Award of Excellence: A glimpse into the voting

This is our annual issue that honors FCNews’ Award of Excellence winners. The recognition has become exceptionally meaningful for manufacturers and suppliers for nearly three decades. Why? While other award programs tend to focus on a particular product introduction or marketing/ merchandising concept, the Awards of Excellence honor companies based on an array of criteria as voted on by you— their customers. Basically, those criteria contribute to retailer success. It validates what every supplier strives to do on a daily basis. 

The competition has grown over the years to include 27 categories. We try to let the companies compete in their appropriate sandboxes. For example, hardwood suppliers are segmented via origin of product, whether domestic, Canadian, Asian or European. In other categories, suppliers compete against companies of similar size. It’s not fair for a $25 million company to be judged vs. a $200 million company. The larger company simply has more resources at their disposal. 

With all this said, you’ll find the well-deserved winners on page 28. But I always like to use this space in this issue to talk about the voting nuances in some of these categories. Why? Some companies won in a landslide. You should know how much they are considered the best of the best. And in some instances, a company proved victorious by the smallest of margins. That is not to take anything away from them but rather to call out some other suppliers that retailers believe are helping them be more successful. 

Daltile always generates the most votes of any company as the largest and best capitalized company on the boards, but when we added the moldings category to the mix a couple years ago, Versatrim has been a dominating winner. The company repeated this year with 61% of the vote. That’s the second-highest percentage any supplier garnered. 

In that same vein, I wanted to call out Stanton in the Decorative Carpet category. Despite competing against some very solid suppliers, namely Couristan, Nourison, Prestige and Masland’s 1866 brand, Stanton commanded 48% of the vote. They must be doing something right—or many things. And the same can be said about Mannington in Resilient Sheet with a 41% share of the vote. 

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Carpet A category, which was won by Engineered Floors. Now, get this: EF won Best Overall (beating every single company except Shaw and Mohawk, which compete amongst themselves) by a sizeable margin. But in carpet, EF, Karastan and Anderson Tuftex were separated by less than 10 votes. There can only be one winner, and we don’t award honorable mentions because no one likes the silver medal, but Karastan and Anderson Tuftex are also doing some good things for dealers. 

Now let’s talk about Carpet B. It hasn’t been more than three years since Jason Surratt landed at Tarkett. Its carpet division, formerly branded Lexmark, has proven to be a valuable addition for dealers as evidenced by capturing its second straight Award of Excellence, this time extending its margin of victory to over 50. So kudos to the company under Jason’s leadership. 

Let’s talk about another exceptionally close category: Laminate. Inhaus had taken top honors for the past five years. This year it was a five-horse race between Inhaus, Audacity, Bruce, Cali and MSI with only 12 votes separating all of them. 

This year we separated Technology into two sections—flooring solutions and everything else. Flooring solutions include technologies like locking systems, lighter-weight SPCs, air-purifying surfaces and more. Companies that develop the technology and then license it to manufacturers. The second section includes flooring software, lead-gen programs, room viewers, AI, digital printing and more. Both Unilin and Roomvo were first-time winners and won by comfortable margins. Roomvo has been gaining acclaim as the years go by for its highly sophisticated room viewer, something that can help the retailer close the sale. 

When it came to Hardwood, each of the four winners were repeaters. While Mirage and Hallmark sailed in their respective categories, Kährs and Fabrica were close in the Europe/South America section and only 22 votes separated Anderson Tuftex, Mannington, Karastan and Somerset in the domestic category. 

Lastly, it seems COREtec and Karndean with their respective Resilient categories every year. COREtec has built one of the best brands in the flooring industry, and when it comes to design, it’s hard to rival Karndean. Both attributes contribute to retailer success.

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