Relaunch Due Soon

I’m planning to relaunch this blog into a fully fledged review site in the very near future. I’ll also begin to take a look at the world of LVT (luxury vinyl tile – Karndean et al).

While I’ve been AWOL much has happened in the wonderful world of floorcoverings. Brinton’s have secured foreign investment and looked to Indian and Chinese plants for the future, Victoria Carpets have shot themselves in the foot by teaming up with Tesco to sell carpets direct to the public (a big no-no in the trade), the recession has taken a chunk out of more high street names than you can shake a stick of gripper at and Carpet Right has announced that it will very likely be closing a significant number of stores in order to focus on more online activity. Oh and some rioters burned one of their shops down in London.

Whilst I have had some animated discussions with customers over the years, none have actually torched the shop (yet), although one guy did threaten this once. Oh and possibly the most worrying news of all is that wool now seems to cost as much as gold – in fact I’m expecting ‘cash for wool’ shops opening on high streets very soon.

I’m also continually asked about which is better, Balterio or Quickstep? It’s largely a matter of opinion – Quickstep has the better joint (in my humble opinion) and Balterio has the better design. Ignore the warranties and claims of super duper scratch and or water resistance. Buy the best one you can afford that you like the look of and you won’t go far wrong. Neither company makes a bad product and you won’t wear them out. I have some Balterio fitted at home – been down 7 years and looks exactly as it did when I put it down.

 

 

Tarkett Gooble Up Rhinofloor

We just received this letter from Armstrong:

It’s pretty clear from it that Tarkett, the huge vinyl manufacturer have decided, in their wisdom, to take on the Rhinofloor brand. Is it a risk? Well, Tarkett are huge and seemingly very successful, although the impending cuts might see a reduction in their commercial vinyl sales throughout Europe and that is an area of strength for them. They are surely counting on the brand awareness and hoping to use their size and strength to propel the Rhinofloor brand towards profit in the domestic market….easier said than done.

One rep told me not to dispose of my Rhinofloor sampling – whoops – too late. We do get so very many useless, unsuitable and redundant pattern books that a whole lot of them have to be skipped as soon as we work out that they are not useful. I had heard rumours of this move a couple of weeks ago, but I chose not to post it on here just in case somebody got upset at my posting of unsubstantiated rumours. I’m going soft.

Certainly Tarkett would do well to follow the lead of Armstrong, Leoline and so forth and produce a decent up to date website. That’s the minimum requirement these days – so very many of our customers come in armed with info from the internet and any manufacturer who fails to use it to their advantage is being extremely shortsighted.

Headlam Group Acquire Heuga Home Flooring

Well they did promise some impending acquisitions, but Headlam group’s subsidiary, Home Foundations, has now acquired carpet tile/modular flooring manufacturer Heuga Home Flooring.

Basically it is the residential business that they have acquired and not Interface, which takes care of commercial carpet tiles (in the main).

It is a hugely significant acquisition and adds to Headlam’s hugely successful and dominant portfolio as the UK’s top wholesaler/manufacturer. It will be interesting to see how the move pans out in the coming months, but Headlam largely like to keep the brand running as is, at least initially. I was told recently by a Heuga rep that the company’s domestic stuff hadn’t shown a profit for years, but I did not delve to verify that.

Please can you begin to refer to this stuff as carpet tile and not modular flooring now? For my money, they really need to look at their pricing – far too many products at £40+ per square metre with retailers struggling to see the benefits and value of them to their customers.

One of the first moves is to remove the ludicrous delivery charge that Headlam Group wholesalers have been charging for Heuga domestic products – now that really really annoyed us.

Lifestyle Floors: Hardwood, Laminate & Vinyl?

I’ve heard that Headlam Group’s interest in their new ‘Lifestyle Floors’ brand is set to intensify in the new year with the addition of hardwood, vinyl and laminate to the range.

There is talk of some 5 metre long stands being made available to show the products off and we will be very interested to see what they come up with. If we add this stand to the ones we have just had installed then we are talking about giving up a large amount of wallspace to one company.

We’ll have to consider it carefully once we’ve seen how it looks and most importantly, what products are going to be on it.

Kaindl Laminate: Like Hot Cakes

This past year has seen a real revolution in our laminate flooring sales. Sales peaked for us in around 2007, with the years leading up to that seeing massive growth from 1999 onwards. We sold huge amounts of it and at its peak we were selling more laminate than anything else.

What has changed this year, as laminate sales were slowly tapering off, is that we have been selling Kaindl laminates and they have blown away the competition. They are priced very aggressively by the largest wholesaler in the country, Mercado, and they look and perform seriously well.

