Coles Rolls Out Red Carpet For Customers for 60 Years
Family-owned Coles Fine Flooring, also known as Coles Carpets, is turning 60.
The icing on this anniversary cake: a growing interest in home improvement that has netted this homegrown company — averaging $20-million-a-year in sales — its best years ever.
Company President George Coles carries the torch lit by his father, Hubert Coles, in 1947.
“I personally have witnessed three recessions and I think you simply have to learn from those experiences not to overextend, to run and manage your business prudently, and to hire and retain good people,” said George on the company’s longevity.
The last three years have been the most successful in the company’s long history, George said.
On average, the company grew by 15 percent year-over-year in 2005 and 2006. In 2004, the rate was slightly less but still one of the company’s best years ever, George said.
Another second-generation Coles heir is Vice President Steve Coles.
“We built this company on the basic philosophy of doing business in an honest way,” Steve said. “(My father) was a great guy. He had very high standards.”
Among those standards is a one-year guarantee on all floors installed by Coles.
Unlike George, 61, who was first to join the family business in 1973 after dropping out of law school, Steve, 51, said he knew early on he wanted to be part of it.
“My father was pretty smart,” Steve said. “He never asked if anyone wanted to come in (to the business) because he wanted it to be our decision so that if we did come to him, he would know it was what we really wanted and we’d have the same passion for it that would make it and us successful.”
George and Steve have six other siblings; two sisters, Chris and Jan, are involved in running Coles’ seven showrooms.
The showrooms are scattered across the county and include a 40,000-square-foot flagship store on West Morena Boulevard and a 25,000-square-foot store in San Marcos.
