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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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.

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Pure Stone by Balterio

Balterio recently added a tiled laminate range to their impressive array of products with Pure Stone, a collection of four new designs.

It’s an 8mm thick heavy grade laminate with a 25 year domestic and 12 year commercial warranty and is suitable for areas of heavy traffic including kitchens.

With this range, Balterio have managed to create a genuinely authentic looking stone tile. The surface texture and finish is subtle and slightly ‘pitted’ like the real thing. Obviously it doesn’t feel like stone, but perhaps that is part of the charm. Stone floors can often deter potential buyers simply because of their feel and coldness, so Pure Stone does offer a solution there.

Although there is a disappointingly small number of options, the four designs in the range are well thought out and the end result is especially good in my opinion. It’s streets ahead of Quickstep‘s very very tired looking Quadra range and Berry Floor’s tiles are not in the same league.

The tiles are bevelled all the way around and in a very large format: rectangles of 1192mm x 392.5mm. They lend themselves to large rooms, though we have fitted them in smallish kitchens so far and they have looked very good.

The format of the tiles brings me to my one gripe with Balterio’s point of sale. Their wonderful display stand has large tiles for each design, but nowhere does it show the bevel! I have found myself explaining to the customer, “yes they are bevelled all the way around, just like this one” and then showing them an image – it’s far from ideal and a definite oversight on their part. This does not detract from what is a great product though and I recommend it highly.

Can you put it in bathrooms? We often get asked this by customers and to be brutally honest, I don’t like putting any laminate floor in a bathroom. Forget what the makers may claim, it so often ends in tears. Thankfully Balterio and Quickstep unequivocally say ‘no’ by and large to avoid confusion. If you really want to do it then go ahead but clean up all spills and make sure the room is very well ventilated. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Price wise, this will sell at £18-£25 per square metre and is pretty decent value at that price.

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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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Balterio’s Laminate Flooring Manufacturing Process

Balterio are now one of the world leaders in laminate flooring. The sheer scope of their innovative designs and huge choice of options puts them at the cutting edge of the industry.

Their rise has been meteoric in what is a fiercely comeptitive industry. Contending with the likes of the huge Quick-Step, Berry Floor and Grundorf was never going to be easy for a newcomer, but they are now first choice supplier for many retailers here in the UK. Far and away my favourite laminate manufacturer because of their great products, continual improvement and innovation and their wonderful point of sale that shows off their products perfectly.

Here is how they make it:

And no, I do not work for them – just giving credit where it’s due.

I’ll be taking a look at their recently launched Pure Stone range soon and their sampling error….

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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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Write For The UK Flooring Blog!

If anyone out there in the world of flooring would like to write for this blog then please send me an email on ukflooringblog@yahoo.co.uk. I am happy to hear from anyone from any background and anywhere in the world.

Please understand that no payment will be forthcoming as the blog does not make a penny!

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Sensa Laminate Display Stand

Here’s a short post to show you the Sensa display stand if you haven’t made up your mind about it. Personally I would recommend having it, the footprint of the stand is pretty small at 85cms and it stands around 200cms tall by around 40cms from the wall. Four ranges, nice and compact. Anyway, here’s a photo:

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Sensa Laminate Flooring

There seems to be a lot of fuss being made over a new brand of laminate flooring called Sensa.

Sensa Laminate

Apparently, according to whispers I’ve heard, one of the main men behind this launch was closely connected to Balterio and they have now parted ways. I’ve been told a similar story by multiple reps now.

Anyway, to the product itself. Well I should preface this by saying that so far I have only seen some small sample swatches of the product. As usual these are painfully inadequate to sell the product from , being far too small. Having said that, we are now waiting for our stand to be installed and so I ought to have a better idea very soon.

There are four ranges being launched:

Traditional Vintage:8mm V-Groove with ‘Oiled Texture’ and 15 Year Warranty. This range features 8 Oak and only Oak decors. They do look good, but there is not a lot of variation. Cavallo Oak and Albany Oak seem to stand out to me.

Sensa Traditional Vintage

Urban Loft: 8mm V-Groove with ‘Oiled Texture’ and 15 Year Warranty, but with a narrower plank at 160mm, compared to Traditional Vintage’s 194mm.

This is a much more eye-catching range with an accent on lighter woods in Oslo Pine, Whitewashed Oak and Florida Pine. They have also included a ‘wine box’ look which has lettering stamped across the planks, cal’ed ‘Wine and Pine’ – I’ve seen Parador do a similar thing in the past.

Supreme Senses: 8mm Bevelled Edge Tile Effect with a 15 Year Warranty. Tiles are 605mm x 282mm and they look really impressive.

It is with this range that they really come to the fore. The tiles come in four decors with Faro and Pompeii being the pick of the bunch. They are very well finished and pretty lifelike with a wonderful feel and texture to them.

Natural Prestige:10mm V-Groove with 20 Year Warranty. This is the daddy of the range. It’s a really meaty, heavy product and feels impressive to the touch. Once again it’s all oak, but we have some good ones. Bordeaux Oak is stunning as is Vancouver Oak and compare favourably with most other competitors.

It’s very lifelike for a laminate and the more solid sound underfoot you will get from the 10mm thickness will be another plus. It’s a great product.

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