Many BPS products coordinate with those of some hard surface manufacturers.

By Liz Switzer
Designers are a talented group of educated people who work very hard these days with little support. Some flooring manufacturers get that; Bentley Prince Street (BPS) is one of them.

“Today you have 50 designers doing the job of 100,” said Anthony Minite, BPS president.

So BPS, already known for its savvy design, stepped up to the plate with designer-friendly product packages that save time, money and — not least of all — headaches.

There are actually two avenues of collaboration for BPS: product creation with other manufacturers and BPS designers who work with teams of well known architects and outside designers like Robert A.M. Stern architects in New York and Clodagh, who creates multiple products from lighting and spa furniture to sustainable carpet.

BPS is known for style, design and quality, but it is not a low-cost producer, so differentiation is critical in many areas like environmental stewardship and a strong, corporate culture of professionalism.

The third differentiator has become solid collaboration, Minite said, and one thing BPS can do as a company is to continue to differentiate and offer client solutions. “We realized if we are able to at least come in and have a package of products that make the specification process smoother, ultimately it allows designers to spend time doing other things and not be tied down looking through a library of multiple products.”

Many Clodagh products fit well with BPS products, and the same is true for Stern. Most of the work BPS does with Stern involves collaboration with ceramic tile maker Crossville which coordinates with BPS carpet made and supported by what Stern was doing.

In all BPS projects — corporate, healthcare, education — hard surface is most always a part of the job, so the Crossville collaboration was a natural fit. “Crossville is a U.S. company that is lined up very well with our core competencies: environmental initiatives, their safety record, the way they run their company, and probably most important: style and design,” Minite said.

As BPS and Crossville designers work together on color and texture market trends, coordinating products that simplify the specification process, to create new products that give sales reps at both companies fresh items to talk about, and that has generated a strong synergy.

In the San Francisco Bay area, Crossville and BPS reps hold monthly meetings to exchange ideas about what is happening in the market and how both teams can more effectively target the market. There is also marketing collaboration that has resulted in collateral materials that highlight both products and both companies as well as co-branding and co-events such as joint trade shows and NeoCon events like a major BPS-Crossville party at House of Blues.

“So there is a whole collaboration in our businesses that stems from design, from our designers working well together,” Minite said. “Looking at product, looking at market trends, and then it comes back into our product development phase and the end result, we hope, is things that work well together and designers want to specify.”

Crossville’s Color Blox collection coordinates with BPS’ top seller since 1980, King’s Road, giving designers 200 solid colors to pick from. The lines are co-marketed, co-branded and have proved to be highly successful for both companies.

“Our two companies are somewhat like-minded so we take inspiration from the color trends and patterns that Bentley is developing and incorporate them into products within the Crossville offering as well so they work nicely together,” said Frank Douglas, vice president of business development at Crossville. “They end up complimenting each other whether used in the same space or not. They push us and with any luck we push them on the design side.”

Even though there are no official corporate ties between the two companies, BPS and Crossville have become such close partners that communication takes place on an ongoing basis. “Some of the communication is by osmosis; it just sort of happens,” Douglas said.

That is just what happened with sustainable product solutions. BPS for years has had a take-back program, and that inspired Crossville to take previously installed tile back, crush it and put it back into the body of the tile. “It has actually gone to the point now that everything Crossville produces has some reclaimed product in it,” Douglas said.

The collaboration also helps Crossville think outside of the box, he added. “Instead of being internally focused, it forces us to look at what other people are doing in the flooring business. Whether it is more effective communication or simply making better sales calls, they force us to look outside our industry for benchmarking.”

That has included ideas like better sampling that helped shrink Crossville’s carbon footprint with recycled cardboard samples that are far easier to transport and handle than actual tile. Crossville is also moving faster with color and texture than it would have without Bentley, according to Douglas. “And we are doing a better job with just trends in general because our partnership makes us stretch.”

BPS has a growing stable of partners, one of which is Parterre, a manufacturer of luxury vinyl tile with 45% recycled content. “Time is of the essence for everybody today,” said Fred Roche, president, Parterre. “And anytime a design professional can do one-stop shopping it is an opportunity he or she is going to take advantage of because the projects are fast right now. When somebody is ready to go, he or she wants to go right now and there is not always time to source out all the best things to go together.”

The partnership is about talented product designers doing a “Garanimals (a brand of mix-and-match children’s clothing) thing for architects and interior designers that saves hours of time with color combinations sampled together in one unit,” Roche said.

BPS picked product from five of Parterre’s lines, but the one that has been the most popular is the Scrap Yard Collection, derived from photography of rusted metals in a junkyard in Pennsylvania. BPS took 18 of Parterre’s best products and put them together with 18 carpets, all pre-coordinated for designers.

“Bentley is the leader in this industry in design, and when they pick things that go together designers respect that,” Roche said.

BPS focuses its collaborations on interior products outside of furniture, flooring or wall covering, said Minite, who is now looking to add fabric products that would work well with BPS designs.

“I’ve always taken a holistic approach to our industry and our business,” Minite said. “I want to make sure our sales force is well-equipped and serves its customers through solutions, so we are always looking at partnerships that would enhance our offering as well as partnering with companies as a joint effort that we can both benefit from.”