We stand them alongside the brand leaders, Balterio and Quickstep and they compare wonderfully well, but at a significantly lower price. While Quickstep and Balterio have seen price rises recently, Kaindl prices have been static. I believe this to be something to do with its manufacture being in Austria and therefore not at the mercy of worsening Euro exchange rates.

Such is the importance to Mercado of this particular product, that they have taken the unprecedented step of placing a link to the products that Kaindl supply through them on their own home page. It’s a massive product for them and a massive product for us.

There is an 8mm V-Groove, a ‘Natur’ variant with extra visual effects and a super chunky 10mm narrow plank. They are all exceptionally great value in my opinion. The designs are oaky, but wonderful and ‘Brushed Oak’ (37580), ‘Salzburg Oak’ (37684) sell by the lorry load.

Sometimes you do have to take your hat off for a job well done and on this occassion I would have to do that to Kaindl. It’s not just the fact that their product is well put together and impressive to look at (not to mention the fab free display stands), it’s that it is being sold at a great price and is clearly the best pound for pound buy in laminate flooring in the UK today.

UK Flooring Blog Wordle Diagram

I found www.wordle.net and I made this after it analyzed the text in this site. The site is a lot of fun.

Lifestyle Carpet Collection Part 4: Headlam Group

Cottage Berber: This one has been selling like hot cakes. It’s a 100% wool berber made at a super low price and is doing the job for us and a lot of other retailers, if stocks are anything to judge by. It also bears a striking resemblance to range we’ve always done well with – Corsa.

It’s a boucle design, which I’ve shown below and is basically a smallish looped wool berber in the style of those that have been so very popular everywhere for the last few years.

At the price, you can’t go far wrong if you like this kind of carpet and you understand what you are buying. The appearance of this carpet will be very ‘rustic’ as they say in the trade, so if you like a neat, precise, sharp looking carpet then you are barking up the wrong tree with this one. I never like this kind of thing on stairs – the cheaper wool berbers just don’t stand up long term and are also often prone to ‘pilling’ as it is known, where fibres will need to be cut as they protrude from the surface of the carpet and this is not a fault as such (although it makes your new carpet look absolutely awful).

Personally I find them difficult to work with, difficult to maintain, but very easy to sell and therein lies the dilemma for the retailer I suppose. I do always warn customers about the drawbacks of a carpet like this one, but they do often go ahead with the purchase anyway. It is officially rated Heavy Domestic, as opposed to ‘Rustic Retreat’ from the same collection, which is only rated General Domestic. I’d not really be optimistic about either on the stairs, but that is just my opinion of course.

California Dreams: This is a very very well known carpet to all and sundry in the trade. It has been in production (though I don’t believe the weight is exactly what it once was) for many years now and it has gone from being a very big seller for us, to being just ‘steady’ nowadays.

It’s an all nylon shadow pile (the label says 100% polyamide to avoid using ‘nylon’ – the ‘n’ word in UK carpet it seems) and does have a very appealing soft touch, but it doesn’t come across as being lightweight at all. The carpet is fairly heavy and dense and you could use it just about anywhere around the home, and we frequently do.

It is what is known as a ‘tonal’ shadow, which means that not only is there a pattern cut into the carpet as with most shadow piles, but the colour has what I might describe as an ‘iced’ look. There is a lot of variation of shade within the colour of the carpet and this creates a very appealing look. It contrast markedly with the manufacturers’ (Associated Weavers) sister product to this, ‘New Territories’ which has a solid colour).

It is manufactured in 4 metre and 5 metre wide rolls and should be more or less instantly available through the Lifestyle Collection (as they all should be). I’d estimate cost at £19-£26 per square metre and I recommend it as just about the best shadow of this kind at this price.  The nominal pile weight is 36oz, but handle a sample for yourself and you will be impressed I’m sure.

Stately Homes: This is a heavy woven wilton and comes in a good variety of traditional and modern designs. We have a tradition floral ‘ispahan’ design, a very traditional ‘Arabian panel’, which I’ve shown below and also a small square motif and an eye-catching cameo.

The colours are very traditional for man-made wilton and this carpet bears an uncanny resemblance to Balta’s best-selling Wiltax. I like the look and feel of this dense, comfortable wilton and it really impresses as much as this sort of thing ever will. It’s a very good all-rounder for those who want a traditional look without either buying cheap rubbish or running to the expense of a wool Axminster or similar, as it will retail at around £24-£32 per square metre.

