Flooring Superstores

The Story Behind Edmonton's Largest In-Stock Flooring Selection

Flooring Superstores has been part of Edmonton since 1992. What started as four brothers with a better idea about how to sell flooring has grown into one of the largest in-stock flooring operations in Canada. The idea is the same as it was on day one. The inventory is considerably larger.

How Flooring Superstores Started

In 1992, four Ortynski brothers opened Carpet Direct Outlets in Edmonton. They had all spent years in the flooring industry, and they kept running into the same problem: customers waiting two or three weeks for products a well-run store should have had on the shelf. The order-and-wait model was standard. That didn't mean it was good.

Their solution was to buy in volume directly from manufacturers, skip the middlemen, and keep everything in stock. Better prices. Better availability. No waiting. It was an advantage that competitors couldn't easily match on either front, and it became the foundation everything else was built on.

By 1997 the business was thriving and Carpet Superstores was born. For the next 21 years, the name was everywhere in Edmonton, backed by a face most Edmontonians recognized immediately: Oiler great Craig Simpson. Over that time, the company invested more than five million dollars making Carpet Superstores a household name across the city.

Then came the harder decision. Flooring trends were shifting away from carpet and toward hard surfaces, and a name built around carpet wasn't telling the whole story anymore. In 2018, after more than two decades, they made the call to become Flooring Superstores. Walking away from that kind of name recognition wasn't easy. It was the right move.

Today both stores are still family-run, with the second generation of the Ortynski family at the helm. Each location is individually owned and operated. The philosophy hasn't changed since the beginning.