On this episode of the What the Floor Podcast, we decided to explain the very complicated process that we go through when adding new products to the T&A Supply lineup. We take a deep dive into how we research new products, all the things we do to launch a new product into the market, and the complicated process of how products are discontinued. We’ve pulled back the curtain and are giving you a front-row view of what our Marketing and Product Managers are dealing with.
We also brought back Fire in the Hole in this episode! Meet our brand-new TAS Flooring Luxury Vinyl products Corsage & Cruiser!
What the Floor is a T&A Supply Company Inc original production. You can find out more about us at tasupply.com or tasflooring.com. This show is produced by Jose Morales with help from Toni Collier and Jessica Riser. Tell us what you think of the show at wtfpodcast@tasupply.com or #whatthefloorpodcast on social media to let us know what you think.
On this episode of the What the Floor Podcast, we decided to explain the very complicated process that we go through when adding new products to the T&A Supply lineup. We take a deep dive into how we research new products, all the things we do to launch a new product into the market, and the complicated process of how products are discontinued. We’ve pulled back the curtain and are giving you a front-row view of what our Marketing and Product Managers are dealing with.
We also brought back Fire in the Hole in this episode! Meet our brand-new TAS Flooring Luxury Vinyl products Corsage & Cruiser!
What the Floor is a T&A Supply Company Inc original production. You can find out more about us at tasupply.com or tasflooring.com. This show is produced by Jose Morales with help from Toni Collier and Jessica Riser. Tell us what you think of the show at wtfpodcast@tasupply.com or #whatthefloorpodcast on social media to let us know what you think.
This is What the Floor from T&A Supply Company Inc, a podcast for the flooring industry. I'm Holiday Van Erem.
Michael Goria:And I'm Michael Goria. We're going to explore the hot topics of the flooring industry with a little humor and
Holiday Van Erem:We're recording this episode at the a new set of eyes. end of December.
Michael Goria:Yeah
Holiday Van Erem:Christmas is upon us
Michael Goria:Christmas is upon us. The weather's terrible.
Holiday Van Erem:We talked about this earlier. There's an ice skating rink in our parking lot here at the office.
Michael Goria:It is super icy.
Holiday Van Erem:I almost bit it this morning.
Michael Goria:Yeah, so we're up against it and recording for the last time in 2022.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, so this will air in January, the end of January. We have an interesting topic for today, we thought it might be interesting to explain the lifecycle of a flooring product, at least in the eyes of T&A Supply.
Michael Goria:Yeah, no, I think it's really good for our customers to understand how we pick things, why we pick things and then how we bring them to market. I mean, it's a huge process and something that, you know, I used to work for a manufacturer, and for me to understand what it took for a distributor to get a product to market is way more than I expected. So I think it's great to discuss, I think everybody will enjoy this episode.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, we traditionally have received a lot of complaints from customers, when we discontinue something. Why did you do this? It's you know, I just got this, you know, I've got projects. Why are you getting rid of something. And I don't think our customers usually understand how long we've been working with the product and all of the different things that can cause it to be discontinued, and why we have to do that for products and why certain things can't last forever. From the beginning, the middle and in the end, there's a lot of unknowns to folks who are outside of our company here as to why we do things and how we do them. So this should be an enlightening episode, I think for folks.
Michael Goria:Absolutely. Yeah, I think we jump right in and,
Holiday Van Erem:In front of us, we have a list of notes. And and get to it. one of them is actually written out, all of the different stages. So there's a lot of stages involved in launching a product. And first and foremost is R&D.
Michael Goria:Yep.
Holiday Van Erem:We have a lot of projects in R&D right now.
Michael Goria:Yeah, research and development is so huge, you know, we are always looking for the next thing for our customers, you know, we don't want to be just another me too all the time. Sometimes we have to be but the goal is to bring products to market that while you that make you feel like, hey, there's new technology coming, what is it, what's going to be the next popular thing and so we can't just get a recommendation from a vendor and then take that product. And we know we really liked to vet it. So there's part of R&D is, is feeling that product, getting samples of that product is putting it together, is playing with it for a little while to really understand what it is.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, we have a lot of vendors that come through T&A asking for us to take on products, some of them that we work with all the time and that we've never worked with, we have a lot of people that just show up randomly, that you'd have no idea who they are and what they're what they're bringing to you and a lot of samples shipped to us of things, all that stuff goes in R&D. We're going to think about it, we're going to ask people about it, we're gonna get those samples and take them out to customers and get their feedback, we spent a lot of time doing that.
Michael Goria:Yeah, feedback from customers is huge, right? Because we want to make sure, and we can't do it to everybody, unfortunately. But we like to at least get some feedback, you know, from a good handful of customers. Hey, is this viable? If we're at this price point, is this technology of interest to So there's so many facets that play into that you?
