Page 2 - 2018-08-CFR Volume 119 - How Can You See What You Can’t See - The Luxury Vinyl Tile And Plank Dilemma

Most “Manufacturers” of luxury vinyl flooring materials don’t actually The experts at LGM
produce the product themselves, 80+ percent are imported. Along,
with their lack of knowledge for the manufacturing processes they specialize in consultation,
have chosen to either ignore the facts or hold everyone else accounta- correction and resolution for
ble but themselves – particularly blaming the flooring contractor, in- flooring complaints, claims,
staller or installation conditions or some aspect of it. installation and performance
I’m going to suggest you sit down and absorb this issue. Its long and
the information in it is vitally important to the well-being of the commer- issues.
cial flooring industry. According to industry statistics 82% of vinyl
flooring products are being imported and not manufactured in the USA No issue is too big, too small
where we have more rigorous quality control standards and uniformity or too far away for us to
of the product. Unfortunately, this is not going to change anytime
soon. It would take years to build US manufacturing plants and the handle.
market demands for this product is only increasing and they want the
product now. So get ready for a long bumpy ride. All ads are interactive. Just
As I stated, just because you see a name brand on the product it click on the ad to enter their
doesn’t mean they actually manufactured the flooring. I can tell you
for a fact that some of these “manufacturers” have never seen the website.
product being made or know exactly who makes it. On the other hand,
if you buy from a well known big name hard surface manufacturer at
least you can count on them backing their products with actual quality
control technical people. To qualify this, most of the problems we’re
seeing are not with the well known name brand products.
So let’s go through a list of things that we’ve encountered and expla-
nations for the idiotic excuses made by people that respond to com-
plaints that don’t have a clue about that which they speak.
What is adhesive? Adhesive is a
substance used for sticking ob-
jects or materials together. In the
flooring industry the adhesive is,
simply put, pressure sensitive or
multi-purpose in varying formula-
tions and strengths used to glue
the material to a substrate.
Pressure sensitive adhesives
purpose is basically to allow the
flooring material to be taken up if
damaged or for some other rea-
son and be easily replaced.
Some is stronger like for LVT and LVP and some weaker like for car-
pet tile. Multi-purpose adhesives are more firm setting and will hold
the flooring material in place more aggressively. These are simplistic
explanations I admit.

Page Layout By: Anita S. Drennon

2 Commercial Flooring Report August 2018