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The master flooring craftsmen who lived in Europe centuries ago practiced their crafts in beautiful chateaus and castles, rendering skillfully wrought, ornate solid wood floors, which complemented the glittering chandeliers that hung from the ceilings and the beautiful paintings by now-famous artists that hung on the walls.
This tradition of artistic wood floors continues on a much smaller scale today, but the modern wood flooring market has changed. The sand-and-finish solid strip flooring market that existed in Europe 50 years ago is almost gone today. The consensus is that it is currently 10 percent or less of the European hardwood market.
Certainly Europe is not one big monolithic market when it comes to hardwood flooring. There are differences from one country to the next. Because of the close proximity of countries to each other in Europe, one can travel for a couple of hours and be in a totally different market. There are many common qualities, however, and they paint a much different picture than the North American wood flooring market.
At the Mill
Differences between the markets begin with the manufacturing process. In the states, mill workers turn the log and search for particular cuttings within each board that is cut. There's a percentage of clear grade in each board based on square cuttings and rectangular cuttings. From that point on, North American mills market each grade to the specific industry that it lends itself to. In contrast, Europeans slab cut — saw right through the log, dry it and manufacture products after that.
The type of lumber being cut for wood flooring is also different than what's used in North America. A report released by the European Federation of the Parquet Industry (FEP) verifies what most say about wood species used in flooring in Europe.
The usage rates of wood species for the production of wood flooring in 1999 show that 42.9 percent was oak (white oak), 26.4 percent was beech, and 7.8 percent was maple. Red oak accounted for less than 1 percent.
"They have a colder color pallet," says Rich Miller, vice president of sales for Anderson Hardwood Floors in Clinton, S.C. "We like red oak. So a typical U.S manufacturer with red oak is not well received in Europe. But a European product, typically white oak, doesn't go over quite as well over here."
The consensus is that there's a bit more mechanization in the European hardwood flooring industry. Although many North American manufacturers have upgraded their milling equipment recently, European mills, on average, tend to feature more precision milling equipment.
By and large, Europeans prefer wide boards — 5-inch, even up to 6- and 7-inch planks. They tend to dislike narrow strip products. "In Europe, their traditional floor, whether it be in the Louvre or wherever else, was wide, clear and long," says Ross Oliver, director for export sales and marketing at Mistral Hardwood Floors in Lebanon, Pa. "They just took their best boards and put it into flooring." He adds that whereas these products used to be preferred in a 26- or 27-millimeter thickness (about 1 inch), there is now a trend in Europe to resaw these boards and make thinner pieces — some of them only 9 millimeters thick (about 1/3 inch) and others are in different thicknesses, such as 14 millimeters (about 1 / 2 inch).
"The markets there pay an awful lot for that floor, of course," Oliver says, referring to the planks. "On this side, we would never dream of using that type of wood — wide, clear and long — for that product.
Nor would our markets pay the price for that product, because we just don't have the same mentality of putting that type of wood into our floors."
A particularly European-type product is fixed-length flooring, which comes in specific lengths and can be arranged either in a linear pattern or in various patterns in parquetry.
Another key distinction is that European flooring mills aim for a moisture content of 9 or even 10 percent, significantly drier than the American norm of between 6 to 9 percent.
Very few prefinished manufacturers in Europe use aluminum oxide and ceramic-type finishes that have become dominant in the North American market in recent years; they prefer finishes that are not as hard, Miller says.
One German flooring manufacturer has gone to something called an EB Finish, otherwise known as electron beam finishing. "Electron beam finishing has some advantages over ultra-violet finish technology, and it creates extremely high cross-linking," Miller says. "If a UV light, which is not as intense, hits an acrylic urethane, it cross-locks it pretty good and it makes a nice durable finish.
"If you put EB on it, you can match the toughest urethane. They're all trying to get to the next level. They're avoiding the oxides that the U.S. has."