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah. R&D with that particular product. But feedback from customers is huge, because obviously we want to engage them to make sure they feel like it's something viable for the market. Yeah. And we don't know everything.
Michael Goria:No
Holiday Van Erem:We don't. We're just we're making these decisions. But we don't make them just because we liked something. And if it's just something that one of us happen to really like, it's probably not going to work out super well. We've got to have everybody really excited about a product. And customers excited about it. This is something that they've been asking for. And this is a solution to a problem that they have.
Michael Goria:Yeah, from the sales side, too. We got to wrap our minds around, what's the sales story? And then put a marketing plan together? How do we make sure this product will be successful? We may like it, and maybe our customers like it, but how will we march that all the way down to the consumer, so we have to think about it start to finish really.
Holiday Van Erem:time. We think about it a lot. We we get it almost to the point where we've decided to launch it or we've told people we're going to move it into that next phase and then we go back and decide, nope, it's going back in R&D. We're not ready for this one, it's not going to work out. So some things don't really leave that phase. And you know, after a while I try to in my own personal spreadsheet trying to mark them as things that were just so we've abandoned this. We're done, stop, not even considering this as R&D anymore. This has been abandoned and moved on. So from R&D,if they happen to be those special unicorns and moved to the launch phase. That's the next one is launching the product, that can take a really long time.
Michael Goria:Yeah, it can. I mean, there's just again, we can we're gonna keep saying this through and through, but there's so many things that then have to go into it. But once we decide we're moving forward, and like Holiday said, it goes into the launch process, that incorporates, you know, several different factors and groups that have to get involved sales and marketing is probably where that kind of starts to breed life, right?
Holiday Van Erem:Yep. So our marketing team starts to jump on it, we start to create our product briefs for the program, trying to gather all of the information about what the product is, how we're going to sell it, how we're going to market it, how many SKUs are there going to be, what is the features, and the benefits? All of that information for each of our different market segments, because we don't necessarily market the same product to each segment the same way. So when we go out to a contract customer, it's very different selling experience then if we go out to retail, so it's got a whole different story. And some of those things overlap. And it's beneficial to both groups. But there's very specific things that we're marketing the product differently, and has a different look and feel and different story to it, depending on who we're talking to.
Michael Goria:Yeah. And you wouldn't imagine the amount of information we have to collect and build. I mean, from from building SKUs. Well, it's not just the SKU that it's all of the what we call the ad notes, where it's you know, the weight of the carton, the weight of the product, how many pieces are in, that's all super viable information doesn't seem super important when you're just looking at a product for maybe a customer to pick. But ultimately, we have to have all that you wouldn't believe the amount of times we get asked for such specific questions about a particular product. It's in the marketplace.
Holiday Van Erem:How much is on a pallet? What are the size of the pallets? What are they made out of? How is it how are they shipping it to us
Michael Goria:pattern repeats, I mean, we could go on and on about the specifics of a product. But to collect all that information can take a lot of time.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah. And then we start building out all of our merchandising materials, we try to get all of that stuff sent to the factories to have those done and the printers that are doing them. Way way before we ever get the samples in the product.
Toni Collier:During that launch phase in the like sales support marketing side of things, we have our product launch tracker, and in that we're tracking dates and individual tasks that all these people have to do and coordinating deadlines on all those. That like for an individual launch and say the TAS flooring brand is roughly 150 tasks that have to happen, or things that we're you know, trying to get from vendors or dates that we're tracking. So all those line items that are included in a launch, it adds up to about 150 things that have to happen.
Holiday Van Erem:Times like two products, three products at once. Yeah, it's a lot of work.
Toni Collier:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So when we are launching, I don't know how many things in February and March, you know, like, I think seven or eight product lines, it's a lot that we're trying to make happen all at the same time. So
Holiday Van Erem:Once we place our purchase order for something, we've decided we're moving forward, and we're placing your purchase order, we have a certain amount of weeks to get all of this information gathered all of the merchandising materials created and then start working on all of the marketing pieces. And sometimes that turnaround time is really fast. And then sometimes we've got a lot more room to breathe. But it's crunch time. Really Yeah. And there's a lot of places where that information can go wrong. If we have one, even just a packaging information that's wrong on something. Well, that might have been put on numerous different things that have been printed in quantities of 1000s that tend to have to be fixed or replaced or covered up later.
Michael Goria:Well, the other facet that you can think about is if it's a new product for a vendor, versus a existing product for a vendor an existing product, usually we can go pretty quick. The vendor usually has all that information, when they've launched it with another distributor somewhere in the country. If it's a new product, sometimes it takes forever to get all the detailed information, maybe they don't have a lot of the testing done. Yeah, there's just a lot of a lot of things that play into that can take longer.
