SELLING TO: CONSUMERS Picture: Arnold Laver
Picture: Brooks Brothers
TAKE YOUR PLACE ON THE FLOOR
Timber flooring is an increasingly lucrative category for merchants. It’s especially true in those branches where kitchen displays attract not only builders but also their householder customers. Where should a merchant start with a flooring offering?
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nvestigating what’s needed below the surface is an important first step. “The base of a good flooring installation is the sub-floor,” says Joan Bailey, Sales Manager UK & Ireland at UPM. “It needs to be structurally sound and form the most stable base possible for whatever goes on top. As an example, WISA®-Sprucefloor is a fully-structural FSC®-certified Spruce plywood specifically designed for this purpose. “Dimensionally stable, all four edges of each sheet are tongue & groove for easy fitting, and it’s suitable for all standard flooring applications including underfloor heating,” UPM’s Joan Bailey continues. “It comes in 18mm and 22mm thickness and one pack will cover the floors in an entire terraced house. Merchants can buy individual sheet quantities from our various distributors nationwide, detailed on our website.”
Two-tier market
Jason Dodd, Sales Manager, Setra Wood Products says there are two tiers to the solid
12 / May 2019
timber flooring market in Britain: “Firstly there’s the RMI market, where builders need products for extensions and floorboard replacement. Secondly there’s the high quality solid timber flooring side, such as our Setra Tragolv product.
“Solid timber flooring is a good insulator and has the natural look and feel that many customers are after. It also has good acoustic properties and a warmth that’s sometimes lacking in laminated flooring. Solid timber flooring is also good for wellbeing as it’s a low emission product with great environmental credentials. It’s also a good fit for those consumers who want to avoid plastics in their building materials,” Setra’s Jason Dodd concludes.
Merchants have been selling certain types of solid timber flooring for many moons. Do standard products like planed tongue & groove still cut the mustard in terms of sales? Jason Ostler, Managing Director at Arbor Forest Products, certainly thinks so: “PTG flooring lost a little ground some years ago
Picture: UPM
but has maintained its market share ever since and is still a good performer for merchants. Redwood PTG is the higher value product; whitewood PTG is more the commodity end of the market where people buy on price. Whitewood PTG flooring also tends to be thinner, at 18mm and 25mm nominal sizes.”
Extending value
With many builders’ merchants now incorporating kitchen showrooms into their branches, it makes sense to increase the value of kitchen sales by adding a flooring solution. Brooks Brothers supply flooring to many other merchants. Flooring Manager Tom Dee advises: “For engineered flooring used on top of joists you need a 20mm thickness. If it’s a concrete floor there’s no point in having additional depth so a 14mm thickness product will suffice. Beech was in fashion a few years ago but Oak and Walnut are the most popular veneers today.”
Kitchen flooring needs to be capable of handing extra moisture. “An engineered
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