Here in the last day or two before our new website goes live, I would like to reflect on a couple of design issues that were important to me as we worked on our site architecture.

First, I wanted to have complete transparency in pricing.  It must be surprising and frustrating for consumers to visit wood flooring manufacturers’ websites.  Products tend to be only vaguely described, and even when there is explicit product data there is typically no pricing.  What can this possibly mean?  Well, perhaps the manufacturer sells through a retail distribution network and wants to let retailers set prices.  But if so, why not have a “manufacturer’s suggested retail price”, that would give a consumer some range of product cost?  I would find it incredibly frustrating to search for a flooring product for my home without any clue as to whether it would actually fit my budget.  And I would wonder if the price varied based on what the manufacturer’s salesman thought I could pay, much as doctors suspect (rightly) that tradespeople charge them more because they assume they can pay more.

So we are completely transparent about our pricing.  Virtually every product on this site comes with an actual retail transaction price attached.  And we stand behind our pricing.  You will never call us and find out the real price is something else, and we “haven’t gotten around” to changing the website price.  If you see it here, it’s the real deal.  You can build your flooring budget around the information you find here in complete confidence.

Transparency.  It’s so simple.