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.

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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.

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