Industry An - Hardwood Floors Magazine

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An
Industry
Transformed
A look at the past 20 years of hardwood flooring
Compiled by Michelle I. Desnoyer
hen Hardwood Floors published its first issue in 1988, the hardwood
flooring industry was just bouncing back from bottoming out in 1982.
At the time, the NWFA was looking for an information source for
people in the recovering industry, and Hardwood Floors was born.
Over the past 20 years, the industry and magazine have paralleled each other in
growth and change. As the industry grew exponentially, the magazine answered the
call for technical articles, job-site tips, new product descriptions and other information needed by contractors worldwide. On the next few pages, hardwood flooring
experts share what they think are some of the biggest changes to occur in the
industry since the first issue of Hardwood Floors, and we take a look back at some
vintage clippings from the early years of the magazine.
W
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Association of One
Virgil Hendricks, president at St. Louis-based distributor Lockwood Flooring and president of the NWFA from 1986 to 1990:
“I think the NWFA has solidified its position in the past 20 years in the industry. It
just draws the people of the industry together. Just think, it all started in a tiny room
in my office and now it has that big training facility. Its membership is huge compared to what it started out with, and who would ever have thought it would have a
convention the size it is now? I think the NWFA really and truly has become the
spokesman of the industry. It addresses everyone, be it the retailer, distributor, contractor or manufacturer.”
Modified Manufacturing
Chris Coates, U.S. sales and marketing manager at Novato, Calif.-based
manufacturer Boral Timber Inc. and president of the NWFA from 1996
to 1997:
Virgil Hendricks’ prediction
headlined in this “President’s
Message” from the October/
November 1988 issue proved
to be correct.
“The two things I’ve seen change the most are the different types of products available in terms of species and the technical advancement in flooring construction,
especially in engineered and prefinished flooring. It’s amazing what has happened
to prefinished flooring in 20 years. I think the quality of flooring milling has
improved because of the demand for prefinishing. In other words, to make a prefinished product that looks good, manufacturers had to make the milling precise—
much more precise than what it used to be. I think wood flooring milling was
excellent back then, but there was a lot more individual work that went into installation, sanding and finishing than is required now, just because the products then
were primarily solid unfinished.
“Nested bundles are also a big change for manufacturers. When we used to buy our
flooring, which was unfinished, it came in random-length bundles and you would
get—if you use the example of 21⁄4 strip oak, which I think is still the foundation of the
business in terms of volume—bundles that were called foot-and-a-quarters: bundles
that were 2-foot or 3-foot bundles. And in those bundles, say in a 3 footer, would be
lengths that were just about 3 feet, maybe a little shorter, maybe a little longer, but
there would be 12 pieces, so you had to tally out every order. Tally sheets were part
of every invoice we did in the 1980s, but today we rarely—if ever—do a tally sheet.
The nested bundle used by most manufacturers today is a bundle that has all the different lengths within it and comprises whatever the manufacturer has designated will
come in a bundle of that particular size.”
Factory-Finished Formation
Mickey Moore, technical director at Memphis, Tenn.-based NOFMA: The
Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association:
This graphic, from April/May 1989,
shows how NWFA grew in the ’80s,
from 109 members at the time of the
1986 convention to 503 in January
1989. Membership today stands at
more than 4,000.
“The industry has grown tremendously, and the amount of domestically produced
product has increased nearly five times. In addition, the factory-finished imported
segment has grown rapidly, particularly in the last 10 years. In the ’80s, your major
factory-finished product choices were engineered plank and strip, finger-block parquet and solid wood flooring. Solid wood factory-finished products were finished
with a sealer/stain and top-coated with wax. Water spotting, scuffing and required
buffing maintenance were the usual consumer objections. The market was limited to
those specifically wanting the traditional wax finish. There are some specialty factory-finished manufacturers that probably still do some sealing wax, but it’s not any
substantial segment of the market.
“Engineered flooring has also made a big in-road. You’ve got engineered products
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that are quite varied from thin to fairly thick to quite thick. There are 3⁄4-inch-thick
engineered products now that weren’t even in existence. Basically, 3⁄8 and 7⁄16 inch
were your primary thicknesses back then, and most all of your product was singleunit, rotary-peeled product. You had a board that looked like a board and the grain
was all plain sawn. Now you have the panels that have multiple pieces in one board
like the clip systems, click systems and other floating floor systems, which weren’t
players at all in the market in the ’80s.”