Holiday Van Erem:And again sometimes it never leaves the launch phase either if they can't provide all of that information, and it's we're not getting the things that we need. Or we find that after we've gone through this process, it's really not what we thought it was going to be or the samples show up and they're trash or the product actually gets delivered. And it's does not meet our quality standards, we might abort this mission right then and there. And it might not actually ever launch to the world.
Michael Goria:Yeah, there's also a lot of negotiation that goes on with installation instructions or warranty. They want to go, you know, they may say, Hey, you can go 30 by 30. Well, a lot of our customers want 50 by 50 year wider without transitions. And so we're negotiating, hey, is this product stable enough to do that? So a lot of behind the scenes stuff that is not discussed out in the open but certainly is is something we're working on.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah. So from R&D and launch, we've got all of our sales management, our marketing team or sales support team, our imports, team, our warehouse team, all of these folks are involved in that process. It's a lot of people involved in making sure that that product actually gets to the introduction phase where we are launching it to the field sending the samples out and have our sales reps actually introducing it to customers. That's the next phase
Michael Goria:growth. How do we get the market penetration? How do we build that product out to make sure that it's successful in the field,
Holiday Van Erem:I don't think that there is a set amount of time that we can put on a product where we can decide that we've reached the maximum growth of a product, or it should have certain expectations by certain dates, every product is a little different. And we might have stumbled a little out of the gate when we launched it. Things could change after we've launched it. I mean, there's a handful of times where we've decided that the marketing message we chose is not really what's actually important to customers. Once we've shown it to customers, we've decided that it's really, that's not as important as they said it was going to be and we need to relaunch this in a different way and just kind of start over. Yeah, we have some benchmarks that we utilize 60 days, 120 days where we start running some reports and see what's going on. But it's hard to tell product compared to other products, what successful in those certain ranges, you have certain ideas of how well things should do. But I don't know that we have really great benchmarks yet for that.
Michael Goria:No, it always we have to manage expectations, it always takes a little bit longer than we expect. We want things to sell the minute we put the samples in the field. What I will say is we also understand from a you know, maybe we're talking about our retail customers here, hey, they have to get comfortable with the product, they have to be PKed on the product. And then they have to be comfortable selling it to Mr. And Mrs. Homeowner coming in to choose that product.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah.
Michael Goria:And so it can take time for them. And then maybe they get that first order, well, it takes a little time and they want to make sure it goes well. And then they're willing to sell it again.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah.
Michael Goria:So it's amazing how many you could go down so many rabbit holes on where we have some of those slowdowns or issues, but it's a big part of the launch.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah. So a product for a normal thts flooring product will stay in that growth phase for probably several years. I mean, it's it's not a right away hit, usually a lot of things will take time to ramp up and get to a place where we feel like they're really successful. By the time they reach what we consider maturity, we have to have documented for at least six months or longer that this product sales have kind of hit that peak. And it's kind of plateaued out and this is kind of where it rides at, I don't know that there's really a good like number of years that you can say by this by x date, you will see that happen because every product is a little different. And the market changes will affect whether or not that products gonna stick around for five years, 10 years, one year two.
Michael Goria:Yeah, I feel like after six months, we typically know the success rate of the product, or that we have to do something drastic to reengage our customer base with it. You know, if we think about our contract AMD team, you know, when they are showing products to the market, that those projects are, you know, sometimes 3, 6, 8, 10, 12 months or longer down the road. So if you're looking at it from their standpoint, it is a good probably a year into it. Is it successful at that, you know, avenue, if you're talking, you know, residential retail, six months is usually we know for the most part will this, is this a product we really want to put more energy and time into.
Holiday Van Erem:At this point, the retail side of our business and the contract center of business start to separate. And we will do different things based on those different markets for products. So this is where we start to decide if it's really not working in the retail side, we may change it to a non stop product. And we're really not push it and have our customers renew the samples, you know, this just isn't really working on the retail side. And we're not going to support it as much as a TAS flooring product. But we might not have that same message with our contract side because we can still access the product, it doesn't have to be in stock, the quantities of their orders are much larger than what we would normally have in stock. So we do things a little differently depending on how they want to source the product. We kind of decide whether we're going to be continuing with the product if we need to, if it's fine and doesn't need to be touched. If we need to refresh it and do something new and different. bring in new colors change some kind of specification on it. Or if it's declining, and it's just not going to be a long term product for us. Lots of decisions to make once you feel like you've reached a point where you have enough data to understand what's happening in the marketplace.
Michael Goria:Yeah, it's hard to know when I apologize. We're speaking kind of vague. It is like Holiday said every product is different. Every product has a different timeline and success line. We've had products that were slow out of the gate, and we just struggled with, and then all of a sudden, we just see this, you know, maybe it gets a spec into a project, you know, a couple couple customers are starting to have success with it. And all of a sudden, it just starts to take off word of mouth is very big, especially amongst a company. If one residential rep is selling that, well, they usually spread the word, hey, here's how I'm doing it. So it's fun to watch different products have different paces. And we get to be a part of that. But it's all in its own time.
