Woodbury, N.Y.—Stanton Carpet has a 40-year history as a brand synonymous with high style and value. Its decorative take on high-end, high-quality carpets and rugs has been equally matched by its unparalleled customer service. While its mission has not changed over the four decades, its 2020 ruby anniversary will mark a major evolution—the addition of hard surface flooring solutions to its portfolio of products.
According to Jonathan Cohen, president of Stanton Carpet, Stanton Decorative Waterproof Flooring is a natural extension for the brand as consumers continue to demand waterproof hard surface flooring. “As a soft floor covering supplier, it’s impossible to ignore what’s happening in hard surface,” Cohen told FCNews. “Being a company that has specialized in style and design for 40 years, we can apply that knowledge and point of differentiation to this new category.”
While the company enters into a new product category for the first time in its history, Cohen stressed that its value proposition remains the same as it was 40 years ago—bringing high style and value to the decorative soft flooring market.
“Of course, that has now evolved into even more markets, but that is what the company was founded on and that is still what its core competency is—having really high style,” Cohen explained. “That premise of the brand is tried and true, and it’s a great premise because you can keep evolving it. If we can do something that matches our brand and style profile—and we can make it Stanton—we can sell it. We’ve done it time and time again over these 40 years, and now we’re doing it with Stanton Decorative Waterproof Flooring.”
Stanton pulled out all the stops to make sure its foray into hard surface was successful, not only for the company itself but for its retail partners as well. From seemingly simple undertakings such as naming its hard surface flooring, to the R&D-intensive development of its go-to-market strategy, the company’s new product portfolio has been thoughtfully designed and crafted with the utmost attention to detail. As Cohen noted, “There are a lot of companies that jumped on this [hard surface] bandwagon and then called it something technical. Consumers just want to know what this is. And its Stanton Decorative Waterproof Flooring.”
The company also onboarded John Rocconi, sales and marketing operations director, who tapped his industry experience to help direct the line’s style and design as well as its overseas manufacturing partnerships. “To some extent I knew how to partner with factories overseas, but I also brought my knowledge of what was going on in the market,” Rocconi explained. “I did a lot on the sales side as well—what colors we needed, what constructions were selling, what patterns could do well. As I learned about Stanton and what they were doing on the decorative and service side, there really was an opportunity to marry this fast-growing category—which we weren’t in at all—with what they could bring on the decorative, service and inventory side.”
The high-performance line features the latest in SPC core technology and touts Stanton Shield, a 22-mil wear layer allowing for superior scratch and stain resistance. The line also boasts high dent resistance alongside its waterproof construction and measures in at a thickness of 5mm, including a 1mm IXPE pad for sound.
What makes it different
While the market for hard surface vinyl products—LVT, SPC and WPC—has become saturated of late, what differentiates Stanton’s product is the styling, the company stated. “And this is also going to be a collection that has something for every part of the country,” Rocconi added.
The Natural Beauty series under the Stanton Decorative Waterproof Flooring banner includes 24 wood visuals in 7 x 48-inch plank sizes. Its 24 styles range from modern hickory and transitional oaks to edgy metropolitan colors and coastal beach favorites. The collection’s design styles include: Woodlands, (four colors); TimberLand (five colors); Black and White (five colors); Grove (four colors); and Oakley (six colors).
All of these designs can be paired with the many fashion-forward carpet designs in the Stanton family of brands. In fact, with the advent of in-demand hard surface came another evolution for the company, rug fabrication, which has quickly become a boon to its waterproof portfolio. “We fabricate more and more rugs out of carpet—to the point that we completely threw out our old B2B system and reengineered a completely new one,” Cohen said. “Hard surface has been good for us because we’ve been able to take advantage of the rug fabrication portion of it. And now we can match our rugs to our hard surface offering.”
To that end, Stanton has added merchandising displays for its waterproof SPC flooring with room scene visuals that pair Natural Beauty hard surface flooring with suggested Stanton rugs. “Customers have come to know us for our merchandising [as well as our] sophisticated merchandising that pulls the consumer in,” Cohen said. “We want to take advantage of the fact that we sell beautiful carpet and we fabricate rugs, and the RSA should be selling rugs with hard surface.”
The line comes complete with a residential lifetime warranty and 15-year light commercial warranty. MSRP ranges from $4.49-$4.99 per square foot.
