Lexington small business owner offers to help others with ‘tough’ application process for federal assistance

LEXINGTON, S.C. (WIS) - A small business owner in Lexington County says the key to getting the economy back up and running is to support small businesses.

Floor Boys owner, Brian Peed, says much like other small businesses, his company has seen a dramatic change in pace over the last couple of weeks.

Floor Boys has been offering flooring services since 2007 and just relocated to its North Lake Drive location in September. Peed says they used to see about 25 sets of customers on an average day, but as of late, the showroom barely sees any customers.

For now, the plan is to keep all full-time employees on the payroll, but times are growing increasingly hard for the subcontractors the company hires for in-home installations.

Peed says as soon as he could, he started the application process for federal assistance through the Small Business Administration (SBA) to help the company survive the many changes brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re slow, it’s a different business right now. We’re only having six of us in 15,000 square feet at a time. We doing a little more in-home shopping. We’re taking samples to customers – disinfecting them before we take them in, disinfecting them when we take them out and I think that’s the best we can do,” said Peed.

According to Peed, the application process through the SBA was lengthy and complicated, but he believes this help will be crucial for so many small business owners.

“It’s a lot of red tape. My application was 75 pages long. I don’t think that the small restaurant that had to go out of business just like that would have all this information readily available. I think the process may be a little tough. It took me three and a half hours – very, very tough,” said Peed.

The Floor Boys owner is now offering to assist other small business owners who may need help with the application process. He can be reached via email: Brian@floorboys.com.

A spokesperson with the SBA says their website is being visited by hundreds of thousands of small business owners on a daily basis. They’re working to meet this unprecedented demand, and are processing applications as soon as they can.

Below is the contact information for small business owners needing assistance:

If a small business owner applying for SBA disaster assistance has any questions about the application process or the information requested, please contact the SBA disaster assistance customer service center at 1-(800) 659-2955 (TTY: 1-(800) 877-8339) or by email at disastercustomerservice@sba.gov

They are working with the SBA District Office in Columbia, Small Business Development Center Networks, SCORE and Women’s Business Centers to assist small business owners prepare their SBA disaster loan applications. They can be found at www.sba.gov/local-assistance.

Additional information may be found on their website at www.SBA.gov/disaster.

Copyright 2020 WIS. All rights reserved.