Toni Collier:Jeff Nealon, our product manager, imports, Director, jack of all trades has this great graph that he draws every once in a while, I'm going to try and illustrate that in Word. Maybe we can like, you know, post a little picture of it. Okay, so imagine a quadrant where your horizontal axis your x axis, axis is time. So the farther right you go, the longer the product has been launched. And then the vertical is sales. So in your lower left quadrant, we have early adopters. So it's early to launch. And sales aren't very high yet. So the people who are using it are early adopters for that launch, the top left quadrant, so not very much time has passed, but sales are high. That's going to be our stellar star. Collections. Those right out the gate are producing sales quickly. Oh, yeah, we love that scenario, I gotta x right. And then the farther over you go on the to the right, so you have your top right quadrant, that's time has passed, the products reaching maturity, but the sales are still high. So those are going to be our workhorses. Those are the ones like Bourbon Street, and Tandem, they live and live forever. Customers trust that brand name, and they just are consistently generating sales. And then you have your bottom right quadrant, which Jeff calls the dying dog. So those are on the on the way to discontinuation or nonstock, where they've lived their life and are not producing sales at the volume that they used to. And sometimes maybe you know, a product, it dies in early death. And it goes from early adopter to dying dog and never reaches
Holiday Van Erem:and never has that like arc, were it naturally is coming up and coming back down. It just takes off
Toni Collier:The right or
Holiday Van Erem:The far rightreal fast.
Toni Collier:Yeah, so but those that's kind of a fun way, I think to visually understand how we made some of those decisions and how you can visualize the launch or lifecycle process.
Holiday Van Erem:I think a couple things that I do want to say is the timelines, like you're saying, there is no specific timeline, when we decide to discontinue a product, within a few months of it launching into the field, we're sorry that we have to do that. And we're not trying to disrupt people's business. And you know, maybe you just just got excited about this product. And we're already taking away from you. But there's definitely a reason that we're doing that. Let's talk about what can kill a product.
Michael Goria:Yeah.
Holiday Van Erem:What are those things that happen along the way that make us decide that we are no longer going to support this product?
Michael Goria:There's a lot of things I think, you know, one of the things I think about right off the top is the samples aren't representative of the product or don't show it well enough in that display. Whatever the facet is, yeah,
Holiday Van Erem:yeah, that's a great point, there's, and there's certain things that we can do to fix that. And some things that you just, it just doesn't show well, and it doesn't express it correctly. And it's just, there's nothing really you can do to change that. Or you're just not willing to invest in a different type of sampling vehicle, because it's just it's not worth it. Right. We've definitely over the years had problems with that.
Michael Goria:Yeah, I think the second thing is instant inventory issues with the vendor, you know, we get things out, it starts to sell like gangbusters, and then we can't get the product. And you know, people move off things very quickly, as hard as we work to get them in there and get people excited about it. If they can't get it kills it.
Holiday Van Erem:And there are so many reasons for that happening. It could be something internal that we've done, you know, something that was set up wrong in our system to not gauge the quantities that we're going to need port issues, shipping problems, shipping delays, the vendor having problems, being able to source raw materials to be able to actually manufacture something, it's not always our fault, or the vendors foul it, there's so many different things that can be happening, or they just can't produce the product consistently. I mean, we've had that before where we get the samples, they look great. We I mean, we've been getting like Master cartons in the material, and it looks fine. It clicks together good and seems like it's going to work and then our first batch is terrible. Our first actual containers and the material is not what they said it was going to be. And sometimes we don't notice that completely you know. Well, we'll pull some pieces out and do some quality control testing here. And if it looks good and smells right and seems like it's right thing, you know, we move it along. We're not going to hold it up. But we don't notice the problems until customers start buying it in larger quantities and start doing more installs and we realize there's something wrong with it. And then we We have to decide whether or not we can trust that vendor. Right? How long have we worked with them? Do we know that they have a good track record? Is it just a problem with this batch? Are they explaining it? And you know, and want to fix the problem? Or are they trying to tell you there's nothing wrong with it? And there's a lot of questions that can come up that will decide whether or not you actually continue working with them and give it another shot? Or if this is dead now.
