How Atlanta-based Plum Is Transforming ECommerce From The Floor Up

Being home to the “Flooring Capital of the World,” North Georgia carpet is found in homes across the country. 

Now a team of Georgia-based entrepreneurs and veterans of the flooring space are helping to bring the industry to the e-commerce world. 

That industry, Plum Carpet CEO and founder Shawn Wilson said, has a notoriously “nebulous cost structure” and requires homeowners to often “play roulette with contractors.” 

“The most frustrating and confusing part of the four buying processes is price. So at Plum, we flipped it around.”

As an e-commerce and direct-to-consumer startup, Plum has created an in-house pricing methodology that pulls public data from individual properties. This way customers get clarity about pricing from the start of the renovation process.

Customers can then shop Luxury Vinyl Plank (LVP) hardwood and carpet selections before working with the Plum team to get it installed. In a “Warby Parker” style experience, Plum sends samples to be tested at home, and Wilson said that the team can typically install within two to three weeks. 

Wilson said Plum’s direct-to-consumer model and its ability to quickly price and deploy projects was a particularly important competitive advantage when home services companies were slammed during the course of the pandemic and as consumers continue to navigate the national housing shortage. 

Wilson said the team has mostly been unscathed by the global supply chain shortages as they source carpet domestically.

 

E-Commerce From The Ground Up 

Wilson previously worked at Mohawk Industries, The Home Depot, and Romanoff Renovations before launching Plum in late 2019. The team brought in an Atlanta-based capital partner early on to scale. 

Flooring might not sound like a natural fit for online buying, but the long purchase cycle around buying carpet and hardwood makes for an exciting challenge for Plum’s Head of ECommerce Jay Allen.

“People don’t wake up in the morning and decide to buy flooring that day,” Allen told Hypepotamus. “They need to see samples and think about this big purchase.” 

Allen said the team is focused on building up its funnel of homeowners and B2B partners through strong content and finding new e-commerce solutions to attract key customers. 

 

Photo by Kelly Kline