Product Preferences
The most significant difference between Europe and North America is that the European wood flooring market is controlled by prefinished, engineered products. Plastic laminate products also enjoy a large market share. Estimates for prefinished, engineered wood floors are anywhere from 70 to 90 percent, with most giving credence to the 90 percent figure.
There is near-unanimous consensus that sand-and-finish solid strip flooring is 10 percent or even less of the market (varying from country to country), with the majority being installed in southern Europe. (Estimates in the United States put the prefinished, engineered market somewhere around 50 percent.) The trend toward prefinished products should continue, according to industry veteran Ulf Kähr, who is now general manager for Sweden-based Kährs' Overseas Division, which cultivates new markets in the Far East, Australia, New Zealand and South America. "People look at prefinished, laminated wood floors as real wood floors," Kähr says. "Sand-and-finish strip flooring is really not an option because the production of it is so small. In Europe, if you go 50 or 100 years back, all the products were solid, sand-and-finish strip flooring. But that has changed in recent years. And I don't think it will change back."
One reason for this shift away from sand-and-finish flooring in Europe is very elemental — supply. "There just hasn't been a readily available, cost-effective source for solid woods," says Don Bollinger, owner of Seattle-based Wood Floor Products, which imports European finish and fillers to the United States. "One exception to that has been beech. Beech hasn't been cut as much as the oak has in Europe. There are a number of solid beech manufacturers in Europe. That's probably been the predominant solid wood product to come out of Europe in recent years."
Another factor in the market differences between continents is the environment. Europeans are known for being environmentally conscious. One probable reason for this is the limited supply of hardwood in Europe. By using an engineered product, manufacturers in Europe can use less wood per square foot of timber compared to a solid floor.
This environmental awareness can be taken to what Americans might consider the extreme. Bollinger recalls some past trips to Germany: On more than one occasion, he was on a job site and watched a whole crew — getting an hourly wage — standing around tapping little football-shaped wafers, or biscuits, into in one side of solid groove-and-groove flooring.
Bollinger asked them why they didn't simply buy tongue-and-groove flooring instead. They stridently replied that they could not do that because it would be wasting natural resources. When Bollinger pointed to all the labor they were using and the cost savings that could be realized by using tongue-and-groove, the crew said if their clients found out they were using tongue-and-groove, they would be displeased and the backlash might hurt their business.
For Europeans, engineered flooring offers a benefit besides its environmental aspects. With its quicker installation time, engineered boards also appeal to European's production-oriented approach.
Across the Continent
John Stewart, sales and marketing manager for hardwood flooring at Tembec in Huntsville, Ontario, said his company tends to sell more rustic-looking grades of wood in Europe as a whole. This, of course, can vary from market to market. Some countries, such as Ireland, want rustic-looking floors with a lot of character. On the other hand, countries such as Germany are similar to California — they want uniform, character-free wood, Stewart says.
In the United Kingdom, wood floors are currently experiencing a fashion revival that has been going on for the last four or five years and seems to be continuing, says Gavin Muir, marketing manager for Hewetson Hardwoods, a hardwood flooring distributor in Surrey, England.
As a result of this, some textile manufacturers in England who manufacture carpet are mounting a "fight-back campaign," highlighting what they say are the benefits of carpet over wood flooring and laminate (lumping wood and laminate in the same basket). Muir says this promotional campaign is being conducted primarily through the trade press in the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent through the commercial press.
Muir finds this somewhat curious, because wood flooring is only about 2 to 2.5 percent of the flooring market in the United Kingdom. "But if you look at it a little deeper, the very fact that they're bothering with the campaign must indicate that wood as a total has begun to indent on their market share," he adds.
Asian Flu
Miller says that while the Europeans have used product specifications to protect their markets from imports such as rotary-peeled engineered floors, they have sown the seeds of trouble for themselves in another area. In Europe they call it the "Asian Flu," a situation in which many German engineered floor mills were set up in low-priced manufacturing areas such as Malaysia and China (including more than 20 new longstrip plants set up in the last 12 months in mainland China, according to one source). Now these products are being imported to Europe, and the result has been a drastic lowering of price in the European engineered flooring market, especially for the big European manufacturers.
