At its recent convention in Ft. Laurderdale, Fla., Starnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partnership honored its members, vendors and the designers they work with at its 14th annual Design Awards celebration.
Unlike the residential market, which is essentially single family housing and most often dealing with remodels, the commercial sector is a vast sea of segments, ranging anywhere from corporate offices to healthcare to education to hospitality to retail to government/military and technically anything else not handled by the typical neighborhood retailer.
Pavilion Floors came to life a little over 10 years ago in 2003 with a very small startup staff. I brought 25 years of flooring knowledge to the table and a four-generation family history in the flooring industry dating back to the Mohawk/Bigelow carpet mills of upstate New York, but I knew that would not be enough.
With all the major and secondary markets in the U.S. now covered, along with 80% of the tertiary areas and, most recently adding members in the top four markets of Canada, officials for Fuse Alliance told the membership at the group’s recent convention the time is now to start thinking as a national organization and not just as a group of individual companies serving their local markets.
There remains a myth that most tile—especially higher-end tile—is made outside the USA. True, tile is indigenous to areas of the world such as the Mediterranean or Iberian regions where it was popularized first as roofing material (baked clay) and certainly as a decorative covering harkening to the days of the ancient Romans.
For many, Made in the USA is a sign of product quality, economic investment and some may even venture to say patriotism, and when it comes to buying floors, consumers’ standards and expectations remain the same.
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