Lifestyle Carpet Collection Part 1: Headlam Group

Headlam Group’s (the group is a wholesaler/manufacturer) major launch this year has been the Lifestyle Floors collection. They are aggressively promoting their new launch in the form of lovely stands and lecterns that they are offering to place in shops across the country for a nominal fee. It’s great value for shops, so you will see plenty of these stands.

Ours was installed last week and we have 14 carpets on it. This rundown of the carpets will come in three parts. Today I’m looking at:

City Twist: This is a ‘better than most’ budget twist that is comparable to something like Revolution in terms of price and quality. It does feel a little more dense to me and it is a very colourful range, with ‘Sky’ and ‘Fuchsia’ definitely catching the eye at first glance. It’s 100% polypropylene and action backed and is available in either 4m or 5m wide rolls.

It’s a decent stab to do a reasonable twist for under a tenner and I have to commend it. You should pay £8-£12 per metre for it and it would be ideal for those on a budget or landlords who don’t want the ‘cheap and nasty’ look.

Revival Twist: This one is a heavier, heathered twist with a more subtle colour bank. I quite like the Crimson and Raspberry Jam, but if I’m honest then I am not blown away by this one in the least. It’s one of many similar at this sort of price.

It’s 100% polypropylene, action backed and available 4m and 5m wide. It should be priced between about £14 and £18 per square metre and I think that maybe a pound or two too much. I don’t think it stands up that well to competition at a similar price, like Cormar’s Primo Tweed, Balta’s Stainsafe Heathers or Lano’s Startwist Supreme. It’s not a bad carpet as such, but it’s not as good as its competitors to my mind.

Cosmopolitan Stripe: The much-vaunted ‘funky’ stripe of the collection (there is another, but it is a little more subtle) is a slightly shaggy twist with stripes of varying widths in some crazy colours.

Coffee and Tan are by far the best colours in the range and it features a truly rancid ‘Hot Pink’ shown below:

It’s 4 metre wide only, is made from 100% polypropylene and is felt backed. I’d be guessing it’s for kids’ bedrooms or playrooms, but you could use it elsewhere I imagine.

Time will tell if it will sell well, but customers have not been impressed by it in here so far, so I don’t think it’s going to work for us, but I might be wrong. Expect to pay around £9-£12 per square metre and it’s not a bad price for what it is and if you like the colours and designs, you could do a lot lot worse.

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Carpet For Mods: Carnaby by Brockway

While I was researching the ‘striped carpets’ stuff for this blog, I did come across a very lovely new range that I hadn’t seen before.

Brockway have launched the decidedly 60’s retro mod chic of Carnaby to the market and what an absolutely wonderful design it is – right on the money:

It’s a 100% quality wool berber that I am yet to have a physical sample of, so I am simply bowled over by the design alone at this point. Brockway will send you samples from their (very good) website. They do a whole host of excellent stripes on there – Carnaby is just the tip of the iceberg.

I expect an order from Paul Weller is pending…and if I can convince the wife, maybe from me too.

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More Stripes, By Popular Demand

There’s been a vast upward surge in people viewing this blog since I posted about stripes in my last post. Far be it from me to deny you some more lovely striped carpets to gaze at! Here are some more:

Montana Stripe by Bajong is a revamped range that was previously a heavy, plain saxony. The thick, luxurious pile always sold well and with it being available in 4 metre and 5 metre widths, it was always a good seller.

A 60oz 100% polyprop carpet with an action back, Montana has now been relaunched with some new colours, but of course we are interested in the stripes and there are three of them in the range. Here is the best seller:

A lovely feel to this thick saxony and quite a bold stripe on both senses of the word. You should be looking at £18-£25 per square metre for this one.

Berber Ridge by Victoria Carpets is a very different animal – a sheep basically! It’s a 100% wool berber available in 2 metre and 4 metre widths. There is also a co-ordinating range of plains within this range that are available in 2, 4 and 5 metre widths.

Pretty much anything with the Victoria Carpets logo on it is a very well put together carpet and this is clearly no exception. It’s certainly a major competitor to Beach Hut and Mississippi and will go out between £20 and £30 per square metre.

Funky Stripes by Balta Carpets is one I’ve metioned numerous times and it gets the most hits of anything on the entire blog, so here is another image of a natural shade for you to admire:

It sells okay too and realistically you should not pay more than £10 per square metre for it. Carpet Right do promote this one and seem to be calling it ‘Trendy Stripes’ – looks the same to me though. They say the RRP is £23.99 per square metre – well you learn something new every day. I do wonder just who recommends these prices to Carpet Right sometimes because to be honest, I would be asking them to look carefully at them. Just saying… Of course I only want the best for them and I’m sure they constantly review their pricing. All I do on here is offer opinions and in my opinion this carpet is worth no more than £10 per square metre.

Another option, and always a cracking value solution, is to buy a wool twist stripe that a manufacturer has created using surplus wool. A lot of large carpet warehouses buy full rolls of this surplus stuff and the price is brilliant. You can very often buy a 40-50oz 80% wool twist for about £12 per square metre and that is just a wonderful deal.

The downside to these is that the exact colour combination is not repeatable and you can’t order exactly what you want. Mostly they are very narrow stripes made up of browns, creams and beiges and here is a cracking example of the ‘art’. This one was made by John Lanham Watts:

I love to sell this because the customer gets a great deal, we make a handsome profit and also the manufacturer gets rid of surplus stock. It’s win/win/win. I would strongly urge landlords to consider this kind of thing ahead of out and out budget carpets, especially if you are trying to create a slightly more upscale rental.