Consequently, European flooring companies are now looking for the next technological breakthrough in flooring to create new markets and to regain their profit margins.
On the Job Site
One of the major differences in flooring installation in Europe is that there is a significant amount of shimming of the wood floors done, according to John Safarik, commercial sales manager with Junckers Hardwood in Anaheim, Calif., whose parent company is in Denmark. He says that in Denmark and other parts of Europe, flooring installers don't necessarily strive to have a flat slab to install over. He adds that all sports floors are designed to be shimmed — to have the wood floor system leveled as opposed to having a flat concrete area to be leveled.
"Instead of having the contractor provide a flat floor, they just assume the subfloor is going to be irregular, and they design their installation systems to be shimmed," Safarik says. "If they're laying over sleepers, they have special wedges and shims that they use beneath the sleepers to level them, and then they install the flooring over that."
Safarik says this occurs not only with sports floors, but also with most residential work, because Europeans run their utilities — water, gas, electric — beneath the floor rather than through the walls. Therefore, he adds it's not unusual for Europeans to have a 2-inch to 3-inch thick subfloor. The concrete subfloors are not trowel-finished smooth, but rather are left somewhat rough.
Eugene Klotz, owner of Renaissance Floor Inlays in San Francisco, Calif., and a native of Poland, said the difference in subfloor materials between the United States and Europe is a major reason that there are more sand-and-finish wood floors in America than in Europe. "Most of the subfloors here in California are plywood ones — that makes any creative installations easier," Klotz says. "Most of the subfloors in Europe are concrete slab — that limits your ability to do creative work."
Flooring contractors in the United States and Canada tend to do things their own way, Bollinger says, but in general European contractors stick to standard methods. "I think it has a lot to do with the culture more than anything else," he says. "This varies by country, but there seems to be a predominance where the flooring contractor sets a methodology and everybody follows it. Whereas, here, in this country, there is more of a 'Well here are the basic guidelines' and then the guys kind of do their own thing from there."
Installation is primarily in the floating application in Europe. In the United States, even the floating floors are sometimes glued down, which is very rarely done in Europe. "They also use less of the molding and trim items that we have in the United States," says Lanny Trottman, president of Memphis, Tenn.-based Global Market Partners, an importer of European floating floors, finishes and fillers. "They're not as concerned, for example, how the floor looks against the wall versus someone in the United States who would probably put down a quarterround to ensure that you couldn't see up under the baseboard, for example."
One story that has been promulgated in North America is that in Europe, people take their floating floors with them when they move from one residence to another.
Most people say that is just a myth. "I've never heard of anyone doing that," says Ulf Mattson, currently the president of Harris-Tarkett, as well as president and chief operating officer of Domco-Tarkett. " I think that's a rumor that has started somewhere and it has kind of sounded good. I've never see anyone do that any more than you would reclaim old floors here as well."
Miller concurs. "It's untrue," he says."They don't move with their wooden floors. The click-system would allow it now for the first time. You can't take a floor (with you) where you glue the joints together."
The skill of installing, sanding and finishing a 3/4 -inch tongue-and-groove floor has almost disappeared due to its dwindling market share. Since most of the European hardwood flooring product is prefinished, there is not as much sanding that goes on over there.
"Most of the people I know in Europe who work with solid woods are repairing old chateaus and that sort of thing," Bollinger says. "Those jobs were scraped, not sanded."
When floors are sanded, Europeans use the same type of sanding machines as over here, except under different brand names, says Gerry Mueller, marketing manager at Aurora, Colo.-based BonaKemi USA, an importer of European sanding machines and finishes, among other products. "They're basically the same," he says. "The only thing really different is their electricity system. They have to have a different kind of motor. But basically the mechanics of the sanding equipment are identical." One difference is that the dust containment systems in Europe have a higher positive-dust collection rate.