Sticking With It
Don Connor, technical and product development director at Johnson
City, Tenn.-based manufacturer Mullican Flooring:
This ad, which ran in Hardwood
Floors’ first issue, February/
March 1988, showcases some
vintage ’80s fashion and wood
flooring.
“Basically, in the early to mid-’80s, you didn’t have much to choose from in the way
of finishes and adhesives. You had a stain and then a coat of varnish or wax or
moisture-cured polyurethanes. The stain came in natural and a couple of shades of
brown. Then, in the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, the white floors came in. That put us
in kitchens and areas where traditionally hardwood floors wouldn’t go in, and it
caused a whole craze of pickling floors, water-popping floors, high-solid-content
job-site stains for white and a massive amount of prefinished white floors. And we’re
all glad that’s gone. In the mid-’90s, that trend faded and went into the naturals—the
hickories, the maples, things like that.
“Another major change we’ve had in the past 20 years is adhesives for the engineered products, because back in the mid-’80s it was all chlorinated solvent adhesives—the adhesives that when you spread them up you wouldn’t have to buy beer,
because you were already drunk. We used these for 20 to 25 years. They went out
in the mid- to late ’90s because of the VOC regulations, and we had several years of
wondering what we were going to use. Manufacturers had to keep adjusting formulas for the content and effectiveness. Water-based, latex-based, urethane, moisture
cure—everything’s figured out by now, but there were several years where it was
painful for everyone involved.”
Fast Finishing
John Mayers, president of Upper Saddle River, N.J.-based manufacturer
Dura Seal and president of the NWFA from 1997 to 1999:
Speaking of ’80s fashion
trends, beware of spike
heels, as the NWFA and
NOFMA cautioned in that
same issue.
“In the ’80s, oil-modified polyurethane was still the relatively new kid on the
block. Waterborne finish didn’t even exist to speak of in the U.S. or North America
at all. It wasn’t until the mid-’80s when waterbornes were introduced, and it wasn’t
until the early ’90s when they began to make their presence known and became a
true alternative to oil; wax was still the prominent product used in the 1980s.
Refinished work in the field was based on different topcoats altogether. So, that’s
like going back to the days when there were no computers, from a business standpoint. Stains haven’t changed that much, but because time is money now, quickdrying stains are much more popular. Back in the 1980s, contractors used a coat of
slow-drying stain and one or two or three coats of slow-drying topcoat. Nowadays
you can use a fast-drying stain, a fast-drying sealer and a fast-drying topcoat, so
you can go faster but with better quality… the fast drying time of today makes a
big difference in productivity levels.”
A Rebounding Trend
Daniel Boone, president of Deland, Fla.-based dealer/contractor
Everwood Floors Inc.:
“There has definitely been a change in styles over the past 20 years. I think wideplank and distressed floors are probably more common now than they have been in
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20 or 30 years—it’s kind of a national epidemic. I would say 99 percent of my work is
wide plank, and it is hand-scraped or distressed, or it’s stained dark. Very seldom do I
do a strip job. I’ve also done a lot of walnut and other products that were popular
through the mid-’70s and ’80s. Consumers are spending more on upgrading their
homes than I’ve seen when I was just starting out as a kid in my dad’s business. And
they’re using more wood throughout their houses—wood cabinets, wood doors,
wood flooring, wood stair parts, wood fireplace parts, everything is just wood. In
houses like that, wood flooring goes along with everything. People also want more
wood flooring. Years ago, they would put in 1,000, maybe 1,500 square feet of hardwood. Now they’re doing three levels of wood flooring—the upstairs, the main floor
and the basement. They’re putting wood throughout … it just seems people are
building more and more than they have in years.”
Multi-Channel Distribution
Jeff Hamar, president of Santa Fe Springs, Calif.-based distributor
Galleher Hardwood Co.:
The NWFA Third Annual
Convention, held in 1988 in
Kansas City (and advertised here
in the April/May 1988 issue),
attracted 596 attendees. Last
year’s convention in Baltimore
drew 4,500 attendees.
