Eric See started 5280 Floors in 2011. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
There’s a good chance you’ve walked on one of Eric See’s floors before.
The 55-year-old entrepreneur is the owner and president of 5280 Floors, which opened in a new showroom at 1025 Zuni St. along Interstate 25 last month.
It purchased the 4,900-square-foot building in March for $1.9 million. The previous owner had run Trouts Fly Fishing, which never reopened after being briefly seized by the state over unpaid taxes last fall.
See founded his flooring business in the garage of his Arvada home in 2011, and eight years ago moved to Denver in a warehouse a mile south of the new showroom, at 2nd Avenue and Bryant Street.
The flooring business has done work in Ball Arena, where it recoats the Nuggets practice court each year, as well as Union Station and the Denver Performing Arts Complex, See said. It also does “rinse and repeat” work for prominent retailers such as Starbucks.
Some of the businesses’ best work, though, can be found in the showroom itself.
“This slab was the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. Now, it’s a piece of art,” See said, pointing to the concrete floor.
Flooring samples on display at 5280 Floors’ new showroom. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Years ago, the space was a Sherwin-Williams paint store with drab flooring. Now, it’s been accented with orange, recoated and redone to show off the services that 5280 Floors provides. The business specializes in hardwood and concrete flooring to staircases and railings.
The showroom is eclectic, with over 500 flooring samples available to review. Everything inside is custom-made, from a 200-year-old African Wenge Tree slab serving as a bar countertop to Austrian-made “scalloped” and textured wood flooring on sale for $50 a square foot. Two thirds of See’s business comes from the trades: designers, architects and contractors. The remaining third being homeowners.
“10,000-square-foot houses is not out of the ordinary (for us),” See said.
See shows off a product on display. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
While he has high-flying clients, no doubt, the entrepreneur has less-expensive options for sale; a room in the back has a vinyl flooring collection starting at $2 a square foot. His business, which has about 25 employees, rakes in over $3 million in revenue a year, he said.
Next door to his cheaper flooring display sits one of the more expensive items in the showroom: a golf simulator.
See had it installed for $40,000, he said. The simulator, a bar that serves soft drinks and espresso and a back patio that overlooks the South Platte River are expected to be used at company events, or events held by company clients. But See is also good with someone driving down Interstate 25 just stopping by to try it out.
“We’re a client-experience company,” he said.
