Carpet Castle: Beating the virus in 2020

Carpet Castle in Caerphilly is pioneering a safe new way to buy flooring

As retailers all over Wales reopen their doors following the Coronavirus lockdown, we caught up with Carpet Castle in Caerphilly to find out what South Wales’ famous bargain flooring warehouse has done to keep customers safe during this time

What changes have you made to the store to ensure you are ‘Covid Secure’?

You name it, we’ve done it!

Perspex shielding around the till area, two metre spacing around the shop floor, electronic payment methods, hand sanitisers, disinfection of carpet samples and we also limit the number of people in store at one time.

I can honestly say that customers should feel really safe making a visit to the store. It’s a really clean environment and the staff take these new measures really seriously.

We’ve been a leader in our industry for 50 years, so we’ve gone above and beyond to pro-actively modify the entire retail experience that will allow customers to shop with complete confidence.

We were able to trade earlier than other stores because we have an outdoor landscaping department, so we had the chance to iron out a few things and optimise our safety procedures well before non-essential retailing was permitted in Wales. I think that has given us a bit of a head start over some other retailers.

If anybody would like to learn more about the new measures, we’d be really happy to discuss it. They can call the store on 02920 884951. Just ask for Dai, the store manager.

Have you considered selling online instead?

We thought about it, but the feedback we received from customers is that when it comes to carpets, there is so much choice that they prefer to make a physical trip to the store.

In fact, we are much cheaper than most online carpet retailers as well. That’s when we realised the solution for our industry was just to make the in-store experience totally safe.

What about home visits?

Obviously, our fitters need to visit customers’ homes to complete installation work, so we’ve introduced additional measures to keep the fitters and the customers extra safe when it comes to home visits.

The fitters wear PPE equipment that they change for new on every job. They accept contactless and electronic payments and we ask that customers give the fitter at least 2 metres of social distance.

We appreciate that some customers may be of an age where they would like the fitters to take even more precautions and we do our very best to accommodate these requests. At the end of the day, this virus has left many people nervous about shopping and especially about letting tradesmen into their homes so we’ve tried to make it so safe that anyone, even ‘at-risk’ groups can still have their new flooring fitted and do it with confidence.

How do you see the economic picture developing for retailers over the next 12 months?

We’re more optimistic than others. Our shop has been really busy since we introduced all the safety measures so I think it’s all about just making the experience safe so that customers can happily shop with confidence.
The more that businesses and industries adapt, the more customers will return and the economy will recover for everybody.

We’re really lucky to have been in business in South Wales for 50 years and we intend on being here for another 50 years!

Andrew Graham is a director at Carpet Castle

Carpet Castle buy their carpets in huge quantities, direct from the best manufacturers. They keep their costs low and pass the savings on to their customers. They believe that their prices can’t be beaten – from Cardiff to Tredegar and everywhere in between!

Nantgarw Road, Caerphilly
029 2088 4951
www.carpetcastlecaerphilly.co.uk

Click here to read about Carpet Castle’s artificial grass