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May 06, 2023

Hamburg Township family flooring business rebounds after fire

A phone call woke up Carpet Depot owner Doug Hill on July 31. His Hamburg

A phone call woke up Carpet Depot owner Doug Hill on July 31.

His Hamburg Township carpet and plank flooring business, founded in 1994 by his parents, was engulfed in flames.

An early morning blaze destroyed the approximately 16,000-square-foot showroom. They lost all their flooring inventory and displays. Little is left of the building. Some neighboring businesses suffered smoke and water damage.

"When I pulled up and saw the extent of it, there was a lot of smoke," Hill said. "They were still there putting it out. I couldn't get close but as the smoke cleared and my eyes adjusted, I could see the poles of the building. It hit me. I'd lost everything."

Carpet Depot has reopened in two temporary locations. The business is operating out of a temporary 1,800-square-foot showroom at 9600 Chilson Commons Circle in the Chilson Commons shopping center. It is using about 1,000 square feet in the old fire hall building in downtown Pinckney as a temporary warehouse.

The business is preparing to move into a larger 4,500-square-foot storefront next door to their current showroom.

Hill said he and his father, Derryl Hill, who still owns the property, want to rebuild the store.

"It was his dream to have all that and I was part of it since the get-go," Doug Hill said. "Certainly there is a lot of attachment to that building. I have a picture of my oldest playing in a mud hole when they were building it."

He said they are waiting on an insurance determination. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Hill estimates the fire destroyed about $60,000 of customers' flooring materials that was in the warehouse ready to be installed.

"They had put deposits down, we’d already took shipment in and they were ready to be installed," he said. "My second panic was how am I going to take care of customers and not lose them."

He said it took a few weeks to reorder lost materials.

"We didn't have a single customer cancel."

He said customers found out what happened and were patient.

"Shop local, that's huge out here," Hill said. "I’d say 75% of customers who come in say, we wanted to keep our business local."

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The store also had to replace dozens of displays and a carpet cutting machine. He was able to get a lot of what he needed from other flooring stores that were going out of business.

Another scare came last Tuesday when a small kitchen fire broke out at Hamburg Coney Island next door to Carpet Depot's temporary location.

"I was definitely like, really, wow, is this really a possibility that it would happen again so soon," Hill said. "It makes you think. You have a big event like I had. I think, that's a once in a lifetime event, and here is something that could have happened again easy."

He said he feels lucky to be back up and running with the support of the community.

"We were always busy and there is a little extra support from people who knew what happened."

Contact Livingston Daily reporter Jennifer Timar at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @jennifer_timar.