We’re trying to make buying floors as easy as buying a sofa.

In the spring of 2014, our co-founder Maya Reyes walked into three flooring big-box stores in one weekend trying to replace the carpet in a small two-bedroom condo. She left each one with a different price, a different install timeline, and a vague promise that the "real number" would come after a measurement.

The lowest quote was $3,400. The highest was $9,100. The floor was the same floor. So she did what any reasonable person does at 11pm with a spreadsheet open: she called every installer in town directly. The materials cost $1,150. The install ran $1,800. The rest was overhead, commission, and the markup that lives between a buyer and the person actually doing the work.

“The product was honest. The transaction wasn't. Fix the transaction and the whole category gets better.”

SimpliFloors started as a directory of vetted local installers and a spreadsheet of real material prices, run out of a one-bedroom in Glendale. The first website was a single page with a phone number and a promise: we will tell you the all-in price before we lift a plank.

That promise is still the only promise. Eleven years, fifty thousand floors, and a 280-person install network later – we've scaled the answer to one question we keep getting asked: can a flooring company actually be straightforward about this?

Yes. With practice.