In the June/July 1988 issue, coverage of
the convention included this photo of a
panel discussion on “Hardwood Floors for
All Rooms”—apparently a novel idea at the
time. Participants included (left to right),
Hugh Pugsley, Dennis Parks, current
NWFA Chairman of the Board Joe Audino
and Don Connor.
“In some ways, distribution hasn’t changed, and in some ways, it’s an entirely different ball game. At the most basic level, it’s still connecting suppliers with customers
and providing intermediary functions. What’s changed is the dynamics of the industry in terms of its scale, velocity, complexity and the product choices available to
consumers today. There’s an infinitely more complex channel of how product gets
to market. It was easy 20 years ago to identify who your customer was and to
develop a system to get product to that customer. It was a much simpler business: a
lot fewer products, a lot fewer customers, a lot fewer suppliers, a lot fewer competitors. Now there’s exponentially more of each. One thing that’s also changed is that
there are more distribution channels. Twenty years ago, it was really only specialty
retail floor covering stores that were in wood flooring. Professional floor covering
retailers primarily sold carpeting and vinyl and maybe had one or two wood racks,
so it was a big deal to get retailers into the wood business.
“Back then, there was no Home Depot, no Lowe’s and no Internet. None of that
stuff existed, so most of the wood flooring was sold to contractors and some to
retailers. The builder channel was very different back then because wood wasn’t
nearly as popular in homes in the mid-’80s; it was just starting to re-emerge, and it
was still not a big driver, so selling to the builder community was a lot less sophisticated. And now you’ve just got tons of different kinds of customers, you’ve got a
lot more activity in the commercial space, more complex builder relationships and
different kinds of retailers with all different skill sets, aptitudes and approaches to
the market.”
Chinese Influx
Gene Brown, president of Memphis, Tenn.-based manufacturer Biwood
Flooring Inc.:
“There are so many more players in the industry now, and a lot of competition is
coming out of China, which wasn’t a player at all in the ’80s. From what I have seen,
the Chinese are producing some quality flooring because they were the latest to get
in on it; they have all the state-of-the-art equipment—the lack of which certainly has
hurt a lot of the American manufacturers. But now many of the key players in the
wood flooring industry are sourcing their wood flooring from China.
“Some people question the quality of products coming out of China, but you have to
be careful in any foreign country if you don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’ve
heard some nightmares about Chinese manufacturers, but I spent probably a year
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Thank You
for two decades of partnership
Many loyal advertisers have helped establish
Hardwood Floors as the only magazine serving the
hardwood flooring industry exclusively. Hardwood
Floors extends special appreciation to the following
companies that have advertised in every issue:
Basic Coatings
Dura Seal, a divison of Minwax
Lon Musolf Distributing
Sheoga Hardwood Flooring
and Paneling
Their continued dedication has helped make the
magazine the success it is today, serving more than
25,000 wood flooring professionals.
The magazine of the National Wood Flooring Association
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researching to find a factory that I wanted to do business with. I went there and saw
their production and saw the quality that they could produce. I’ve only been with
China now for two years, but I have yet to experience any quality problems at all.”
An Industry Grows
Joe Audino, president of Los Angeles-based dealer/contractor Rode Bros.
Floors and current NWFA Chairman:
“The industry growth in the past 20 years has been phenomenal. Back in the ’80s,
when I was a contractor in Los Angeles, I could count my competitors on one hand,
and now you look in the Yellow Pages, and there are hundreds of flooring companies in each city. And on the prefinished side, a lot of the carpet-type retailers have
gotten involved in wood flooring.
More than a decade before he
became president of the NWFA,
Doug Lux gave testimony on the
benefits of being an NWFA member in this section of the inaugural
February/March 1988 issue.
