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Soleil Floors • Round Rock

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By Terry Hanley Friday, 09 January 2009

Soleil Floors is a family-owned business with a wide range of flooring products and personalized home improvement services.

“Round Rock has been good to us,” owner Willie Hendrix said. “Those are our customers. Eighty percent of our business is done right here in Round Rock, and we appreciate that patronage and want to continue to build that.”

Ben Hendrix, a salesman at Soleil Floors, with his parents Stephanie and Willie Hendrix, who own the flooring and countertop store.

In 1992, the Hendrix family moved to Round Rock from Annapolis, Md., where Hendrix had remodeled historical homes and buildings as well as private residences. He also did remodeling work for the Maryland General Assembly in downtown Annapolis for more than six years.

“That was a nice feather in my cap,” Hendrix said. “I only stopped because I moved here.”

Though Hendrix’s roots are in the Northeast, he said he wanted to raise his family somewhere more culturally traditional, thus the move to Texas. Upon coming to Round Rock, Hendrix partnered with a friend to form Hill Country Custom Builders. Three years later, he broke away from the business to work as an independent contractor.

Hendrix began talking to his wife in late 1996 about opening a business that focused on the aspect of building he enjoyed most — flooring. After discussing the idea for the next five years, the couple opened their store in downtown Round Rock in 2002.

Around that same time, one of Hendrix’s best friends, Mark Stock, and his wife, Andrea, were in the process of adopting two young girls from Russia whom they named Sarah and Soleil. The latter — a family name that means sun in French — struck Hendrix as a good name for his new business, and his wife, Stephanie, agreed.

Hendrix’s years of building and remodeling experience enable Soleil Floors to provide services that larger stores cannot, he said.

“What that allows me to do is go into a situation where people are going to do their floors, but say they are going to do a little more as well [such as painting, sheetrock or plumbing],” he said. “When they find out that that’s what I did for 20 years prior to this, I’ll go in and I’ll take care of [other work] for them.”

Hendrix said he and his family usually get to know their customers on a personal level because they are a part of all jobs, whereas some bigger stores subcontract their services out to other businesses.

“We can give you what the big boxes can’t,” Hendrix said. “You go in there, and you become part of their sales system, and somebody who did not come out to your home is selling you the material. They don’t know what your house is like. They don’t know anything because they’re not out there. They just meet you in the aisle. We can provide a service far beyond what the larger stores can do. They can’t do what we do, and a lot of people appreciate that.”