‘All must go!’: Lehigh Valley flooring supercenter to close | Eat, Sip, Shop

WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – A destination for flooring, including carpeting, hardwood, laminate and tile, is holding a store closing sale in Lehigh County.

A location of Lomax Carpet & Tile Mart, offering a wide array of flooring options as well as installation services, will close on May 26 at 955 Grape St. in Whitehall Township, according to store employees.

Customers can shop a store closing sale, with markdowns up to 80% off items’ original pricing.

The flooring supercenter lost its lease in Whitehall, but the management team is hoping to relocate the store to another Whitehall area spot, workers said.

Signs reading “all must go!” and “final liquidation floors!” are displayed at the Grape Street location.  

Carpet & Tile Mart, a third-generation, family-owned and -operated business with more than a dozen flooring supercenters in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and South Carolina, in 2020 opened its Whitehall location at the site of a former Toys R Us store.

Carpet & Tile Mart was founded in 1967 when founder Sam Longwill opened the chain’s first store as Airbase Carpet Mart in a Quonset hut adjacent to the Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware.

The company’s roots date back nearly 60 years, when company founder Sam Longwill opened the chain’s first store as Airbase Carpet Mart in 1967 in a Quonset hut adjacent to the Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware.

Longwill stocked and sold broadloom carpet and area rugs at steep discounts by purchasing mill overstocks, factory leftovers and remnants from dozens of manufacturers.

As a result, customers could get “the same quality and fashion of high-end carpeting at a fraction of the cost” offered by competing stores, according to an account on the business’ website.

“Carpet Mart’s in-stock, direct-from-the-mill, warehouse-style approach allowed customers to save money and take their new carpet with them — or have it professionally installed within days,” the online message continues. “This unique combination of value, convenience and professional service has been the hallmark of the business ever since.”

From the late 1960s to today, the company has continued to expand its product offerings, services and retail footprint.

Now, with over 300 employees, Carpet & Tile Mart operates on the same strong, family-oriented traditions and values – including “exceptional values, unsurpassed selection and superior customer service” – as it did when Longwill founded the company in 1967, according to a business description.

Carpet & Tile Mart buys directly from mills and manufacturers, eliminating the middleman and mark-ups that are typically associated with flooring franchise stores, big-box home center flooring departments and floor covering buying group operations.

“Working closely with the mills and flooring suppliers for decades, we have also been able to maintain a superior product-quality level that other ‘flooring liquidators’ cannot match,” the business description reads.

“Our long-standing history with these vendors, and a unique liquid position in the marketplace, allows our buyers to negotiate and buy at deep discounts, and obtain goods or special limited deals not readily available to other retailers.”

The Whitehall Lomax Carpet & Tile Mart location operates 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays.