Buying flooring is a confusing proposition for consumers, and International Flooring Company (IFC) aims to change that with a new flooring brand: Canopy.
Founded by Julian and William Dossche one year ago, IFC is built upon a legacy of flooring manufacturing and branding. Entrepreneur Piet Dossche, Julian and William’s father, introduced the Coretec brand of WPC in 2012 and sold it to Shaw Industries in 2017. The Dossches are taking what they learned to create a high-quality flooring brand that is easier for consumers to shop and more profitable for retailers to sell.
“I grew up in this industry,” said Julian Dossche, co-founder and president of IFC. “I saw my dad build the brand. I saw the hard days. We want to make sure that we continue to build this brand on this great industry.”
Announced at FloorCon 2023 in Amelia Island, Florida, Canopy will offer hard-surface flooring that will provide exclusivity to retailers and a simplified shopping journey for consumers, powered by Broadlume technology.
"The key component to this whole partnership—it's market specific," William Dossche, co-founder and EVP of IFC, told attendees at FloorCon. "It's market protection, It's limited distribution. It's making sure that you guys know that when you have our products in your store, you can make money and you will not be shocked from the guy across the street."
Over the past year, the team has introduced three waterproof resilient collections made in Northwest Georgia and Asia. The Canyon Select Classics collection is a 20-mil wearlayer SPC in six wood-look designs. Canyon Americas collection is a 20-mil wearlayer SPC with 17 designs. The Reserve WPC, made exclusively for the National Floorcovering Alliance, features 10 wood-look designs in a 30-mil wearlayer.
Canopy has its roots in WPC and SPC, but the Dossches said the future could bring other flooring types under the Canopy umbrella that is sold as a store-within-a-store concept through independent flooring retail.
“We want to build a brand that not only consumers get to know, but the retailers can get behind as well," William Dossche said. "Consumers will get to know it via the funnel: SEO, social media, blogs, reviews, great branding, and very simple to understand product specifications. We are supercharging the buying process for retailer leads."
IFC's first year in business was focused on building supply chain and branding. While navigating supply chain disruptions and watching the challenging housing marketing, the team built the back office, put in systems, and listened to customers across the country.
"Everything we've learned and what we see in the market and what we're hearing from retailers of what they want has given us the opportunity to build and put the systems in place and the people in place to have a full launch for this new brand," Julian Dossche said.
The brand launch, driven by IFC's 11 employees, is planned for late March or early April 2024.
“With the team we have today, we've accomplished a crazy amount, and that's just the testament of who we've brought in and the energy that they've brought,” Julian Dossche said. “We are very fortunate that we have a strong name and a reputation, but we still have to earn that reputation every day. So, if every single touch point is always exuding that positive energy, even in the stressful times, I think it will flow through somehow via the product.”
