The Belknap White Group is a multigenerational, family-owned business that started in 1982. Now, in its third generation, Belknap White has acquired a number of distribution companies that align with the company’s overall mission and values, according to Ray Mancini, CEO.
Belknap White purchased JJ Haines and Swiff Train over the last few years and recently announced the merging of all three brands under the Ultimate Customer Experience (UCX) brand umbrella. “When you roll the three of those companies together, it's over 250 years of floor covering distribution,” said Mancini.
Coming up with a name that ticks all the boxes required the appointment of a committee and the help of a third-party marketing firm, The Blake Project, to come up with a name that encompassed the customer-centric focus of all three legacy distribution brands.
“I always tell people the Beatles is a great name, but it's a great name because they made great music for all those years; it didn't matter really what they were called,” said Mancini. “So, the name’s an important reminder, but at the end of the day, it's what we do day to day with our customer base out in the field.”
FLOOR Trends & Installation sat down with Mancini to talk more in depth about the brand merger, what it means for their distribution customers going forward and get an industry outlook for the remainder of 2024 and into ‘25.
The following are excerpts of our conversation, which you can listen to in its entirety below.
FLOOR Trends & Installation: How is this brand merger changing how you do business?
Ray Mancini: It's not so much changing how we do business. It's more of building upon the history that the three companies have built over the years and really evolving from there. First of all, it's a big statement—UCX, Ultimate Customer Experience, and it's really an aspirational statement. We're not going to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it will serve as a constant reminder of why we all come to work every day—our purpose. As a group, as a team, we are trying to create this great experience for our customers and our tagline is “Your Flooring Connection” because it is a people business, and we want to connect with our customers in a way that they know we care about them and their success. We're working hard to bring them great products with great service with people that are passionate about getting it right the first time.
We'll continue to build on our culture. We've been streamlining our processes for the past year. We're creating best practices to hold each other accountable so we can deliver this consistent, reliable service throughout the territory. We'll be laser focused on the customer and delivering a great experience. It's basically to continue to get better and better at the blocking and tackling that we do every day.
In fact, one of the metaphors we use [to answer the question] what is the ultimate customer experience? If you go to a restaurant and you get a great waiter or waitress, it really enhances the dining experience because they connect with you, and they care about what they're doing, and they care about making sure you get good service, and that's what we're trying to do. We really believe it's truly our people that make the difference. Caring about the customer is at the center of everything we do. So, we're gonna continue in that tradition as we move forward.
FLOOR Trends & Installation: What is your business outlook for the second half of 2024?
Mancini: The first half was soft, and from everything I've read, down 5% to 7%. We think the second half is going to be much of the same, although we do think the comparables will be maybe a little bit easier, because the fourth quarter last year was soft. We're going up against a soft fourth quarter, so it might help the actual comparisons. We do believe that when interest rates come down, there's gonna be a multiyear run for floor covering because in the residential remodel business, people are not selling their homes.
It's probably been off a year and a half to 20% to 25% this year versus last year finally getting into single digits. [With] the builder business, there's not a lot of existing inventory out there in the marketplace. Commercial’s been the bright spot of what's going on in the industry, but once the remodel and the builder [markets] start to click in, we think it's gonna be a nice two to four year ride for us. So little soft through ‘24, and then getting much better in ’25/‘26.
FLOOR Trends & Installation: What are you providing that is going to make your customers more successful in 2025?
Mancini: First, we're going to continue to bring our customers great products and services that will make it easier to do business with us and help them be more successful. We truly are a one-stop shop. We have some of the best brand names in the industry, as it relates to hard surfaces and some of the best private label brands, too. So we're going to continue to do that.
Secondly, we're working hard with our residential customers to provide a seamless shopping experience from the digital world to the physical world. Consumers start their journey today online, and then they're coming into the store to finish selecting their floor and having installed. Well, we wanna help the retailer to execute this consumer experience, so it's as easy as possible from start to finish. This takes a lot of coordination of supply chain manufacturing and then with the consumer.
Lastly, our team is committed and passionate to deliver on our promise of the ultimate customer experience. And like I said earlier, we think business will get much better in ‘25, and we look forward to helping our customers be successful in that much better economic environment.
FLOOR Trends & Installation: Are there any significant changes being made to the product mix and inventory that you would like to get the word out about?
Mancini: One of the reasons we bought Swiff Train is they have 45 plus years in the import business. They're one of the first distributors to import a luxury vinyl tile. So, we've had a great domestic portfolio, and we have brands like AHF, which has Bruce and Armstrong and Crossville, and we have Somerset, Mullican. We have American Olean. We have a bunch of really great brands, and we're really proud to be distributing them and really work hard to add value in the marketplace with them, but we also need to have a good relationship with the import manufacturers to come. They're more a part of the business today than they ever have been.
We have a portfolio now that we think is on the hard surface side that's second to none. We source product from all over the world, and we were able to, instead of trying to build the capability on our own, we bought a company that had a rich history in doing that. They've helped us to understand that side of the marketplace. When you look at our portfolio today, it has changed a lot in the last two years, and a lot of it has to do with the purchase of Swiff Train.
FLOOR Trends & Installation: Any final takeaways that you would like to leave with us?
Mancini: I would just say that one of the main reasons for our rebranding is we're adapting to the changes happening in distribution these days. We wanted to be a regional player at one point in time—a Northeast player. And now, we decided that we need to be a larger regional player. Now, we cover 28 states. We have roughly 70% of the population that we service today and instead of having three separate companies and being fragmented, we wanted to get to one brand name and let people understand what it is that UCX is doing and how we're doing it.
One of the only ones of these larger regional players, you can see Gallaher just bought Virginia tile. Now they're a West Coast distributor who's in the Midwest and all surfaces, They just bought three or four distributors to handle…I don't know how many states they're in. But they're a live regional player. So, the landscape is changing, and hopefully, we're adapting to that change. That's really one of the main reasons for the rebrand.
