By P.J. Quinn
Following the addition of two new brands in 2009, CBC Flooring laid the foundation for an aggressive five-year growth strategy centering on sourcing green flooring from around the world that meets the requirements of contractors, architects and designers. At the same time, officials say it is poised to evolve from a small company best known by its flagship Toli brand into a formidable, single-source supplier of commercial hard surfaces.
“CBC’s competitive advantage is its incredibly diverse and well-rounded selection of hard flooring materials,” declared Jeff Collum, director of flooring. “Our business model of sourcing products from around the world allows us to offer the highest quality and performing products while meeting today’s environmental and on-trend designs.” The company sources products from countries covering four continents and partners with various manufacturers worldwide.
CBC Flooring, a division of CBC (America) Corp., strategically assembled a collection of four brands across North America representing a comprehensive breadth and scope of commercial materials. The two newest brands are Indelval, a high-performance, natural rubber product manufactured in Argentina, and Salto Exceptional Flooring, a floor imitating the essence of natural stone and marble. According to Collum, the Indelval brand has been long recognized globally for its exceptional quality due to its combination of high natural rubber content and proprietary high-pressure vulcanization process that ensures durability, easy maintenance and environmental friendliness. Indelval counts 18 products, including new hammered textured floors designed for the U.S. marketplace.
The first product marketed under the Salto brand is Unica, a limestone tile featuring 80% recycled content (10% post-consumer). Available in an 18-inch format and 28 colors, Unica is a high-quality commercial floor ideal for retail, education and healthcare facilities. It features a water-based polyurethane, factory-applied finish, allowing ease of maintenance for high-traffic areas. “No other flooring option offers the aesthetics, green factors, durability and ease of maintenance as affordably as Unica,” Collum said.
Reade Palmer, president, Sustainable Surfaces, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., the agency for Toli and Ceres throughout most of Florida, applauded the addition of the new brands. “The addition of new product segments that address clear needs in our industry allows CBC to potentially gain a greater share of the resilient flooring market and, in turn, offers our client base a wider range of product from a company they already know and trust.”
Toli and Ceres are the two bedrock brands under the CBC umbrella. Toli products, distinguished by a 20-year track record of proven performance and aesthetics, include Toli Mature, a wood grain sheet vinyl floor, and Lightwood, a resilient plank. Both lines are often specified for healthcare and education applications.
“The Toli brand is also positioned well to capture those projects where end users or designers are calling for ‘anything but VCT’ with FasolPlus, Linotesta and their forthcoming Salto tile,” said Shawn Campbell, president of Contract Surfaces, a Cary, N.C.-based agency representing CBC in the Southeast. “The colors are current and coordinate with each other as well as the Ceres brand products.”
Ceres is positioned as a PVC-free flooring offering specifiers and facility owners a product that promotes better indoor air quality, advanced green design and a longer, cleaner lifecycle. Key products in the line include Wels Sheet, Ceres Cork C2 and Sequoia. “Many clients are looking for PVC-free flooring solutions,” Sustainable Surfaces’ Palmer pointed out. “CBC got it right with Wels Sheet. The color range is on the money, and the product itself offers designers, facilities teams and environmental service teams the solution they are looking for with low maintenance, high-performance, seamless PVC-free sheet goods.”
Sequoia, a resilient plank, is also scoring points with healthcare designers, according to Campbell and Palmer. “Sequoia has been successful in our market in children’s’ hospitals, women’s diagnostics centers and other facilities that were set on a wood grain resilient plank but demanded a no-wax product,” Palmer reported. “The most impressive side note about Sequoia is that our client base that has purchased this product continues to do so as they renovate existing facilities or design new spaces.”
CBC flooring products and installation systems contribute to a number of LEED credits, Collum said. For example, CBC’s homogeneous vinyl tile lines contain high levels of recycled material while its luxury vinyl tile, LL300, represents a unique construction featuring a PUR wear surface and 65% recycled content. Toli’s Linotesta homogeneous vinyl tile is said to be the first oversized format in its category, offering a highly styled 18-inch format with 50% recycled content. All CBC Flooring brands are both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 compliant.
