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.

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Are You Going To Harrogate Fair?

This year’s Harrogate Flooring Show is almost upon us – it is being held between the 5th and 7th of September this year. In a move to persuade hard-working shop owners to make the journey, the operators have decided to begin on a Sunday this year.

I’m not sure whether to pop along there or not at the moment. Anyway, you can pre-regisiter by clicking the link above and if you do go then have fun.

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Hardwood by Kersaint Cobb

I’m a big fan of Kersaint Cobb’s products and their refreshingly positive attitude towards retailers. Their coirs, sisals and seagrasses are excellent, as are their tremendous collection of wool carpets.

Therefore it was quite a surprise when they launched a hardwood out of the blue last year. It’s a range full of oak, which is the big seller after all, save for an American Walnut. There are a couple of 14mm Engineered Oaks – lacquered or brushed & UV oiled,  four ‘semi-solid’  18mm thick options (including the walnut) and five options of 20mm solid oak, as well as an 18mm solid oak.

The display stand that they have come up with is simple and effective. It’s a ‘toaster stand’ that allows easy access and provides the customer with enough of the fitted hardwood on show to have an idea of what it will look like on the floor and also helps the retailer to really show off what is a quality product.

You can buy it on Yourfloors and you are much better off with a quality wood from a reputable supplier than some shady pallet handler from the Far East who sells on Ebay. Be very careful when buying hardwood…

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Yourfloors Fitting And Accessories Active: Be Careful Though…

Finally Yourfloors has activated the fitting and accessories part of the website. If you have a Yourfloors site then please read this very carefully before you activate the fitting and underlay.

Firstly, a screenshot of it working:

It works! However be careful for a couple of reasons.

Firstly your fitting charges need to include gripper/adhesives. They have emailed us all to remind us of that, but it’s something to bear in mind when adding your fitting prices to the site.

Also there does not appear to be any way to set a minimum fitting charge. That can be scary. Imagine selling a 2m x 2m bathroom carpet and getting the princely sum of £10 or £12 to fit it! That must be changed and I’m certain it will be. People can knock the website all they like, but it will work successfully in the years ahead, I have no doubt.

Aside from that there is a minor problem with carpet tile fitting where 4 tiles, according to Yourfloors, means 16 square metres of fitting – oops.

I do like it though. You can decide what accessories to sell and add any underlays you like, regardless of who you buy them from. There are not enough fields for door bars (only 6?!?! – you need more like 20+), whereas you can add up to 6 types of scotia (?).

You can add uplift of old, removal of furniture and door cutting (or not if you don’t do it), so it does have a lot of the bases covered (though not all, obviously). Yourfloors is very much a case of ‘swings and roundabouts’ for the retailers who have signed up. Some things will seem a bit of a headache – “oh no I have to deliver a 2m x 2m for free”, but remember you might just get a big order off the back of it, so grin and bear it!

To consumers, Yourfloors now offers a complete service and I recommend you use it. You can compare all of your local independent retailers who are specialists and have every reason to provide you with a much better and more personal service than the big shops. They will also have every chance of winning on price.

Remember, the price per square metre and the final fitted price are not the same thing! Big carpet chains will often lead with prices that appear to be lower, but the on the floor price will end up being much higher than your local retailer.

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Quickstep Parquet: New Product Launch

We’ve been invited to see the launch of some much talked about new hardwood from Quickstep next month. I’m not sure if it’s wine and cheese or Nescafe and digestives, but we can live in hope.

It looks superb from what I’ve seen so far. This is very much a pre-launch post, remember I haven’t seen it in the flesh yet, but early signs are extremely promising. As the saying now goes in the hardwood/laminate trade, it is ‘very oaky’, but then that is what sells and if it gets us out of decimating rainforests for exotic woods and being at the mercy of some very shady loggers, then it’s got to be a good thing in my book.

Quickstep are quick to point out the use of Hevea in the core of the board (it’s an engineered wood as opposed to a solid) and that one cubic metre of  wood makes 150 square metres of their product compared with solid wood making only 50 square metres from a single cubic metre.

I do think that an educated customer should be able to see the benefits of using engineered as opposed to solid wood, regardless of the ‘mug’s handful’ that a cheap solid oak gives them. Hopefully the benefits will become obvious to the customer and Quickstep are playing on the ease of installation, the eco-friendly nature of their wood and also the ‘plug and play’ nature of their product.

From a retailer’s point of view I much prefer to sell engineered wood. To put it simply, there is so much less that can go wrong. Particularly for a shop like ours that does not specialise in hardwood, engineered floors are a much better bet.

I don’t know the projected price yet, but I do hope it isn’t astronomical. I can almost hear the main men at Quickstep et al trotting out their ‘do not sell on price’ mantra, but whilst I partly agree, that does not allow for open-ended pricing without limits. It’s only worth the amount that the customer is prepared to pay for it and raising the bar will not happen overnight. Whilst sheds still pile up cheap hardwoods at £20-£25 per metre (and even less in places), the problem will persist.

Stand aside from that, elevate your product to a higher level and sell on quality emphasising its benefits – at least in an ideal world.

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