May 25/June 1, 2015; Volume 29/Number 4
By Ken Ryan
Unlike the traditional commercial channel, Main Street is fragmented, with many different venues—i.e., churches, dentists’ offices, barbershops, etc.—all having varied needs. Main Street has the added threshold of requiring a diverse product assortment that can be easily installed without much business interruption while still performing to the highest degree.
Many of the spaces in Main Street applications can get the same degree of foot traffic as the contract segment, albeit in smaller spaces. Therefore, products must stand up to the same kind of wear and tear, or stain and soil, as heavy commercial. Within Main Street, carpet tile, modular resilient (hybrid) and LVT are currently trending.
On the hard surface side, LVT is especially surging. In addition to design flexibility, LVT’s appeal includes durability, performance and maintenance ease.
Shaw Industries’ 5th and Main LVT collection was part of its performance test at Grand Central Terminal in New York, showcasing the product’s durability inside one of the most heavily trafficked spaces in the world. The company installed the 5th and Main Park Avenue style LVT (with VersaLock floating installation) at Vanderbilt Hall inside Grand Central during a six-week period.
5th and Main is comprised of 14 styles and more than 100 looks evocative of marble, concrete and wood. “Because of its diverse design options, durability and easy maintenance, [5th and Main] is ideal for a wide range of applications,” said Scott Sandlin, vice president, hard surfaces, Shaw Floors. “The expansiveness of this collection and our development of a customized display system show our commitment to this product category.”
Other resilient products finding home on Main Street include VCT, sheet vinyl, rubber and fitness rubber tile for child play areas. All offer durability and ease of installation and replacement.
On the soft surface side, carpet tile is the leading product in Main Street with current growth estimated to be 15%. Carpet tile is considered an ideal solution for high traffic areas where replacement of floor covering has traditionally been inconvenient. It can be installed in busy offices, halls or retail areas and is easily replaced with squares from areas with less traffic, such as from a storage area or from under counters or desks. Experts advise retailers to buy carpet tile in a larger quantity than required for future replacement of the damaged or worn areas.
“The end user realizes carpet tile is the better mouse trap,” said Ken Leviner, director of business development for Aladdin Commercial, a unit of Mohawk Industries. “Advantages include selective replacement, ease of handling, shipping, less waste in install process, less seaming and its environmental footprint. But the biggest is the life cycle cost. It costs a little more on the front end but lasts twice as long—15 years vs. seven years. It helps diffuse the installation dilemma, and end users are asking for it.”
Mohawk’s Aladdin Commercial offers seven fiber constructions to cover every Main Street application, including nylon graphics, level loop nylon and cut pile nylon.
For RSAs, it is important to know the construction and fiber of the product so they can match it with the traffic classification. For example, a heavily trafficked area would generally require cut pile nylon as opposed to a polypropylene, which is more suited for light traffic.
Carpet tile has at least two other advantages—less disruption in the workplace and dealers can sell it by the carton rather than 12-foot rolls.