Columbia Flooring Begins Rebranding
Dallas, TX, July 15, 2008--Columbia Flooring has undergone an extensive makeover of its brand, strategically developing a hardwood product line focused on new, fashionable products, while simultaneously unveiling a new branding approach incorporated into all merchandising elements.
Columbia’s launch is flagshipped by an assortment of stylish “Character Woods” featuring a variety of popular surface treatments, including hand-sculpted, recovered, weathered, distressed and time-worn looks.
“To ensure Columbia’s place as the design and style leader in hardwood, we extensively researched current consumer tastes and then boldly responded with a total reinvention of our line,” said Roy Foster, vice president of sales for Columbia Flooring.
“We are taking Columbia in a completely new direction with a curated, deliberate approach, offering the right products focused solely on the finest American hardwoods in a variety of innovative, fashion-forward looks.
“Our new line is all about design,” Foster added. “Columbia is now the industry’s specialist in character woods. Character woods make available the popular surface treatments such as distressed, weathered, recovered, time-worn and hand-sculpted design. We are now offering a full range of 98 character woods across multiple species and multiple colors, in both solid and engineered hardwood. No one else offers this.”
The new Character Woods collection is the first hardwood flooring that offers such a myriad of surface treatments prefabricated from the factory, Columbia said. Previously, expensive on-site finishing was required to achieve these looks.
Columbia’s launch also includes Domestic Exotics and Traditional Oaks. The variety within each of these categories, in both color and design, makes Columbia the most comprehensive line in the market place. All three lines offer similar color and design options in both solid and engineered wood.
To position Columbia not only as the design leader and solidify its new status of offering unique technical advantages, Columbia has invested in technologies including SuperiorShield, PureBond formaldehyde-free engineered flooring technology and the Uniclic patented locking system.
SuperiorShield by 3M is built into the floor during the curing process to protect the floor against stains, germs and grime, while also improving gloss retention. PureBond technology for engineered flooring is a new innovation replacing traditional urea formaldehyde hardwood plywood construction with technology that adds no formaldehyde to the finished flooring, creating products that are healthier for families and the environment.
Incorporation of the Uniclic locking system into Columbia’s Intuition collection of domestic exotic woods lowers installation costs.
From a marketing perspective, the new branding is featured comprehensively throughout an entire line of new merchandising materials.
Columbia has also made significant capital investments in its production plants so all products consistently meet stringent quality standards while giving Columbia the ability to manufacture complex textured products in-house. By being domestically harvested and domestically produced, the new Columbia assortment will offer superior service and availability versus imported products.
Columbia Flooring products will continue to be offered exclusively through a network of independent flooring distributors. The changes to the Columbia product assortment will start appearing in retail flooring showrooms within the next 30 days.