“The popularity of wood flooring has increased over the years for a couple of reasons. One, as far as design, it’s a clean look. You can always build your interiors
over it, and it’s like a neutral background for any type of interior theme you want to
use. The value of wood flooring is probably the best of any floor surface since it will
last virtually the life of the home. It can be refinished, and the color can be changed,
especially with oak, which you can make any color you want. As far as health benefits, it’s a more hypoallergenic type of surface with less dust. A lot of people have
gotten rid of their carpeting and gone to hardwood flooring because of that. And
the perceived value of wood flooring is that it will last a lifetime, so when you
invest in wood flooring in your house, you get a return on your investment. If you
look in the real-estate ads, most list a home as having hardwood floors because it’s
a selling feature. The all-around benefits of wood flooring in a home are evident
wherever you look.”
The Daily Grind
Doug Lux, owner of Portland, Ore.-based D-Lux Hardwood Floors Inc.
and president of the NWFA from 1999 to 2001:
“On the business side of things, I’m seeing a lot more paperwork and contracts.
Before, you used to be able to do things on a handshake, but now you have to protect yourself just to get paid. Most everything in accounting was done by hand and
now it’s done by computers. We didn’t have mobile phones, although some of us
might have had pagers back then.
“Our relationships with customers have also changed. I’m not sure if we’re as close
and personable as we were back then. I think everyone has more to do. In the ’80s,
a contractor wouldn’t think of using another floor company, he would always use
you. Now, he would probably switch to another company in a heartbeat. We don’t
have the real strong, solid relationships you used to see back then. And you see
fewer builders. In our area, there are fewer buildable lots, most of which are already
taken up by the big builders. There used to be more small builders and contractors
than you see now.
This BonaKemi informational
insert from the April/May 1988
issue provides guidance on how
to achieve different white floor
looks, from the “frosted look” to
the “painted look.”
78 Hardwood Floors ■ February|March 2007
“The main thing I see in the industry today is how fast-paced things are. Everybody
wants things done now. They want to be communicated with right away. Consumers are very educated by getting on the Internet and looking at products. Sometimes it seems like they know more about the products than you do, and it’s not that
you don’t want a well-educated consumer, but some of that information is wrong.
This leads to misconceptions about flooring or unrealistic expectations.”
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Battling Builders
Bill Price Sr., owner of The Villages, Fla.-based consultant/trainer
Floormasters.com:
“It used to be that builders were craftsmen and tradesmen. It seems today that
builders are more administrators who have a computer schedule to keep and don’t
understand construction, especially when it comes to wood flooring. So they’re having things done that shouldn’t be done. They don’t understand moisture, and they
don’t know how to protect the flooring from moisture or damage. For example, a lot
of builders don’t understand that heat or air conditioning should be in place before
floors are put in. They just don’t get it. There was a greater percentage of builders 20
years ago who knew that, at the very least.”
Powered-up Tools
Lon Musolf, owner of Vadnais Heights, Minn.-based distributor Lon
Musolf Distributing Inc.:
Being featured in the April/May
1989 issue of the magazine
apparently wasn’t enough for this
product—the “Kneel-eze apron,” a
version of chaps for the working
man—to catch on in the wood
flooring industry.
“I’ve seen a real change in the machinery used for installations. For one thing, there
were some air nailers being used on the job site in the ’80s, but there weren’t a lot of
them on the market. Up until that time we were using manual nailers, mainly from
three big manufacturers. And then one company released a pneumatic nailer in the
mid-’80s and it caught on really well. Now all companies—even those traditionally
known for their manual nailers—offer air nailers. This really changed the means of
installation for people in the industry. Sure, the installer has to bring more equipment
to the job site, but now he doesn’t wear down as fast during the day, and it’s easier
to train people on the air nailers. As long as I was a contractor I never used an air
nailer, but I don’t think there are many people out there today that don’t use them.
“Dust containment has also improved. Nobody used any dust containment products
in the ’80s—I don’t think there were any—but today we’re getting much cleaner
jobs. There are portable dust containment systems and vacuums that prevent the
problems seen earlier. It used to be the dust flew everywhere, which caused some
problems with finishing.”
A Higher Level
Howard Brickman, president of Norwell, Mass.-based consultant/
inspector Brickman Consulting:
“The past 20 years has seen the industry flooded with inspectors due to various training programs, including my own. We’ve trained about 100 inspectors over the past
three years. Because of the larger number of consultants, I now have to travel a lot
farther for jobs, and I no longer get the easy puzzles to solve—I get the real brain
teasers, things that no one else can figure out how to do. The real easy ones tend to
get taken care of along the way.