Finish Issues
The major method of finish application in most European counties is rolling and brushing, says Thomas Adam, president of BergerSeidel in GrĂĽnstadt, Germany. In the United Kingdom, applicators are used that are similar to those used in the United States.
In some areas of Europe, a trowel is even used for finishing — not just for trowel filling, but for applying coats of finish. Adam says a crosswise application technique is used with special primers of higher viscosity that create a smooth surface without the need for intermediate sanding. Bollinger adds that a trowel allows you to put down a very thin coat and then you can come right behind it with another coat.
"They actually cut the pops of the grain as they're troweling it," Bollinger says. "So it does two things in one. And it allows them to put several coats down in one day. They can put down three coats in one day, and then come back and spray or mop or paint another coat on at the same time. So they can just go bang, bang, bang." This efficient method suits the European production-oriented mentality.
A traditional technique for hardwood treatment is seeing a revival in Germany, Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), the Scandinavian countries, Austria and Switzerland. Re-engineered oil finishes for job-site application, as well as for industrial application with prefinished hardwood products, is now evident, says Adam. These finishes provide a natural silk matte look that harks back to the past. "This technique is more an impregnation than a coating of the surface," Adam said. This method is considered environmentally friendly because of the organically grown materials used for these penetrating oils, such as linseed oil.
Also, wax is still popular in Europe with old solid wood floors, and is still necessary for maintaining old chateaus.
Most countries in Europe use waterbased finishes. About 70 percent of all hardwood floors are now finished with water-based finishes in Germany, with about the same percentage being used in Scandinavian counties and Switzerland, according to Adam. The percentage is even higher is Sweden. This compares with about 30 to 40 percent usage of water-based finishes in North America.
Adam adds that this trend is fueled by not only a long history of development of water-based finishes in Europe dating back to the 1970s, but also a high level of awareness about environmental and health issues. Policy and regulations in countries are further forcing this trend as well.
Most Europeans have always preferred, for the most part, the low-gloss look in their finishes. In the United Kingdom, there is a general dislike by the consumer of high gloss floors, Muir says. Therefore, the majority of sales are of prefinished flooring with a matte finish.
Europeans tend to like the natural colors of the wood; therefore surface staining is not popular. However, in southern Europe, aniline dyes are sometimes used. When staining is done in countries such as France, Italy and Austria, they often get some very unusual, interesting colors, such as pastels, Bollinger says.
A Tangled Web
Distribution of hardwood flooring can vary from country to country in Europe.
For instance, BonaKemi's parent company in Sweden sells only through distributors in the United Kingdom, Poland and Sweden, says Claes Bjorck, deputy managing director/vice president of BonaKemi AB in Malmo, Sweden. However, in countries such as Denmark, they only sell direct to the contractors. In most countries, distribution is a mixture — BonaKemi sells direct in some areas and through distributors in others.
A typical example of this mixture is the United Kingdom, which has five large hardwood distributors. The main five are Junckers, Havwood, Hewetson Hardwoods, Wood Floor Sales and Tarkett.
There also are many new and small players. Even with the top five distributors, the distinctions can sometimes be blurred, Muir adds. For example, Havwoods is the largest distributor of Kahrs products, and Wood Floors Sales distributes large amounts of Tarkett products.
Tradition and the size of the country are the main reasons distribution differs so much from country to country, Bjorck says. The many small hardwood floor manufacturers in Europe cannot afford to field a sufficient sales force, therefore distribution is their only choice.
Although Bjorck says that a future trend for distribution in Europe is not all that clear at the moment, he suspects that there will be less product sold through traditional distributors and more sold direct or through big box-type companies.
At Junckers, the company serves as a manufacturer and as a distributor. There is a Junckers UK and a Junckers Germany, for example. Corporate salespeople sell directly to the dealers as opposed to going through the distribution level. "The reasoning behind that is, I guess, they want a bit more control over their sales force and their pricing. They don't want to leave it in the hands of a distributor, who might have conflicting lines or might want to price it or market it a certain way," Safarik says.