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I Got Stripes: Striped Carpets Saturate The Market

As I walked along my street the other day, the temperatures had soared and many of my neighbours had chosen to leave their front doors open and let some air in. Little did they know that as I am something of a ‘carpet trainspotter’, I would be peering in as I walked – not for any reason other than to see what flooring they had fitted. I realise this behaviour is not normal, but I do it in shops, pubs, hotels, airports – I probably need therapy.

Anyway, I digress. What I wanted to say was that within 20 doors, 5 of my neighbours, whose floors I could see, had striped carpet in their halls or on their stairs. Now that’s an especially high percentage for my totally unscientific survey, but I use it to illustrate my point – stripes are now everywhere.

I’d better review a few then:

Beach Hut by Kersaint Cobb is a good place to begin. It’s a high quality, jute backed, 100% wool berber available in 6 striped colours, as well as 6 co-ordinating plains. This gives you the opportunity to combine the two on say, landings and stairs and create an attractive staircase.

As soon as you handle this carpet you cannot fail to be impressed. The wool used in its construction feels great to the touch and is firm and very heavy wearing. It really suits a staircase and I would definitely recommend it for that use. The colours are absolutely spot on and this range, together with Crucial Trading’s Mississippi are very big sellers nationally. I prefer this one, but that’s just a personal preference – both are excellent.

You will find Beach Hut priced between £35-£45 per square metre and you can order samples online here very easily.

Mississippi by Crucial Trading is very much in the same vein as Beach Hut. Again, this is a lovely 100% wool stripe, available 4 metres wide off the roll, but Crucial offer 17 colour combinations (though no plains).

The carpet itself feels a little more coarse than Beach Hut and that coarseness lends itself to a carpet like this – a lot of people prefer that feel underfoot on a carpet of this type. Again, I would expect you to be buying this carpet at £35-£45 per square metre, although Crucial say £54 per metre on their website. Either this or Beach Hut will do the job beautifully, look the part and certainly bring some admiring glances from friends and neighbours!

I’d recommend getting some brochures – Crucial make the very best brochures I’ve seen from a carpet manufacturer, complete with perforated pages so the customer can place them on the floor and the print quality of them is perfect. Top marks for that.

Tripoli by Georgian is considerably different. It’s a bog standard 80% wool, 20% polypropylene twist with the distinction of it being striped rather than plain or speckled as most wool twists are.

This one is not in the same class as Beach Hut and Mississippi, but that is reflected in the price. At £12-£18 per square metre depending on the weight, it is less than half of the price of the other two and if you feel that your striped stair carpet is more of a ‘fashion statement’ than a long-term proposition then this could be an option.

The standard weight is an underwhelming 27oz and the (surely someone at Georgian has a sense of humour) ‘Supreme’ weight comes in at a colossal 36oz – ahem. The 36oz would probably just about do the job and save you some pennies and it does look and feel fine. It’s good to look at, rather than great but it does do a job for a price.

It’s 4 metre wide only and is widely available. You can find samples here.

Okay so we’ve had a look at two nice ones, one mid-range one and are there any cheapies? Well, yes of course. Balta’s Funky Stripes is a wild and wacky one on a felt back, but it is pretty garish. Probably better suited to the bedroom and not really destined to last that long. Still, it’s sold for under £10 per metre, so that’s not too bad.

There is a newish similar, though slightly more subtle stripe in the Headlam Group’s new ‘Lifestyle’ collection, called ‘Cosmopolitan Stripe’. It’s quite shaggy and best suited to bedrooms and a fair few of the colours within the range are ….. weird. Just my opinion. You can get this one for around £8-£12 per metre.

Timzo have come up with a felt backed cheapie, a little closer to Beach Hut style with ‘Inca’. It’s a narrow stripe in more subtle and natural tones than the last two I mentioned. It’s selling okay for those on a budget and like most of Timzo’s carpets it offers decent value for money. You should be able to pick it up for under £10 per square metre and of the three cheapies, I personally prefer this one.

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Funky Colours from Balta Carpets: Funky Stripes

Striped carpet has become very popular over the last year or so, particularly in the higher end carpet world. Kersaint Cobb’s lovely ‘Beach Hut’ and Crucial Trading’s ‘Mississippi’ and ‘Audrey’ have defintely made their mark.

The lower end has been starved of anything fun and funky like that until now with Balta releasing an intriguing looking new range called ‘Funky Stripes’ in a lightish weight poylpropylene (around 18oz I beleive) and on a felt back:

As you can see, it’s vibrant and has a clear accent on ‘fun’ to help the limping ‘funonthefloor’ campaign. It looks like a dead cert seller to me for kids’ bedrooms and at a retail price of £8-£12 per metre, it should find a healthy place in the market.

We are selling a whole lot more in the way of colour this year, with ranges like ‘Fusion’ by Balta and ‘Carousel’ by Condor doing especially well for us – noticeably in kids’ rooms.

Interestingly we are also beginning to notice that customers are coming in to carpet their ‘games room’. Often youngish couples who buy a house with more bedrooms than they need seek to turn one of them into what is essentially a play room for adults to Wii, XBox or generally pretend they are  still kids! Nice work if you can get it and I’ve already recommended some nice carpet to customers who use Wii Fit (laminate may well prove harsh on hips and knee joints in the long run!) extensively – oh how the trade has changed!

Anyway, back to this carpet. We are still waiting to see the full colour bank, but let’s hope the promotion material supplied so far is just a taste of better things. Well done Balta I say.

Harrogate Show is now on by the way (biggest national flooring show) and I’m not there. To all who are attending, have fun and don’t forget to bag enough free pens to last you through the year.

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