who “gets it”? Christine cites several examples of companies that “get it”, many small, family operations, but some bigger companies who are starting to explore the possibilities beyond traditional online retail.
“Carpet One Floor & Home in Panama City does a terrific job on Facebook offering flooring tips. Palmetto stores has an active Facebook fan page with contest and passionate users. The Domotex blog has been very useful for industry people. McKay Flooring in the UK (see interview with Richard McKay) has really used the net to its full potential. The aforementioned Carpets by Otto has made small, but significant in-roads.














Carpet One Floor and Home Panama City: (l-r) the blog and the company website.

Does Christine get the sense that if flooring companies don’t get on board the social media bandwagon in the next 5-10 years they will disappear? Could it be that urgent? This year has been crippling for many in the UK flooring industry, and there’s a sense that those who are surviving are having to radically transform their entire approach to the customer
“I do believe there is urgency. My latest Floor Covering Weekly articles have been about the need to be found online. Online visibility is getting so much more critical, to such a point that if you can’t be found online, despite a physical store, you become irrelevant.”

Find Christine at:

Simple Marketing Now / http://simplemarketingnow.com/
http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com
http://carpetology.blogspot.com/
http://www.socialflooringindex.com/
On Twitter / @CBWhittemore
On Facebook / Christine B. Whittemore