Trottman says a dominant scenario in Europe is a manufacturer selling to a wood retailer, and the retailer then selling flooring to a do-it-yourselfer. Or the retailer has a crew that installs it.
There are few traditional distributors left in Europe, agrees Tryggvi Magnusson, president of Award Hardwood Floors in Wausau, Wis., and a native of Iceland who spent most of his life in Sweden. He says that most of the producers sell direct to retailers, buying groups or home centers.
In a country such as Norway there are big dealers — such as a building supply shops or installers — and therefore little need for distributors, according to Tom Goss, president of Martinsville, Va.-based Boen Hardwood Floors, whose parent company is in Norway. "Of course, when you look at Norway, you're looking at a country the size of Florida with about 4 million people," Goss says. "So they don't really need distribution."
Many of the distributors who do exist are owned by the large wood producers, according to Miller. "Fifteen years ago they bought their distributors," Miller says. "So what we're seeing here now in the U.S. is that the middle guys are under siege. In Europe, they were under siege 20 years ago, and most of them are now owned by the manufacturer."
Miller adds that some of the distributors that were purchased owned their own retailers in a franchise-like situation.
"One particular Kahrs distributor in Belgium would find some unemployed guys — at that time unemployment was high — who were highly mechanical and offer them 50 percent of a business in a 500-square foot store format, and they would install and sell Kahrs," Miller says. "There'd be two guys and they'd have an incentive — because they owned part of the business — to do a good job. The guy was very successful. But that was a wholesaler, who was eventually owned by Kahrs. As you get to Southern Europe, some of the wholesalers still remain on their own, but that's not a very active business."
Stewart adds that European distributors tend to be hardwood specialists or building trade providers, which means they provide all building products, and hardwood flooring is just a small part of their total offerings.
The most significant difference between the USA and Europe is the strong loyalty and mutual exclusivity between most European distributors and manufacturers, Adam says. "This is causing a close partnership between manufacturers and distributors, and strong technical application know-how with the distributors' staffs," he adds.
One issue that can affect distribution decisions or patterns is the currency exchange rate between Europe and North America.
When exchange rates are favorable, companies over there will want to export to the United States. When the exchange rate drops, they sell as much product as possible to anywhere besides the United States. "They follow the money exchange with their inventories," Miller says.
Looking to the Future
One similarity between U.S. and European hardwood flooring markets is the increase in mergers and consolidation of companies, driven by the goal of achieving economies of scale and therefore greater profits.
In June, Nordic Capital, a private Scandinavian investment firm, and the Swiss holding company HIAG signed an agreement with Skanska, a leading construction corporation, to acquire 100 percent of the shares in Nybron — Europe's largest, and the world's second largest, wood flooring manufacturer, according to the companies. Simultaneously with the acquisition of Nybron, Nordic Capital and HIAG signed an agreement to combine Nybron and Bauwerk (a Swiss wood flooring manufacturer).
Bauwerk is reputedly the third-largest wood flooring manufacturer in Europe and is currently owned by HIAG. The combined group will have about 20 percent market share in Europe in the wood flooring industry, according to HIAG. The new group will be called Nybron International Flooring and will be organized into three business areas with a focus on each customer segment: Bauwerk for the professional market, Kahrs for the dealer segment, and Marty for the home center chains.HIAG says the goal is to provide more complete services and product ranges for their customers.
Other factors such as the recent free trade agreement with China, which has an enormous pool of cheap labor, and the emergence of Russia, with all its natural wood resources, could further complicate the hardwood flooring market in Europe, as well as over here. Technological advances in flooring and flooring systems also may alter the market.
One force that is beginning to take hold is the quest for a European Union, which seeks to harmonize laws and regulations throughout Europe. The unified European currency – the Euro — has already been introduced. How these forces impact the European hardwood flooring industry remains to be seen.
Changes in the European hardwood flooring market and its relationship to the market in North America — steered by economic, environmental, technological and regional cultural factors — will continue to be a dynamic, interesting story.