If you head to Arizona Hardwood Floor Supply’s website or take a peek at online reviews, you’ll find extraordinary testimonials and consistently see rave comments stating, “excellent customer service,” “highly recommended,” and “quality.” It makes sense why they proudly display their A+ ratings from the Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List and Customer Lobby on their homepage. Their dependable reputation could also be the reason they ranked as one of Action Floors’ top ten dealers in 2017.
As members of the flooring industry, we all know that it takes craftsmanship, quality materials and a knack for understanding a customer’s needs to acquire recommendations and a loyal clientele.
We spoke with Arizona Hardwood’s Commercial GM Jimmy Waters to hear a bit more about the dealership and the practices that have helped them earn their badges of excellence.
As the commercial GM, Jimmy is responsible for all sports floors and custom installations. He’s been affiliated with the company since its early years and shares how the company got its roots.
“Arizona Hardwood Floor Supply, Inc. became incorporated as a business in 1982. Shortly after, in 1989, founder Jim Hosea and mill representative Mike Marzols partnered up to install sports floors. They were approached by Action Floors to represent the company in the sports flooring industry. The two jumped on board with Action Floors in 1989 just when Action Floors started,” shares Jimmy.
Though he’s been affiliated with Arizona Hardwood since 1989, Jimmy had the opportunity to branch out on his own for a while. When Jim Hosea announced his retirement in 2001, his son Bill and daughter-in-law Cheryl reached back out to Jimmy to rejoin the business–he’s been there ever since.
When it comes to the breakdown of Arizona Hardwood’s business, the company is split between athletic flooring, residential flooring, residential installs and material sales. They pride themselves on being a wood flooring-only company.
Arizona Hardwood is honored to have installed many NBA sports floors, hundreds of sports floors for universities, high schools, charter and private schools and floors in homes and businesses in their region.
Quality Partnership
Jimmy has worked with many different wood flooring manufacturers over the years but says one reason he enjoys working with Action Floors is the quality of the product.
“The product itself is bar-none some of the best in the industry,” he explains. “I’ve installed floors for all the guys that are out there, but when I show up for sanding, I’ve noticed that Action Floors is much more detailed in their milling work.”
“This makes for a smoother install on the labor end of the project. And, once we start sanding the product, it actually makes it easier because we have less downtime for changing paper and we don’t go through it as much,” he says. “We’re able to get better performance out of our machines and labor. In the end, we have a much better-looking product because we have minimal variances in the mill work of the flooring.”
Overall, this saves Arizona Hardwood a lot of time and money, which is why Action Floors is proudly represented on the company’s list of reputable product brands by which they stand.
What’s Trending in Sports Floors?
Quality craftsmanship and products are the fundamentals of Arizona Hardwood’s reputation but staying current on flooring trends shows innovation and creativity to prospects.
“One of the biggest things we’re seeing more and more of in sports floors is the usage of transparent paint to achieve a stain-like appearance,” says Jimmy. “People are really wanting to see the wood show through the paint in lieu of a solid color surface.”
This is especially popular in the graphics and the solid painted areas like borders and solid keys.
Arizona Hardwood is also playing around with the use of different wood species within one flooring project. This creates accents and contrast with the wood.
Jimmy recently did this on a racquetball court. “Instead of painting the lines in, we installed purple heart and ebony in the lines instead of just painting in the red and black lines.”
“We are trying to present this in residential homes for personal home gym half courts, too,” says Jimmy. “Instead of having the painted lines for the keys, that can all be inlayed with a contrasting wood flooring color to the maple.”
Overall, this approach enhances the aesthetics of the floor and makes long-term maintenance easier.
“The beauty of this is that you can install it and never have to worry about painting your floor again. All you have to do is sand it, put a finish on it and you’re done.”
This is a similar approach to what Action Floors is seeing quite often on basketball floors where different grades of maple are used to achieve an intense, yet natural, contrast.
Focus on Social
Aside from the daily operations, Arizona Hardwood is finding new leads and success from social media. Jimmy says a lot of calls come in from prospects who have seen their work on Facebook and Instagram.
“We have been starting to get a lot more feedback and attention from social media,” he adds. “My advice for other dealers would be to hire someone specifically to maintain a social presence.”
Arizona Hardwood posts at least once or twice a week and has a dedicated person on staff who manages the accounts. Jimmy says the most popular posts are ones that show the detail in gym flooring artwork.
From their Facebook to Instagram accounts, take a look at some of the nice marketing work Arizona Hardwood is doing as a way to find new clientele and share their beautiful installs.
Action Floors is proud to work with industry leaders and Top 10 dealers like Arizona Hardwood that focus on superior quality and share innovative ideas to keep business opportunities flowing.
For more valuable information, see case studies and project profiles from other dealers that had a story, tip or experience that was noteworthy to share. And, if you’re seeing trends or have business advice you’d like to share with other Action Floors’ dealers, let us know! Our goal is to foster a community where dealers can thrive off each other’s knowledge and expertise.
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