Hardwood Floors April/May 2019

FINAL COAT

By Michael Martin President & CEO, NWFA

Keep It Real

Much ink has been used in ooring publications for the last few years telling us how various plastic planks are taking over the world, taking market share from all other ooring types. While LVT is growing, wood also grew at 6.9 percent in 2018. 1 And the global market for wood ooring is expected to rise nearly 7 percent per year through 2020, according to Technavio. 2 Not to mention that the wood ooring manufacturing industry is an impressive contributor to the U.S. economy, employing more than 45,000 people and contributing $8.5 billion overall. 3 What is also true is that the sky is not falling for natural products. In this same time frame, the tile industry launched a “Why Tile?” campaign, the Marble Institute of America changed its name to the Natural Stone Institute to be er re ect the di erence between its

Whether they currently havewood in their existing home, or whether they aspire to have it in their next home consumers see real wood as their oor covering of choice. e question is…why are we selling them anything else? e wood ooring channel has to utilize the preference that they have with consumers and get the supply chain behind them in selling the consumer what he or she wants. Whether that means o ering incentives, showcasing real wood’s unique a ributes that can’t be mass-produced, or simply carrying the “Real Wood. Real Life.” logo on materials to reinforce the importance of using real wood, now is the time to gure it out. Let’s work together so that consumers want to ask for real wood, and let’s give themwhat they ordered instead of a substitution. g Sources : 1. 2018 Hardwood Market Report; 2. Dun & Bradstreet, Wood Flooring Manufacturing Industry Profile; 3. Hardwood Federation, Hardwood Industry Economic Impact Study.

products and knocko look-a-likes, and the NWFA launched its “Real Wood. Real Life.” campaign. Many ooring options today emulate the look of tile, marble, stone, or wood, causing consumers a great deal of uncertainty about what they are actually purchasing. e common goal across all of these industries’ e orts is to educate the consumer on the bene ts and characteristics of these various products. I think Marvin Gaye expressed it best, “Ain’t nothing like the real thing.” A decade ago the same industry predictors told us that laminate and bamboo were going to take market share fromwood ooring. And perhaps they did for a while. But today, bamboo is less than 2 percent of the market, and laminate is less than 10 percent. Wood has maintained throughout those years a consistent range around 20 percent. No ma er what the “other” product that looks like wood is – laminate, bamboo, LVT, SPC, WPC – real wood remains the choice of consumers. eNWFA’s Consumer Research Study indicates that 80 percent of consumers want real wood in their dreamhomes.

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