May 11/18, 2015; Volume 29/Number 3
By Nadia Ramlakhan
Edison, N.J.—FloorFolio Industries has officially made the move to manufacture its patented EnviroQuiet LVT in the U.S., bringing with it a slew of benefits for both the company and its customers. For starters, having the location of the new factory near company headquarters in Edison, N.J., provides FloorFolio with the ability to have control over the manufacturing process and ensure high quality production of goods.
“We had the opportunity to take this space, so we took it,” said Michael Freedman, president and CEO of FloorFolio. “It just made sense. EnviroQuiet is a patented product for us, so we wanted to control the process even more. Our customers were asking to decrease the lead times and have more product locally made, so we took the step to bring manufacturing to the U.S.”
EnviroQuiet has seen a major increase in demand in recent months, so the inauguration of the new facility couldn’t have come at a better time, according to Doug Tunnell, president and CEO of Liberty Flooring, a Pennsylvania-based distributor servicing the tri-state area.
“It’s going to enable us to get product faster without having to wait for it to ship from overseas,” he said. “It will allow us to get LEED points on certain projects that are looking for it and it’s just going to offer a lot more flexibility that we didn’t have before. With a job that’s 100,000 to 200,000 square feet we’ll be able to get about 20,000 square feet from this space and the rest will come over without any wait time; we can ultimately get the job done sooner.”
What makes EnviroQuiet so popular is its production process of permanently attaching a 3mm sound reducing underlayment to the LVT, eliminating the need to install an underlayment and significantly reducing installation time and costs for the end user. With more than 100 patterns and colors to choose from, EnviroQuiet has garnered two patents for its unique method and design.
“We do a lot of multi-family housing and there is no other comparable product in the market,” added Tunnell, who explained that EnviroQuiet is one of his best-selling products. “Along with the various options it offers an end user as far as its customization capabilities, it American-made is going to be a big selling point.”
FloorFolio has also made a commitment to go green and help keep the American environment clean and safe. As a result, the company has adopted a new packaging system as part of a sustainability initiative at the new LVT facility. In an effort to reduce waste, FloorFolio will package 60 boxes worth of product material in a single container; the goal of this new system is to eliminate the use of excess cartons while saving time for installers.
As far as the future is concerned, Freedman is already hoping to expand. “The goal is to get this facility up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And if we can do that, we feel we can go anywhere from about 5 to 7 million square feet a year, maybe even up to 10 million square feet a year. This is really stage one of hopefully what will be a multi-stage process.”