Name: Chris Laycock
Age: 41
Company: Manchester Flooring
Job Title: Director
How did you get into the flooring industry?
By accident – as everyone does! When I was 18 I had a job as a welder, but I had quite a serious accident at work when I fell off a power station. Following that, I got a summer job in Carpet World and I climbed the ranks to store manager pretty quickly. Then in 2002 I founded Manchester Flooring.
What’s been the biggest change in the industry in the past 10 years?
I’d say the work has got harder. There’s also been an increase in the number of people calling themselves “flooring contractors” when they’re nowhere near the same level. They always use cheap products instead of solid F. Ball products, for example, which means they’re not giving customers the best value for money. You really get what you put into it.
Looking forwards, what do you think will be the biggest change in the next 10 years?
Flooring is flooring at the end of the day; there’s not going to be an even quicker screed or a product that lays itself in 10 years time! I can see there continuing to be an increase in the importance of Health and Safety rules and regulations, which has been great for making people much more safety-conscious while on site.
What’s the worst job you’ve been on?
I recently had an overnight job for a CBBC show down in Media City, Salford. They wanted us to transform a dingy, grey corridor into something funky and bright, using pink and grey chevron carpet tiles to create a runway for a shopping trolley to be pushed down into a pyramid of toilet rolls! It was absolutely horrendous; the corridor was roughly 20x4m and it took about 45 minutes to take one single tile off physically by hand. The tiles were coming up in pieces, so in the end our only option was to glue over them.
And what’s the best?
We’ve done some nice work in Harvey Nichols, as well as the Lowry Hotel in Manchester and Blackpool Pleasure Beach. There’s a lot of satisfaction when you renovate something like a pub too because everyone always compliments the floors above anything else. It’s a nice little pat on the back!
Do you have go-to-products for certain jobs?
A lot of our clients specify the kind of flooring they want; I’ve worked for a care home that only wanted F. Ball products to be used, for example. We go along with their recommendations as long as we think they’re suitable for the job. The cheap products really don’t pay off, so we have to enforce that sometimes.
What do you like best about the job?
One of the employees here has a hobby where he takes day trips around the world. He just decided one day that he’d like to walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia, so he went. He’s got all the staff into it now; we’ve had work excursions to carpet shows in Las Vegas, Shanghai, even Harrogate!
What is your least favourite thing about the job?
It’s still a job; I’d much rather be sitting on a beach in the Caribbean drinking cocktails! But honestly, there’s nothing about the job that I really don’t like. I’ve never woken up in the morning thinking, “Urgh, it’s time to go to work.” The day I do, that will be the time to finish, and I don’t see that happening any time soon.