Change is good. When people change the way their house looks, one floor comes up and another goes down. That’s good news for our industry. When manufacturers are anxious that their products are indistinguishable from the competition, they get cracking on something new.
The consensus on 2007 is clear: The favorables will outweigh the unfavorables.
Retailers and contractors asked to reflect on 2006 and assess the business conditions in the flooring industry for the coming year agree that the terrain will be rocky at times. Unstable energy costs, a surge in low-priced, off-shore competition and a cooling real estate market are only a few of the market factors that have people on edge.
Consumers can be forgiven if they believe the
retail price of new flooring is a never ending race to the bottom. Newspaper
and TV ads touting lower and lower prices are splashed across nearly every ad.
Sharply reduced manufacturing costs and a government
eager to lure foreign businesses were the top selling points at the four-day
China Wood Flooring Export and Import Conference. The meeting in Shanghai was
aimed at showcasing partnership opportunities while dispelling some commonly
held notions about China.
My week-long visit to Shanghai last month was for the China Wood Flooring Export and Import Conference. I was invited in a bid to call attention to the nation’s hardwood business. Most of the focus is on OEM or “original equipment manufacturer” production (or as they prefer to call them, “partnerships”). They make it the way you want it-usually cheaper than you can get it anywhere else-and you put your label on it. There are already a number of U.S. companies that have signed on in one form or another.
Devastating fires at opposite ends of the country hit the flooring industry in October. Both lit up the late night sky with flames leaping more than 100 feet in the air; and both required the best efforts of local firefighters working frantically through the night. The first fire was in Oakland, Calif. Straus Carpet, a well respected retailer that’s been around for more than a half a century, nearly burned to the ground due to an early morning electrical fire. Virtually everything inside was lost. The second blaze, a suspected arson, came eight days later. It swept through Anderson Hardwood Floors’ 48-year-old manufacturing facility in Clinton, S.C. claiming nearly half the plant. The veneer grading, pressing and panel sawing areas were left in ruins. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt in either of these blazes, and a 21-year-old local man has been arrested in connection with the Anderson fire. But in each instance the material losses were considerable.
The carpet and area rug segment continues to stand its ground as a dominant force in floor covering-but it is also a category on the move. New stain fighting technology, a more daring palette of colors and an invigorated approach to consumer marketing have helped keep the business rolling at a time when hard surface products are making broad strides.
Here's what I learned about myself when I visited the new consumer education website developed by the World Floor Covering Association to help its members drum up new business.
They say it took Michelangelo a bit over four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A crack team of installers, working sporadically on weekends, needed only three years to re-do the floors at the World Floor Covering Association headquarters. Granted, the chapel job was completed almost 500 years ago by a lone worker craning his neck five stories up.
I was at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver late last month and the place was wall-to-wall with flooring retailers. Some big, some small, some wearing matching shirts that made them look like aging day campers.