Roth Carpet is going out of business -- swamped by the steady creep of big box home centers combined with the muddy mess of a recession that convinced homeowners to live with their old flooring just a bit longer.

The Monroeville-based retailer has begun liquidation sales at its three locations -- Monroeville, Mt. Lebanon and Ross -- with plans to get rid of hundreds of rolls of carpets, thousands of room-size remnants and piles of Oriental rugs as quickly as possible. The process could be completed in four to six weeks.

Richard Roth, whose grandfather and father found an opportunity cleaning carpets drenched during Pittsburgh's 1936 St. Patrick's Day flood, said the economic downturn of the past year was too much to handle. "It was an impossible 12 months," said the man who grew up in the family business, came on full-time in the late 1970s and has been running it since 1985.

Flooring companies such as Roth have been losing market share for years.

While department stores moved away from the business, home centers such as Home Depot and Lowe's moved in.

Mr. Roth estimated flooring centers used to have about 75 percent of the market but now control about 60 percent.

At its peak, Roth Carpet achieved $10 million in annual sales. "They're nowhere near that now," he said.

Nationally, the floor covering business is down almost 20 percent this year based on U.S. Census Bureau numbers, according to Santo Torcivia, president of Market Insights/Torcivia, a flooring industry research and consulting firm in Reading. In fact, most businesses connected to the home and home furnishings market have been hit hard by the housing market crash and falling home values in many markets.

"It's been a real bad year all over," Mr. Torcivia said.

He's thinks things have hit bottom and forecasts a turnaround is coming.

Even so, he said it will be "very slow and agonizing."

When consumers showed hints of starting to buy again late this summer, Mr. Roth decided to take the moment to sell off inventory at a reasonable return during what's traditionally a strong season for the flooring business.

He's not sure the old patterns will still play out since they haven't so far this year but he didn't want to take a chance things would get worse again.

"We're not in any financial distress," he said. He expects all creditors and the company's approximately 50 employees to be paid in full.

Sales will start at all three locations. At some point he expects to move the remaining inventory to the Ross location and close the other two sites first. Mr. Roth, 54, isn't sure what he'll do once the family business is wrapped up.

The decision to close the business means an end to the colorful marketing that the Roth family has brought to the region over the decades. Mr. Roth said his father, Bernard, was an early user of jingles -- "ding-a-ling-a-ling, give Roth a ring ..." -- and night sales with search lights and giveaways of everything from lottery tickets to kielbasa.

If he remembers right, his father once rented the Civic Arena, put out carpets and had staff on roller skates taking orders.

"Anything to stand out and get people's attention," he said.