Allied Flooring, Paint and Design reopens showrooms to customers

May 27, 2020 | Danielle Eaton
daniellee@thereminder.com

AGAWAM – Just hours after Gov. Charlie Baker announced his plans to reopen the state, businesses across the commonwealth also addressed their plans to welcome members of the public back safely.

On May 18, Allied Flooring, Paint and Design, which has locations in both Agawam and East Longmeadow, announced that the store’s showrooms would be reopening. Agawam City Councilor Mario Tedeschi, president and owner of Allied Flooring, Paint and Design said the business was, fortunately, deemed essential when the COVID-19 outbreak began due to their work with housing projects and their cleaning services.

“We do a lot of work with housing projects, and we were doing cleaning. All of our guys are crime scene certified, we were doing some coronavirus cleaning,” he said. “We do work with apartment complexes, they were deemed essential [and] any supporting people such as us, were lumped into the essential category.”

It was at this time, Tedeschi said, they made the decision to close the showrooms at both locations “out of an abundance of caution.” This, he said, made it easy for the stores to “roll right into residential” work and reopen their showrooms.

While the state was shuttered, Tedeschi said he “paid people to stay at home” and had only had a few employees coming into work at the Agawam location to accept deliveries. He said now that the stores’ showrooms are reopening, “everyone will be coming back,” and safety precautions for both staff and customers have been put into place.

Tedeschi said he and his staff, “anticipated weeks ago” that the reopening would soon be coming and began making preparations. “We’re ready for it, we’re listening to Baker and Politio, [the] new plan. We wrote down our plan, went over it with employees,” he explained. Tedeschi said each store also has posters hung of newly released guidelines for businesses.

While some other stores may struggle with long lines and limiting the amount  of customers allowed in their stores, Tedeschi said he doesn’t anticipate that being a problem for them. “I wish we had that problem,” he joked. “There’s no lines at the door, if there’s two couples in our showroom at time, that’s a decent time."

He said in-home installations will also be offered “as long as the homeowner is comfortable.” During installations, Tedeschi said employees, who are subcontractors, will be provided with masks and gloves. “They’ll be required to wear masks and [observe] social distancing,” he said.

He said store employees will also be encouraged “to wash their hands several times a day, high touch areas will be disinfected throughout the day, and “at the end of the night our crews will go in and disinfect the store.”

Tedeschi said he expects “it’s going to be a slow start,” but wanted to “encourage the local residents and surrounding towns to support us.”

“And sooner than later, waiting several months to see what happens might not be good enough,” he said.

Allied Flooring, Paint and Design has locations at 350 Main St. in Agawam and 55 North Main St. in  East Longmeadow. The Agawam store can be reached by calling 233-3100 while the East Longmeadow location can be reached by calling 224-2144.

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