Michael Goria:Yeah. And that's where the vendor really shows their colors. You know, what, what do they do to step up? How do they help us rectify the issue? How do they help us make it right for our customers, and potentially, for the homeowner, if it's gone that far? Yeah. You know, but we have to be careful. And I just wanna let people know, we vet our relationships with our vendors a lot, we don't take it lightly, the relationship with the vendor and who they are, we just don't order from anybody. And so it's important for our customers to understand that there's a lot of work that goes into just vetting and making sure they're a good quality partner.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah. And that's not just the one time, that's not just when we bring on a product, we're consistently and constantly doing that. I came into our main conference room a couple of weeks ago, right after there was a meeting in there and Mark imports manager had this his hand written graph on the board about consistency and quantity of claims, by some generic vendors, and then the one that he was meeting with, and he was trying to explain to them, we've been a longtime partner with you, but look at the number of claims that I have with other vendors of these types of products compared to how many I have of yours, you need to fix this, or we're not going to be able to do business with you any longer. So those, we're always having those conversations with vendors. And we need to work with partners who are going to support us and support our customers and support that product all the way through to possible problems down the road. And there's only so much time that we will let that vendor have before we're fed up with it. Yeah, and we will have plenty of other sources. And we don't put up with quality issues.
Michael Goria:I think one of the last things I was thinking about what kills a product is sometimes the market just doesn't accept it. Maybe we're too early with that technology or with we think it's great, we've got the feedback that says it's great. And it just the consumers don't buy it. It just doesn't go. And it's always disappointing, because there's times by the time we've got it out to the field, we've put a lot of blood sweat and tears and we're excited about it. Yeah, and to have the market not accepted is always a huge bummer.
Holiday Van Erem:Or have the market change just right before, you know, it seems like everything's gonna work out perfectly. And then somebody else comes out with something, there's a shift, there's a pricing change, there's something that happens. And you're just, you're just out of luck.
Michael Goria:Yeah.
Holiday Van Erem:It's not gonna work.
Michael Goria:One of the examples I think about is rain tree, we've been very successful with rain tree, our waterproof hardwood, and, you know, waterproof hardwood had been around for five or six years, maybe even longer before rain tree came out. But the iterations of it were the finish was a little milky. It was a rotary peeled veneer, not a slice veneer. And it was expensive. And so there was all these factors that just the market didn't accept it. And so when we came out with rain tree, we really had to do a good job. People love the look. But we had to do an even better job of selling that product into the market. And it caught on but the market had tried several times ahead of that. So we were just fortunate to hit it when we did and to have rain tree be a success. But sometimes you're just early.
Holiday Van Erem:others start to see your success, they come out with their own. And it almost helps because it's almost almost proves your point that this product is really worth folks time and people are going to want this and other companies now have seen that too and want to come in and sell something similar. So sometimes that helps to you're right, there are only so many types of products, we're limited in the amount of things that we can come up with to put on our floor. So with SPC, there's only so many things you can do to make an SPC different. And when somebody finds that little tweak, everybody else is gonna want to make that little tweak to add that new coding or that new, you know, shift in technology or that different type of construction process. Because what else are they gonna do?
Michael Goria:Right
Holiday Van Erem:And they have to keep reinventing themselves. So timing can be everything.
Michael Goria:Yeah. And that's where we try to differentiate ourselves. We understand. There's a lot of the same me too products in the market, but does anybody you know ship as well as T&A? Does anybody inventory as deep as T&A? You know, does anybody have as good of a sales team as T&A? That's where we try to separate ourselves. And I'm sure you could say, you know, there's gonna be people out there. Oh, there's yes to some of those answers. I hope we're at the top of the list for a lot of you listeners, but we really try to make sure that we bring you new products that are going to interest you and interest the homeowners at the end of the day, but also, we're going to support you as well or better than anybody
Holiday Van Erem:We didn't really talk too much about refreshes the types of things that we do when we refresh our product. If we've decided to refresh Your product is most likely because we see some kind of benefit to it. We like the name, we have some good success with it, it's been around for a while, we feel like there's something that we can do to tweak it that will make it even do a little bit better. But we can kind of milk a little bit more out of it before it really needs to be pushed off to the wayside. So one of the easiest things is, is updating colors, switching out some colors.
Michael Goria:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the market changes, right. I mean, you look at, you know, five years ago, Gray's. I mean, we could have full eight skew lines of grays, and they all sold and now Gray has moved out, we still certainly include grays in each of our collections, but they're not what they used to be. So we have very successful lines that we have great price points on customers are comfortable with, we don't want to get rid of those lines, we just need to update them, refresh them with color so that customers continue to move to the racks, you know, that we have in the stores. Refreshing is a great way to keep the legacy of a line moving on. With just some updated colors,
Holiday Van Erem:Or an updated specification we've got our Tandem collections a great example. So we add a Tandem wine, just a wider plank, some different colors, a little different features, we've got Tandem tile ringing, a line of tile options, we really think that there's value and then the Tandem name, we have, you know, a good amount of customers buying that product consistently. And it's got some brand recognition. So just adding a new product under that same name, with some different features and benefits or different sizing and color options. Is another way to refresh a collection, and you hope to when you add in the Tandem Tile that it reminds people that you have Tandem. And they'll go look at that too. Because you can put them in the same display, you can refresh and everything, rearrange your colors and, and it brings some name recognition back to the original collection.
