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Company History
An Epic Yarn
Sheffield’s Pyramid Carpets may not be quite as old as the Pyramids in Egypt, but it has still been around for quite a long time.
This independent firm has over half a century of experience in selling both retail and contract flooring services.
Today the business operates under the leadership of Christopher Steer and his son Mark. The firm offers an incredible choice of floorings to new and existing customers. The firm also specialises in providing floor coverings to projects such as hotels, pubs, restaurants, nursing homes, churches, schools and offices. In recent years the firm has supplied and fitted carpets and vinyl floor covering to the new Health & Safety head office at Bootle and also Copthorne Hotel at Sheffield United Football Club and the all new Doncaster community stadium as well as the new Velocity Tower.
The business started just after the end of the second world war when Chris’s father, Clifford Steer, left the army and set up in partnership with his brother in law. They ran a stall on Chesterfield market, before subsequently moving their small business to Sheffield’s Sheaf Market. Despite the difficulty in getting materials to sell in the era of post war shortages of raw materials the fledgling business managed to survive.
Chris Steer can recall his own early start in the trade when, at the tender age of seven, he helped his father sell carpets at the market stall in Chesterfield. By the time he was 12 Chris was frequently working on Saturdays as the official tea boy.
Those were the days. Many readers will still recall those times when fitted carpets were all but unknown and when lino was the usual floor covering, with a carpet square occupying the middle of the room. And that was only in the front room: bedrooms were a different matter. How many of us remember those freezing cold pre-central heating days, getting out of bed sleepy-eyed and putting our bare feet on the freezing lino instead of a tiny rug?
And who can forget trying to fit that old lino: gosh how easily it used to crack if it was bent too much. For the benefit of younger readers the name lino is short for linoleum a reminder of its origins. Lino was made by impregnating rough Hessian fabric or waterproof felt with a mixture of oxidised linseed oil (the ‘linoleum’), resins such as Kauri gum and various fillers before printing a pattern on the resultant sheets. A big marketing point when lino was first sold was that it would help in the campaign against TB – it could easily be wiped clean after a TB sufferer had finished coughing around the house. Today vinyl is even more easily cleaned and ten times easier to fit – and happily TB has ceased to be a selling point!
Fitted carpets only began to make a big impact in the 1960s. Before then carpets were far too expensive for anyone to think of cutting them to shape. And besides didn’t we want to take them with us when we moved? Certainly very few people at the time Clifford Steer started in business would have thought for a moment that they would ever be able to afford such an extraordinary luxury.
Clifford Steer died in 1997, though not before witnessing the opening of the 1,200 sq ft showroom at Crown House. Pyramid Carpets is still very much a family firm, with Chris and Mark as the directors. Mark deals with the contract department leaving Chris and Terry Dawson, Chris’s brother in law with the daily running of the business. With the business growing fast since moving to Woodseats Chris & Mark decided in 2001 to refurbish Crown House with the addition of a rug department on the second floor and an extension to the front of the showroom which would increase its size to over 2,500sq ft. In 2002 all work was completed and the end result is an impressive building with one of the largest rug departments in the Yorkshire area.
As well as family members, and 10 salespeople, the firm also employs 12 of its own carpet fitters and four teams of contract fitters, whilst for major contracts the firm enlists the service of a dozen sub contractors to help fit not only carpets and vinyl’s but also today’s modern wooden flooring.
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