Over the past few years, employee ownership has transformed Carpet Plus — without disrupting what made it great to begin with.
When Charlottesville-based flooring business Carpet Plus joined the Teamshares network in 2022, the team didn’t know what to expect.
“We were all honestly a little skeptical,” said current president Liz Eure, who had worked at the business for over 15 years. “What are they going to do? What are they going to make us change?”
The answer, it turns out, was not much — at least not all at once.
But over the past few years, under the leadership of former president Sean Garcia (now a Teamshares industry lead), and current president, Liz, Carpet Plus has quietly hit all-time highs in revenue, margin, and operating profit. They’ve also consistently distributed dividends to employee owners throughout that time.
And they’ve done it without chasing shiny initiatives or upending their operations.
The great legacy of Carpet Plus
Carpet Plus was founded in 1987 by Duane Cassis and Cindy Adams, who built a loyal customer base and a tight-knit team over several decades. When Duane and Cindy were ready to retire, they chose to sell to Teamshares because they were excited about the idea of their business becoming employee-owned.
Liz, who spent fifteen years working side-by-side with Duane and Cindy, gives them tons of credit for hiring a great team and fostering a strong company culture:
“They’re the ones who hired all these great people,” she said. “And they had the good sense to make Carpet Plus all about customer service from the very beginning. Although they’ve left the business, they built a team that they knew was able to carry it forward.”
Sean agreed. After Duane and Cindy transitioned out, he recognized the weight of responsibility he carried as president:
“I took on the role knowing that a big part of this was protecting the legacy that Duane and Cindy had created,” he shared. “They had hired a stellar team and set a great standard of excellence, and that’s helped us maintain such a great reputation and a loyal client base across Charlottesville over these last few years.”
Small changes, big impact
After the former owners retired, Sean, Liz, and the whole Carpet Plus team needed to figure out how to build on their track record of success. Rather than trying to overhaul the business, they focused on smart, consistent improvements.
“To use a baseball metaphor, we’re hitting singles and doubles. We’re not hitting home runs here,” says Sean. “There were no shiny big initiatives. It’s been all about fine-tuning little things and stacking wins every day.”
Over the past few years, they’ve done several small things that have had a big impact on profitability:
- Optimizing cost structure. Just like any small business, optimizing costs was a key lever in growing profits. Over time, they’ve worked to make sure they’re getting the best deal possible on everything from materials, to IT vendors, to credit card processing fees and more. While each small change may not feel like much, it’s had a huge impact in aggregate.
- Fine-tuning pricing. Pricing can be a tricky lever to pull, but it’s critical for improving profitability. Finding the right pricing approach was a process and required tweaking along the way, but on the whole, Sean thinks the lessons learned and the price changes they’ve implemented have had a net positive impact.
- Reorganizing the sales team. There are two big phases in the customer journey when you’re in the flooring industry: getting the quote signed and project managing the installation. After recognizing this, they restructured the sales team’s workload so they could focus as much time as possible on actually selling and getting more quotes signed. The project management responsibilities shifted over to other roles, unlocking more selling capacity across the team and enabling more revenue growth. This also meant the team could focus on giving customers the best experience possible throughout the project — something Carpet Plus takes immense pride in.
None of these changes happened overnight, and many came with learnings and mistakes along the way. Fortunately, because of Carpet Plus’s strong team and ownership culture, they were able to manage change successfully and drive improvements over time.
The results have been clear and impactful: since Carpet Plus joined Teamshares in 2022, revenue is up 10%. Even more importantly, operating profit has increased by 45%.
And since the business is part of the Teamshares network, they’ve also been able to participate in the benefits of employee ownership, including participating in over $200,000 in dividend distributions and seeing the percentage of the business owned by employees increase from 10% to 15% over that period.
A true culture of teamwork
While the numbers are important and impressive, Liz and Sean both agree that culture is the real story.
“We’re small, and we put even more of an emphasis on the team,” said Liz. “There’s an elevated sense of everyone being in it together.”
Employee ownership has played a big role in that shift. Team members who once operated in their own silos now step in to help across departments to provide help and support. Everyone from warehouse staff to salespeople now has a clear line of sight into the company’s financial goals — and real incentives to reach them.
“Now the warehouse guys will be like, ‘We just need 300 more dollars this month,’” Liz shared. “They’re watching the numbers. They’re super into it.”
To foster this kind of unity and teamwork, the team holds bi-weekly KPI meetings and tracks monthly sales goals, alongside a “lunch goal” that brings a fun, immediate reward for hitting certain targets.
Sean shared a great example of what this shift looks like:
“We had set a monthly goal, which was basically that we had determined a point where we would be profitable and likely able to distribute dividends at the end of each month. And we communicated that, if we hit this goal, it should mean good things for everyone. A few months later, Liz told me that of their own volition, the team huddled among themselves because they realized they were about $60,000 short of hitting that goal for the month. They met and the conversation was basically ‘We have $60k to reach. Who has that in their pipeline? What can we do to sell that last bit so we can get lunch, and also a dividend?’”
It’s an incredible story because it shows the magic of employee ownership at work. Because every team member has a stake in the business and the right incentives, there’s a sense of working together for a collective reward.
There’s one other big way that this shows up at Carpet Plus: employee retention.
Since Duane and Cindy sold the business three years ago, there has been zero voluntary attrition at the company — something almost unheard of in retail.
That’s not by accident. It’s a testament to empathetic leadership, a culture of ownership, and hard work to help people understand how their roles matter to the overall business.
“I remember talking to one salesperson,” Sean shared. “They pulled me aside and talked about how back in the day, they didn’t know how the company was doing financially. They’d sell, sell, sell, but they didn’t know if it was good or bad or impactful. Today, given the open-book management style, they know what good looks like. They’re aware that if they sell a certain amount, it means the guys in the warehouse get a dividend. And they shared that this knowledge and transparency really reenergized them because they felt like they were accomplishing something important.”
Advice for other presidents and employee owners
When asked what advice she’d offer to other businesses going through an ownership transition, Liz didn’t hesitate:
“Be open-minded and stick with it,” she said. “It’s a scary thing having a new president come in…it’s a big, scary transition. But now, seeing where we are three years later, it’s definitely been a positive thing. There may be some bumps in the road at first, but just stick with it.”
Sean agreed. Speaking to presidents of other small businesses, he said, “Remember, you’re a steward of the business as it transitions to employee ownership. That means protecting the legacy the former owner built, and bringing employee owners along for the journey in a time of a lot of change and uncertainty for them.”
Want to learn more?
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