Over twenty-five years ago, a young
couple in Dalton, Georgia, had a dream. Danny and Judy Simmons wanted to
sell carpet and build the kind of trust with their customers that would
grow their business into a major carpet factory.
They started right in their own
small apartment. Danny handled sales over an old-fashioned, one-line
phone, and Judy figured yardage on a hand-held calculator and prepared
invoices on a second-hand Underwood typewriter.
“If we shipped it that day, we
mailed the invoice that night,” Judy recalls.
From these humble beginnings,
S&S Mills which stands for Simmons and Simmons has grown to fill a
280,000-square-foot state-of-the-art plant capable of producing 20 million
yards of carpet a year. Located on a 37-acre campus in Dalton, the factory
is now fully computerized. Your order is received on one of more than 500
toll-free phone lines, and computers calculate yardage and manage billing.
From tufting to dying, shearing to coating, and cutting to delivery every step
of the process is automated.
S&S Mills still treasures
its direct, one-on-one relationship with its customers. “Every time we
receive a letter, phone call, or email, a customer is inviting us into
their home,” says Danny. “We don’t just sell carpet, we build
relationships.”
When you buy carpet from a carpet store or home improvement chain, you are not
buying direct from the manufacturer. Even carpet purchased from so-called
“carpet discounters” has passed through the hands of a middle man, adding
unnecessary cost to the price of the carpet. But when you buy from S&S Mills,
you buy direct from the manufacturer, eliminating huge mark-ups and commissions.
Danny and Judy believe in the dream that inspired them to start their business
a quarter of a century ago. They have established a personal relationship with
thousands of satisfied customers based on trust-and they aren’t about to
sacrifice that relationship to sell through a middleman.
“It’s a philosophy of direct communication that allows us to work with
each and every customer to ensure that his specific needs are met,” said Danny
Simmons. “We didn’t eliminate the middleman; we never had one.”
“It has worked for us for 25 years,” Judy agrees, “and we aren’t
about to change it just to be like everybody else.”
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Danny & Judy Simmons, founders of S&S Mills Carpet, believe in
giving customers the lowest possible prices by eliminating the middleman.
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