March 29, 2024

The Floor Store celebrates 35 years of business

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When Dan Ellis opened The Floor Store in 1983, he was in competition with several other stores selling floor coverings in Jasper County.

As those businesses dissolved through the years, his shop remained relatively intact in downtown Newton. Come Oct. 1, The Floor Store will celebrate its 35th year in business. Apart from an appointment-only flooring contracting business in Colfax, The Floor Store is the only daily open-door floor covering shop left in the county.

Dan’s wife and fellow co-owner, Margaret Ellis, said, “It looks like we’re kind of boring here on the corner, but there’s a lot going on. It may look like we have one customer every once in a while, but it’s not that way.”

In fact, Dan said business has been rather “crazy” as of late. With all the basements affected by recent heavy rainfall in Jasper County, The Floor Store employees have their work cut out for them, as do their contracted flooring installers. So much so, the Ellises have not really given much thought as to how they are going to celebrate the North Second Avenue East store’s 35th anniversary.

Looking back on The Floor Store’s legacy in Jasper County, Dan and Margaret attribute their relationships with the community as the main reason the business has endured.

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Dan said. “I knew a lot of people here in town. I was a fireman for 17 years here, too. And I started this when I was at the fire department. Started it from scratch. Took an early retirement from the fire department because it was getting to be too much to do both.”

For the first few years, Dan was not only selling the flooring from The Floor Store, he was also the shop’s installer. After a while he was able to hire subcontractors to complete work at the Newton Clinic, the Jasper County Courthouse and Annex Building, Newton Village and other retirement communities, local schools, TPI Composites and many other businesses around the area.

Generally, The Floor Store has about three to five flooring jobs a day in different parts of the county.

“We could be at a house, we could be doing something commercially, it all depends on the day,” Dan said.

Being in business for so long has come with a fair bit of challenges for The Floor Store. Dan said if The Floor Store had not been around for as long as it had been when the Maytag headquarters closed its doors in 2007, the floor covering shop might not have survived.

“Those first few years after Maytag shut down were pretty rough. Our sales were way, way down after that happened,” Dan said. “It started picking back up. Quite honestly, in the last couple years, we’ve had record sales.”

Dan still remembers the first job The Floor Store ever sold.

“It was one of the girls who used to work over at the (Newton) Daily News. It was her parents that bought some vinyl for their kitchen. She was also a classmate of mine,” Dan said. “The first few years it was kind of slow, but we just had to get our foot in the door. Now we’ve done carpeting for several generations and all kinds of families around Jasper County.”

They also built those relationships, which is something Dan and Margaret continue to achieve after 35 years. Margaret said the shop’s dedication for quality customer service has also played a factor into The Floor Store’s long stay in Newton.

“We go above and beyond,” she said. “I’ll help people pick paints and pick out their carpet and colors. I guide them and try to figure out what they like. I don’t just come in and say, ‘This is the newest thing and this is what you need.’ I go with what they have and what they feel comfortable with.”

Dan and Margaret credit customers who have “treated (them) so nicely” in the past 35 years.

“We owe a big thank you to all of the people who have supported us,” Dan said.

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com