Exotic species were just entering the
market at the time of this article
from the December 1988/January
1989 issue. The story recognized the
promise of species like Brazilian
cherry. Other species mentioned,
like amazakoue and kembang
semangkok, haven’t taken the
industry by storm yet.
“One of the most dramatic things to elevate the industry, in my personal opinion, is
the NWFA’s Wood Floor of the Year Contest. I think that’s just been a wonderful,
positive influence in the industry, because it’s taken basically a mean, hardworking
task and elevated it, maybe not quite to the level of art, but it’s elevated the status of
the work done on hardwood flooring. The guy who pounds the floor in can take
those Floor of the Year issues of the magazine and say, ‘You know, that’s the same
thing I do.’ When you see how hard the guys that are out there sanding and finishing work, and you give that work a little status, it’s kind of nice.”
NWFA’s “The Log” newsletter,
part of the magazine in
August/September 1988, touts
the latest in fax technology.
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Informing the Masses
Don Bollinger, president of Seattle-based distributor Wood Floor
Products Inc.:
At the time of this article from the
June/July 1988 issue, California was the
only state regulating VOCs. The article
accurately predicts that “there is likely
to develop a hodgepodge of regulations,
with different states and localities developing different standards.”
“After the industry bottomed-out in the early ’80s, there was this renaissance that
started, and people didn’t know how to work with wood. There was nobody
teaching, and old timers really didn’t want to get back into hardwood flooring after
they had lost everything when the industry fell through. Trying to find people to get
into hardwood flooring was just really difficult because nobody knew how to do it.
So with this resurgence, there was a real need for education, and that was the
biggest change I have seen in the industry over the past 20 years … There are a lot
of resources: my book, the NWFA schools and technical manuals and the NOFMA
schools. There’s a lot of stuff out there now, including the magazine, which has just
been a tremendous resource for people who are trying to learn and network.”
A Work in Progress
Peter Barrett, owner of Great Barrington, Mass.-based manufacturer
Green River Lumber Inc.
“Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a lot of change in the way of certified lumber over
the past 20 years. We’ve always been responsible about where we’ve received our
wood from, and in 1990 we were certified with Forest Stewardship Council. We’re
also certified through Scientific Certification System. We’re certified in chain of custody, which means we bring in lumber that is certified and we account for that
lumber, and likewise account for the flooring that is produced from that lumber.
So when a customer buys flooring from us, we can tell them exactly where that
wood came from through a chain of paperwork. There have been more initiatives
over the years, such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and more work in South
America, which is where it’s necessary because their ecosystem is much more fragile than ours. But it’s been disappointing that there isn’t more of a customer
demand for responsible flooring, or that more manufacturers aren’t getting certified. Yeah, there’s paperwork and there’s some cost involved, but to me it’s worth
it. My vision is someday all products will be certified—that we as a global community will come together to guarantee a sustainable source.”
Moisture meter technology has
come a long way from these
antiques pictured in the
April/May 1988 issue.
Thankfully, magazine layouts like this
’80s nightmare from the April/May
1988 issue have gone the way of
giant shoulder pads.
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Plastic Revolution
Sprigg Lynn, president of Washington, D.C.-based dealer/contractor
Universal Floors Inc.:
“We’ve noticed a good proportion of our business is going to credit cards,
which absolutely wasn’t even thought of 20 years ago. It’s amazing how fast
we can collect the money for a job with a credit card. It increases your
money flow. Sure, it costs you a few percentage points, but how much does
it cost you to chase your money around for 30 days? Or 60 days? We do millions of dollars in credit-card charges. People don’t think twice—they put it
right on there, and you get your money instantly.
“Another thing that’s changed is the use of fax machines. My father used to
say, ‘Don’t you dare get a fax machine. You go there and shake that person’s
hand and thank them for the business and you get a contract.’ If you think
about it, 20 years ago, people weren’t really faxing anything, and now it
really cuts down on time. Instead of driving all the way somewhere to get
someone to sign a contract or sending it in the mail for two or three days,
you can fax it to them, they can write down a credit card number and fax it
back to you. Done deal. Better yet, it can be e-mailed.” ■