Like most, it is available only 4 metres wide off the roll. However there is one glaring error in the sampling in my opinion. A 5 year warranty? What? When far inferior carpets in the range are getting 7 and 10 year warranties? Very strange and I don’t understand that one bit. This is indeed a heavy man-made Wilton and is suitable for heavy domestic areas – genuinely. I’m mystified as to the 5 year warranty which really seems like an anomaly to me. It really ought to last significantly longer than that.

Carpet Tog Ratings: Tales of Woe

In recent months there has been an upsurge in queries from customers who are looking to install carpet over underfloor heating systems. Fine, great, wonderful and surely good for the trade you might think. Well, yes and no. You see, actually obtaining the tog rating of most carpets is a thankless and arduous business.

Balta are great – their website gives very clear, comprehensive information on all of their ranges – though curiously the ITC ones are not as thorough. Most of the British manufacturers need just a phone call to find out the relevant information, but some manufacturers simply ‘do not have’ the information. Erm….excuse me? you don’t know? You have to know – you make the carpet! Excuse the exasperation, but this comes after an hour’s fruitless searching for the tog rating of Bajong‘s Montana, which ended in my phoning Belgium, only to be told by the manufacturers that they ‘don’t have that information’. I was practically speechless and my customer stood aghast as I tried to explain that this manufacturer of the carpet he wants to buy  is simply unwilling/unable to supply a basic technical detail.

A plea to manufacturers. Please can you begin printing the tog rating on the samples? Please, please,  please. Otherwise every single time some new customer comes in and asks, we have to reach for the phone and customers are sometimes reluctant to take our word for it – they want proof positive printed on the sample. Is this really too much to ask?

Oh and a handy little tip. If you can only find the thermal resistance expressed this way 0.14m2 K/W then you simply multiply by 10 to get the tog rating, so in this example the tog rating would be 1.4.

I’m now compiling a list of information that is available and hope to publish this as soon as I can.

UPDATE: They emailed me in the end and I can confirm that Bajong state that the tog rating of Montana is a little under 1.2. Hopefully I will get the sale now.

Carpets of Kidderminster in Administration

More bad news for UK carpet manufacturing from a couple of weeks ago as long-established Axminster manufacturer, Carpets of Kidderminster have entered administration.

Jobs are of course under threat, but in the BBC article, a quote from the firm stated:

“The management remain optimistic regarding the outlook for the company,”

We dealt with them for a number of years and had some success with their Sarakhan collection, but it seems that in common with so many other British carpet manufacturers, they have found the going very very tough indeed during this recession.

Lifestyle Carpet Collection Part 3: Headlam Group

Farmhouse Twist: This one is a longer pile, slightly shaggy twist made from 100% polypropylene with an action back. It’s available 4m and 5m wide and is fairly good value at the likely selling price of £12-£16  per square metre.

It feels very soft, but it is still a twist and I expect it might flatten fairly easily so I would personally be looking at bedrooms more than lounge and stairs for this one.

Colours are similar to Village Twist with subtle, muted tones – probably at their best with a decent blue in ‘Bluebell’ and a decent ‘greigey’ ‘Graphite’. The now obligatory ‘Aubergine’ is seen yet again, but it lacks any real sharpness and looks a little lifeless to me.

Chic Saxony: Something very different is to be found with Chic Saxony. It’s a long, stringily-shaggy effort that reminds me of all of those shaggy rugs that are so very popular right now.

It does have a lovely soft feel to it and will appeal to those looking for something a little different for the master bedroom. It’s not really going to be ideal in heavy wear areas and the Lifestyle Collection confirms this by giving it a 5 Year Warranty in spite of it being about the most expensive carpet in the range – retails at £20-£27 per square metre.

I think this one is more just decoration for the stand in all honesty and I’m not expecting many sales. It’s just the kind of carpet that customers will invariably run their hands through, say “ooo look at that” and then buy something else instead.

Again it’s 4 metre wide, 100% polyprolpylene and made on an action back.

Waterside: A pretty thick Saxony, made to impress with its feel and touch and it arrives into a very cluttered part of the market. With mega-sellers like Mont Blanc, Colorado Springs and Montana competing with it, things will not be easy.

It is impressive and does have a very solid colour range to it. The black with grey speckles of ‘Liquorice’ will sell and sell as it has over the last year and it’s worth having on display just for that one really.

A great asset is that it’s available in both 4m and 5m wide, whereas many similar carpets at this sort of price do not offer that (Montana does) and I think this will propel the sales significantly.

It’s 100% polypropylene, action backed and ought to sell between £18 and £23 per square metre. It’s certainly a contender.