Laminate exquisite concrete designs has made the most significant change to the flooring industry in the last 25 years and continues to make tremendous changes and improvements over is hard surface counter parts.
In Europe they have been enjoying its features and benefits for several decades but not as laminate flooring as we know today. Decorative laminate was really the origins and the beginning of what now is known as laminate flooring. The decorative laminate was widely used in kitchen counter tops and furniture. As the technology evolved in the counter top laminate industry it clearly became apparent that with the endless number of decors that could be created, could also be created and used on the floor.
The idea of laminate flooring was born. There have been many technical challenges the first of which was how can you take a simple counter top laminate and create a flooring product, the flooring product will take far more abuse by being walked on and a wear layer was created.
There has really been no stopping the technical tidal wave of improvements and ideas that followed. Led mainly by the European countries laminate flooring gained more market share year after year, no market experienced such rapid growth as North America. Massive marketing campaigns led by such brands as Pergo who are now synonymous with laminate flooring introduced laminate flooring to the American Public in the early 1990s.
The actual history of laminate flooring is quite short in North America, because Pergo had achieved household recognition with the new flooring products Laminate flooring in North America was widely referred to as “Pergo” floors again the synonymous status and the ‘holy grail’ of all brands.
In 2000 laminate flooring was a glue product; even so the market share within the flooring industry in North America continued to grow at a double digit pace. Many of the other US traditional floor covering manufacturers of carpet and vinyl added laminate flooring to their portfolio of products.
Then so was born the private label laminate. Laminate flooring was easy to private label you simply changed the insert or the packaging and then that created another brand or line of flooring. This was especially useful for the hardwood and carpet manufacturer’s to get on board with this new product. The traditional manufacturers of carpet and hardwood have huge distribution networks and with their own branded line of flooring were able to place thousands of new flooring displays in a matter of months and new brands started appearing everywhere. This continued to drive the growth in the USA.
As traditional US manufacturers of carpet and vinyl presented themselves as laminate flooring manufacturers, advertised the products, placed laminate flooring displays and drove sales.
Time Line in the US Market The next stages of growth were equally fast and I will break them down chronologically:
2000 was particularly painful for the Carpet Manufactures in Dalton, Georgia they were completely blindsided by the aggressive marketing of laminate flooring against their carpet and that is where the laminate took most of their market share from touting the Laminate Flooring product as hypo allergenic and showing close ups of carpet mites and bugs did nothing to help the domestic carpet manufacturers.
All hard surface flooring companies benefited. It was an exciting year for laminate flooring salesmen, even with terrible installation demonstrations and glue together flooring.
2001 Every year that preceded 2000 involved new, exciting and innovative changes to the laminate flooring market. The first change really started in 2001 glue free laminate. This was first introduced with metal clips on the back and during sales presentations as you tried to put it together you almost needed a sledge hammer, it was more difficult than the glue together method. Not very popular but the concept was created all we needed was the design and solution.