Michael Goria:Oh we will always refresh. I mean, that's a big part of our business. And so that's just making sure that we have the most up to date, films or color palette moving forward. And so that's something that we're always working on right alongside with new product launches is, is refreshes of existing collections in the field, those kind of go hand in hand and and you see those, you know, throughout the year for sure.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, oh, one thing I do want to mention is a product that actually makes it through all of the different phases is very fortunate product, most do not make it through the entire lifecycle from R&D all the way to an easy decline into discontinuation, a lot of products get killed all sorts of different places in that phase. So a product for us that can make it all the way through great example, recently, I think would be our Bourbon Street laminate collection, we had that collection for such a long time, we went through several different refreshes of it. And it finally just you know, it just has declined and discontinued itself on its own naturally in the wild.
Michael Goria:The market shifted, you know, COVID hit, the freight went up so drastically from overseas. And so that product just got hammered. Now, it was already just a workhorse for so long for us. So probably on what we would consider a decline, like you'd mentioned, we'd done multiple refreshes with it. But the market conditions caused that to get to a point where we just it didn't make sense to continue that product term. And so we moved away from it. And we found other products, certainly to replace that at the high end that pricing level.
Holiday Van Erem:And it's so funny too, because now we've moved on, we replace it with other things, and now we're looking at bringing in new products that are very similar to what it was. So it's just it's a circle of life. And sometimes, you know, we're not going to call it Bourbon Street. But you know, the market changes, but the market always tends to come back and need those things after certain
Michael Goria:It does and if you look at the market, I mean amount of time. from 2000 Let's call it 13 To really 2019 It was a very steady market and conditions were very stable. Well, the last two years where we've seen when freight went up to let's call it $25,000 A container from overseas and is now back down already to close to where we were buying before you know pre pandemic freight rates. That changes and so we are we're adjusting more in the last two or three years and we've had to adjust in the last 10 Yeah, and so we understand from our customer base, that's not easy, but we want to make sure we keep you as competitive as possible because you have the best products from T&A supply so that you can you know, get every sale that walks into your store.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, I think that is one thing that is different about the way T&A supply goes to market than other large manufacturers. We're a little bit more nimble. We choose to keep ourselves that way. We could be very set like others are in only launching new products and services, only discontinuing you know a couple of things at certain times throughout the year, holding GPL lists where we're guaranteeing that these things will not Go away within a certain amount of time, we tend to not do that, you know, there are specific markets builder being one of them, where we do guarantees very specific things. But it's project specific, it's developer specific, and we have those arrangements with you, not to the masses, because we need to be able to offer what we need at that particular time, our motto has always been what you need, when you need it, at the price when that you need it at, that's what we try to do. And when we are locked into something where it can only change once a year only be introducing new colors and surfaces, that's not beneficial to you as our as our customer, right.
Michael Goria:And that's the thing, you know, I'd like to just add to that is we're never trying to cause disruption in your business, I mean, we really want to help you build your business. And so we get it sometimes, you know, bringing on new SKUs. In in July or August or you know, is is disrupting because we added something in in you know, early February. But we want to make sure your can, we found a way to be even more competitive. And so we want to make sure you have the ability to access those products to make yourself more competitive.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, we know that it's disruptive when we launch it with out a pad and then add a pad two months later and make you change your SKUs and change your samples. But it's because we really believe that it is better this way. And it's going to be better for you and your consumer this way. We're not here doing it just for just to have fun and mess with people. It is disruptive for us too. There is a lot that's involved in us changing something about a product, adding a pad, it seems like a really simple thing to do, which is buy with a pad now. Well, we can't inventory, we can't mix the inventories, we have to keep them separate new SKUs, update samples, all the messaging has to be changed, the website has to be changed. We have to relaunch this out into the market and get you to understand it. So now new, priceless. There's a whole lot involved. It's not something we just do, just because we don't have anything to do.
Michael Goria:Right. Well, that's why Holiday and I and really the the WTF team felt like it was important to do this podcast is, is to really walk you through all the decisions that have to be made. These aren't made lightly when we, you know, do the pad to or no pad to pad or change a locking system.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah.
Michael Goria:It's because we've really vetted this and we feel it's best for us and you guys long term. I mean, we don't make these decisions without thinking about how they impact you, the customer.
Holiday Van Erem:The one thing that I am really excited about ensuring this process is also sharing that we have lots of new products coming out at the beginning of the year, February and March are going to be slammed with lots of samples hitting your stores. And I'm really excited about some of the things we have coming in laminate and luxury vinyl, we've got some really interesting products, thing that with features that we've never seen before, better visuals that are coming out, we have some things that just have new features and benefits, things that we got rid of previously that we didn't, we don't really have that in our line anymore, because we couldn't find a vendor with the right pricing. We found those things again. So there's a lot of new things coming. And it's going to be very exciting February and March for us.
