This week the team travelled to Harrogate in Yorkshire for the UK’s National Flooring Event. We are delighted to have been part of this exhibition which displays a rich selection of new and innovative flooring products. This year we were asked to create a ‘Flooring shop of the future’ as part of the Trends Hub, this was designed to give retailers lots of ideas on how to merchandise flooring. In case you didn’t manage to visit, we have put together a posting to showcase a selection of what we saw at the event…
Exposervice create quality, luxury vinyl tiles (LVT Flooring) in a variety of exciting collections. We picked out their Swing Design flooring, which comes in a range of different colours and has a textile weave aesthetic. This look is something we don’t often see in LVT and relates to the growing trend of softening the look of hard flooring by mimicking textiles to create a comfortable, textured feel with durable and practical qualities.
Earthwerks® (flooring inspired by nature) create LVT flooring solutions for residential and commercial sectors. We particularly liked their “Mix’iT’ collection which demonstrated a creative use of colour within each panel. They offer a range of different colours and styles which allows the customer to be the designer. Take a look at their Colorwerks Brochure for more ideas on layouts and mixing colour for flooring in interior settings.
Polycycle
This company make carpet tiles from recycled plastic water bottles. What we found inspiring was their creative way of displaying yarn cones to show the different colours available in the range. We also love how they utilise a plastic bottle to explain the multi-layered recycling process of transforming plastic into carpet. From the crushed plastic, to the pure polyester beads and finally to the yarn that makes the carpet. It is a creative way to help customers easily understand the whole process.
Natural Solutions
For several seasons now we have been highlighting the desire for carpet, rugs and wooden flooring with an aged, worn and distressed look and texture. We even had inspirational images on display at this year’s Trends Hub (Flooring Shop of the Future). It was therefore refreshing to see this aesthetic coming through in Laminate Flooring. Natural Solutions showcased a fantastic patchwork patterned laminate which had a very worn and distressed aesthetic. It enables end consumers to create the vintage, ‘old-world’ style in their homes in a way that is both practical and affordable. The subtle use of tonal greys works beautifully throughout the laminate to emphasise the faded pattern motif. 
The Campaign for Wool and British Wool returned again to display Wool Trends; the inspirational centre for wool carpet. It was a stylish and vibrant showpiece that hosted leading carpet manufacturers such as Adam Carpets, Axminster Carpets, Brintons, Brockway Carpets, Bronte Carpets, Cavalier Carpets, Ulster Carpets and Westex in the Wool Trends area. The installation highlighted forthcoming wool carpet colours and style, and was created in association with Homes & Gardens magazine. Most interesting was the use of plain neutral coloured carpets and Aztec patterns placed along-side very striking, bold furniture. It immediately makes the roomset look more contemporary.
This company demonstrated wonderful inspirational ways of marketing and retailing their product in line with current trends. They featured a giant pin board on their booth which included fabric samples, interior product images and colour swatches to inspire end consumers whilst in store when choosing carpet for their homes. It was refreshing to see a carpet retailer including other interior design elements in the presentation of their product. Adam Carpets also created Trend Mood Boards with detachable carpet samples so that customers can play and rearrange the samples to suit their individual preferences – excellent interactive sales tools! These were also displayed in our ‘Flooring Shop of the Future’.
Ornate is a leading specialist in the wholesaling and manufacturing of contemporary handmade rugs, kilims and furniture. The business is a thriving hub to the European market, providing some of the finest quality handmade rugs to top interior designers and five star hotels around the globe. We particularly loved the ottomans made to compliment the rug designs. Not only are they unique, one-off furniture pieces but they are also a great way to showcase rug patterns at exhibitions.
Oriental weavers have an ethos of providing a rug to suit every style and budget. The machine made collection included a variety of 100% New Zealand Wool rugs, striking modern designs, unique woven rugs and a variety of anti-slip flat weaves. The fused array of multi-colours across this rug attracted our attention. 
The Flooring Shop of the Future
This year the Scarlet Opus team created a ‘Flooring Shop of the Future’ designed specifically to reflect the shopping experience desired by consumers when making flooring product purchase decisions for their home. There were many features that gave retailers quick, easy, inexpensive ideas of how to display and merchandise product as well as create an inspirational and inviting space for their customers to spend time.
We even created a mock flooring shop window display based around the ‘Wild Urbanism’ trend. The window encourages innovative ways of using flooring product to create an inspiring presentation for visual merchandising.
We would like to extend a huge thank you to British Ceramic Tile for supplying the tiles for our window display, Interface for supplying the Shop Flooring, Adam Carpets, Adriana Tavares Rugs, Jonny Ross, Martin Curtis, QuickStep, Interfloor (Meister), Rug Guru, Tektura and Real Shetland for providing products to help make the window display, shop floor features and interior design table look amazing!
