Residential Flooring

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Flooring, by its very nature, is one of the last elements of a construction project to be addressed. As a result, budget dollars and time are often both in short supply when the flooring installation process is about to begin.

Butler Floor and Carpeting had tried conventional marketing and advertising but, after 63 years in business, the third-generation family-owned Pennsylvania operation needed to try something else.

We have all walked into a commercial or residential space, looked down at the floor, and thought, “that doesn’t look quite right.” 

Branding pioneer Walter Landor famously said, “Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.” 

With the advent of the Internet, U.S. consumers have seen more change in the past 15 years than any equivalent time period in our history and the changes that are yet to come are not only mind boggling they are potentially life threatening for some floor covering retailers.

When it comes to the carpet industry and the work it has done on the sustainability side it is hard to argue with the success and strides it has made over the years–especially the last dozen or so when it helped spearhead the formation of the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE).

Technology. Say the word and a majority of flooring professionals automatically tune out—a similar phenomenon happens when I mention chores to my teenage daughter.

It took an act as drastic as the Great Recession to happen for many Americans to realize one of the country’s greatest strengths—manufacturing, which leads to innovation and progress—had eroded away over the previous 30 or so years as companies went to far off places to produce their goods for lower costs and, in many cases, lower quality.

Several hundred flooring industry professionals from the Pacific Northwest made their way to the Lynnwood Convention Center in Lynnwood, Wash., for The Market tradeshow sponsored by Flooring Association Northwest (FAN), formerly the Washington State Floor Covering Association. 

When it comes to the resilient flooring, be it linoleum, vinyl, rubber, etc., the category is one of the few industries that can proudly say it has a long and rich American heritage. In fact, when you look at the major producers of resilient, many companies can trace their roots back to the 1800s.