Michael Goria:Yeah, I'm excited. I mean, some of the price points even you know, that we're going to be able to get to are going to really make a big impact, you know, with our customer base. And so, yeah, look forward to those. And we certainly want to end this by saying, Hey, thank you for trusting us. Thank you for trusting our product lifecycle process. You know, sometimes it doesn't feel like it makes sense. Sometimes there's internal battles here where we're not all on the same page. Ultimately, we're going to continue to reiterate, we want to do the best we can for you and bring you the best products we can for the market so that you can be as competitive as possible and be as successful as possible.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah. So when we come out and we ask you your opinions, when we're doing PKS and having meetings with you and asking you what do you see coming? What is new and interesting, what are others showing you that we don't have? We really do want those answers because it really affects the decisions that we make. And if we're not getting that feedback from you, there's a want that you have from us that you're not sharing. We can never get you that if we don't know what it is. So never feel like you can't share with us hey, you know I'd really love it if T&A had x blank product because I could really sell that. Well tell us let us know what that is. And we can figure out whether or not we can get that for you.
Michael Goria:Yeah, certainly if we hear it enough times, it makes a major impact on some of those decisions.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, that's the the circle of life as they say.
Michael Goria:Holiday's holding up Simba right now.
Holiday Van Erem:I love that movie, man. That's one of my favorite. It's one of my favorite.
Michael Goria:Yeah, if you need a good hearted movie go watch Lion King. It's been a while probably.
Toni Collier:Yeah, except for you know the like, you know part where...
Holiday Van Erem:Oh, hi.
Toni Collier:Muffassa....
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, you have to
Toni Collier:a little traumatizing
Holiday Van Erem:It is a little traumatizing I still cry when I see it. I probably cry. I'm worn out as a kid right. Now that I'm a parent. heartbreaking moment there. Yeah, that's a an oldie but a goodie.
Unknown:Fire in the hole
Holiday Van Erem:All right, Michael, we're bringing it back. We only done Fire in the hole one.
Michael Goria:I think so, this is number two, of fire in the hole.
Holiday Van Erem:Fire in the hole. And we're talking about product launches and life cycles of products. We've got some coming in the future. But we have some that are happening very, very soon. By the time this show airs, you will be seeing this in the field. So we wanted to make sure we take the opportunity to share with you two companion products, corsage and cruiser.
Michael Goria:Yes, we're very excited about two new glue down LVS that we have come into the market in probably the second third week of January, these will be out in the field.
Holiday Van Erem:Yes, it's very exciting. So there are really one maybe two differences between these two
Michael Goria:Yup
Holiday Van Erem:One of the main colors.
Michael Goria:Yeah.
Holiday Van Erem:they're not the same colors,
Michael Goria:right
Holiday Van Erem:And they're not the same millimeter thickness. So right corsage is a two millimeter, right?
Michael Goria:Corsage is a two millimeter thick product with a 12 millimeter wear layer. So we call it a 212. I've been out talking about this a little bit recently. And, and really to my bad. I said, Hey, yeah, we got this new cool 212. And the guy was like confused. And I'm sorry, let me roll it back for you. So overall two millimeter thickness with a 12 millimeter wear layer. The thing cool about corsage and cruiser is we've got a ceramic bead finish. So you've got the 12 mil but with ceramic bead, which really helps your overall performance.
Holiday Van Erem:Yes, and it's especially with these thin products, you need these little things to make them last longer. Cruisers a 2.5 millimeter 12 mil wear layer, same UV ceramic be finish. So for both of these products, you've got a thin product, which the main point of that whole idea behind the thin product is a price point, we're trying to reach a certain price point on a glue down product. And these products are very project oriented. They're not what a retail customers usually putting in a homeowners house in their living room or whatever. They're not that you can't certainly can't if you fall in love with that color. Maybe you just you do you right and doesn't matter.
Michael Goria:Yeah, we've heard of people putting them in a laundry room and replace of you know, sheet vinyl or things like that. But typically, we will limit you to this but typically they're not used in a residential setting throughout the home.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah, so it's a price point but they these two products have some bells and whistles all say that make them stand out from all of the other two 2.5 millimeter glue down products. And one of them like you mentioned is a ceramic bead.
Michael Goria:Yep
Holiday Van Erem:Just having that in the wear layer just adds that extra protection against scratches,
Michael Goria:extra strength you know there's been ceramic you know, bead finishes and hardwood for years. I'm sure you've heard about that. So now we have it in this LV which will just give you that like Holliday said that extra, you know, strength from scratching and imperfections that you would get from you know, wear.
Holiday Van Erem:And then the next thing that is different is the rolled edge. So, Michael, tell me what have you been telling customers about this new rolled edge?
