Who is Brian Elias, founder of Refloor?

Snapshot

Who is Brian Elias?

Brian Elias is a Detroit-area serial home-improvement entrepreneur and the founder of Refloor, a fast-growing in-home flooring retailer he started in 2020 with his son Daniel. He is best known for building 1-800-HANSONS from door-to-door selling into a business he describes at around $80 million in revenue with 500 to 600 employees, before selling a majority stake to private-equity firm Huron Capital in 2017. On LinkedIn he uses the title "Chief Imagination Officer."

From knocking 100 doors a day to a national brand

Elias started 1-800-HANSONS in the late 1980s selling home improvement door to door, knocking on as many as 100 doors a day. He credits that grind with teaching him to treat rejection as a volume and process problem rather than something personal.

The more no's you get, the closer you're going to get to a yes.

He turned selling into a system. His early pitch evolved from a blunt "Do you want to buy windows?" into an assumption-based discovery question about the age of the homeowner's current windows, followed by a low-pressure offer to show samples and calculate a price. He tested wording, learned from failed attempts, and trained others to repeat what worked.

Marketing was the other half of the machine. Elias wrote the "Call 1-800-HANSONS, Get It Done" jingle to stay top of mind and give consumers a single clear action, and he leaned on memorable outreach, once mailing a CEO a FedEx letter with a two-dollar bill attached just to get the meeting. In 2017 he sold a majority interest in the company to Detroit-based Huron Capital, at a reported roughly $71 million in annual sales, and stayed on rather than walk away.

Strategy, process, people

Elias's operating philosophy comes down to three words in order: strategy, then process, then people. Define the strategy, turn it into a repeatable process, then hire people who can execute it.

There's three things that will change your life in business: strategy, process, people.

The founder's job, in his telling, is to work on the business rather than stay trapped working in it. He built the company by replacing himself function by function, across sales, marketing, operations, finance, HR, and installation. He draws the org chart before every seat is filled and leaves his own name in each box until someone better takes it over.

Your job is not to work in your business. Your job is to work on your business.

• Write the process down: scripts, checklists, standards, and measurable accountability are what make growth repeatable.
• Give every role explicit metrics, and act quickly when a person is not meeting them or the culture.
• Do not fill seats just because someone is a friend.
• Protect executive time by delegating lower-value work so leadership can focus on decisions and growth.

He is candid that his biggest mistakes were bad hires, keeping the wrong people too long, and believing he could do everything himself.

Building Refloor

When Elias sold 1-800-HANSONS, his non-compete covered windows, siding, and roofing. Former Empire Today CEO Steve Silvers suggested flooring, a category the non-compete left open, and Refloor was born. Elias founded it in 2020 as a family business alongside his son Daniel, who leads operations.

Refloor sells and installs flooring through an in-home, shop-at-home model: free in-home estimates, all-inclusive pricing, and fast installation, focused on luxury vinyl plank, hardwood, and laminate. Rather than scale one giant operation, Elias is applying the lesson from HANSONS and building repeatable offices city by city, with the stated goal of becoming the largest flooring company in America. Qualified Remodeler reported Refloor at about $63.3 million in revenue for 2023, and the company has appeared on the Inc. 5000 and the Qualified Remodeler Top 500.

He frames the father-and-son split plainly: he is the zero-to-$100 million builder, and Daniel is the process-driven operator who can take a $100 million company toward $1 billion.

Why Brian Elias matters

Elias is a useful case study in how in-home home-improvement brands actually scale. The same demand-generation engine that built a nine-figure remodeling brand, dominate lead generation, book the in-home appointment, and close in the home, is now pointed at flooring. He says he still pretends he is broke each day to keep the urgency up, and reviews sales numbers daily.

The business is supposed to work for you. The business gives you more life.