The Tale of a Discontinued Item

Have you ever wondered how and why a flooring item gets discontinued? If not, that means you probably have not been stung by that situation, but I can assure you that it can really leave a mark to an otherwise positive floor buying experience. My best suggestion is to avoid the problem.

I wanted to briefly talk about why things are discontinued and about how that impacts you.

Firstly after a period of time products are naturally discontinued as colors, styles or other trends change. The average lifespan for floors I would estimate in the 18-24 month range. The constant changing of samples and colors makes it tough for flooring companies to keep up with.

Now here is the insidious part of this whole topic:
When a manufacturer chooses to discontinue an item YOU are the last person to hear about it. And the flooring company that carries the item is the 2nd to last person to hear about it.

What am I talking about?

Well once the choice has been made internally by the manufacturer to discontinue an item the manufacturer doesn’t actually tell anyone. They just keep selling their inventory until they run out. Then they tell you it is discontinued!

So when we get an order for a product that we think is available, but we were unlucky enough to be at the end of the inventory cycle we look stupid because they tell us they have none left and it is discontinued. Well then we have to explain the the customers that in fact, it is no longer available and no, we didn’t know it until now, and yes, we agree it is arbitrary and capricious, but we are where we are.

Of course the first reaction is denial. Well – just find some of it! We’ll call around to the entire country and find none left. We tell you the bad news. You remain in denial. “I’ll find it if it is the last thing I do!” you say to yourself.

You then start calling 10-20-30 companies all asking the same question. Each of them call the same places we already tried to no-avail. Finding a recently discontinued flooring item has about a 10-20% success ratio and if anyone can do it our folks can because we have more sources than any company on the planet for product. Finding an item that has been discontinued for 1 or more years if about a 100-1 shot for each year it has been discontinued. (e.g. 5 years discontinued = 500-1 shot that you will find it. – don’t waste your effort)

And that is when your search for the perfect floor begins again. And from experience I can tell you that all future options seem to pale in comparison to the first choice. I do believe much of this is purely psychological rather than fact. Don’t we always want what we can’t have?

Anyway – pursuant to my topic from yesterday about the increasing demand and time pressures to get projects done I will forecast a fall season full of surprise discontinued items. My suggestion to combat this is to have us check stock as you are narrowing your field of choices and then ACT before it is too late assuming inventory is available.

Sorry to bore you with what seems like a mundane topic. But I can assure you if you learn from the thousands of times this has happened over the years to folks that thought they were at the end of the floor buying process only to have to begin again, you will be rewarded with peace of mind and tranquility vs. chaos and flooring frustration!

Cheers.