Michael Goria:Yeah, so typically in a glue down product like this is you'll either have a square edge or a micro beveled edge. And like we had mentioned, these go into large projects or larger rooms, sometimes they're being glued down. And so when you have that square edge, it has to be very, very flat. And they're not always very, very flat your sub floor. Same with micro beveled edge that does help hide this rolled edge helps hide imperfections with flatness even better. And so we feel like this is a really nice kind of upgrade to a micro beveled edge in a glued down product.
Holiday Van Erem:So the next bell would be the sizing of the product.
Michael Goria:Yeah
Holiday Van Erem:it's not short
Michael Goria:No. So we've got up to 60 inch lengths. So these are seven inch wide products, and up to 60 inch lengths. So traditionally, you would see maybe a six by 48 inch, certainly, we've seen some wider so some seven inch glue downs, but the length is really kind of the wow on both of these particular products is you've got a full 60 inch plank length.
Holiday Van Erem:So the last thing that I want to mention about these two products because still there are other products that are two, two and a half, they will be seven inches wide or whatever they are long, maybe you don't really care about the edging, it's not a big deal to you. Ceramic bead, and they also have some kind of extra scratch coating. The one thing though, that is different about these products, there's a specific reason that we chose to work with this factory and buy these products. For us product integrity is a really important factor and it is a it is a way that you can stand out from the crowd. So these particular products have what the factory calls it. They're an extreme LV, so there are three layers of luxury vinyl, that instead of being pressed together, they're being welded together. So that adds additional stability.
Michael Goria:Yeah, additional dimensional stability is huge. I mean that's one of the biggest factors in you know with claims or things like that is movement and does LV move? it does, and nearly all flooring will move with, you know, slight conditional issues. So this product just has that much more dimensional stability with this, you know, higher end performance core. Yeah,
Holiday Van Erem:so you've got a better core, better stability, you've got a fancy rolled edge, which I think looks fantastic. I'm really excited to see some of our finished project photos, where you can really see that make a big difference in the room. Personally, I'm not a fan of squarage, luxury vinyl. I think it's really hard to see the difference in the planks, and it just looks like one big sheet. So I'm excited to see it in a larger space and get some nice photos of some larger projects. And then the size in this thickness level, you don't really see things outside of the like 48 or 36 inch long products. So customers like longer and wider planks, and we're able to get something in a price point that you're going to be pretty wowed at.
Michael Goria:Yeah. And then the last thing is the colorations. You know, one of the most important things is coloration. We've got two great collections with color, or they've done a really good job selecting the color in these. I've taken them out. I've shown them and gotten great feedback. People were picking colors right off the bat, we used some colors from other lines that we have that have been extremely successful. So we're excited to see we know those colors hit well in our marketplace. So we think these will do very, very well. Great pricing stocked extremely deep the T&A way. So we're excited to get these products going to you in January. Yeah,
Holiday Van Erem:they are definitely going to create a fire in the hole.
Unknown:Fire in the hole
Michael Goria:That's always the goal.
Holiday Van Erem:I think they're gonna be stellar stars. Toni, right out of the gate. We already have early adopters. Yes, we have folks that have seen this. Not even actual samples of it. They've just seen photos of it,
Michael Goria:Renderings
Holiday Van Erem:Renderings and product information like that's the one give me that I'm specking this in my project. This is an and a lot of that has to do with the price point. You've got a spec that they need at the price that they need. Whatever it looks like you got a dark one. Sure. That's perfect. There's a gray in there. We're good to go.
Michael Goria:Yeah, so please if you haven't seen corsage or cruiser reach out to your T&A rep we will make sure to have wrap sets that's how it will mainly be driven to the marketplace. So request wrap sets we will have plenty of them for you and look forward to engaging with you on these two products.
Holiday Van Erem:Yeah go to the website check out the room visualizer get all your specs information off of the websites tasflooring.com or tascontroact.com depending on what customer segment you fall into, so very excitingfire in the hole, corsage and cruiser. We are hitting 2023 with a bang.
Michael Goria:Yes, so please join us
Holiday Van Erem:Get on the boat.
Michael Goria:That's right
Holiday Van Erem:What The Floor is a T&A Supply Company original production. You can find out more about us at tasupply.com or tasflooring.com.
Michael Goria:This show was produced by Jose Morales with help from Toni Collier and Jessica Riser hosted by holiday Van Erem and Michael Goria.
Holiday Van Erem:Tell us what you think of the show. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. track us down send us an email wtfpodcast@tasupply.com Hashtag what the floor podcasts on social media. If you have our phone numbers just text us Hey, mostly like tell us that we did a good job and everything was great. sounded so good this time. I mean if you have other things to say you can do that too
Michael Goria:We take criticism
Holiday Van Erem:We do mostly that's what we end up taking. What the floor 2023
Michael Goria:That's right let's do it.