Flooring Show Market Intelligence and the Truth.

Posted by Steven Parsons on

Flooring Show, Market Intelligence and the Truth.

This week I spent two days manning (or is that personing these days?) a small stand at a Flooring show.  This was the UK’s National Buying Group show, an invite only event for carpet showrooms that belong to one of the major buying groups.

We used the opportunity of the show to speak to the people who ultimately sell our wool, the retailers.   We showcased our new consumer website, laneve.co.uk and illustrated how we are using new media to educate consumers about the benefits of New Zealand wool and direct them into one of our Premier Partner retail members own stores.

The business people we spoke to were inspired and excited to keep promoting a product with real integrity.  It is clear that we have a sustainable natural product that is warm and comfortable, asthma and allergy friendly and a genuine lifestyle opportunity.

Attending this show was invaluable to me as a marketer and as an innovator.   Getting raw feedback from the people who live and breathe selling wool carpet everyday is brilliant.  It is only by getting this direct market feedback that we can continually adapt and enhance what we do and how we do it.

It also gives us insights into what those naughty plastic flooring maniacs are up to..   Our product wool, remains natural, renewable and the only lifestyle flooring choice that actually improves the air in your home.   Regardless of the truth hard flooring promoters continue to defame carpet as bad for Asthma.   Eventually they will trip themselves up as we have the science to prove them wrong.

Getting to this show enabled me to remind a handful of wool sellers about a few of the technical and ethical benefits of lovely Kiwi wool.   I’m looking forward to the next opportunity.  Hope you are too.

Biscayne Stripe

Wool Acoustic

Posted by Steven Parsons on

You can create quieter more comfortable environments using wool.

Wool carpets dampen noise and reduce sound transmissions between floors and rooms.

Wool carpet improves room acoustics in that it acts as a sound absorber and also dampens any impact noise in a room.  In contrast hard flooring surfaces actually generate more noise from impacts like footprints and act as a sound reflector which intensifies the level of noise is a room.

Wool Carpet Reduces Airborne Sound

Sound is transmitted by the vibration of air molecules.  The fuzzy porous structure of wool carpets and soft furnishings means that sound waves can penetrate into the pile rather than being reflected back into the room.  Wool carpets are extremely effective sound absorbers because the individual fibres, tufts and the underlay have different resonant frequencies at which they absorb sound.  So wool carpet with its many different characteristics of fibre length diameter and crimp is more effective than synthetic carpets (made from non-renewable and highly flammable oil).

wool close up
Wool carpets and textiles reduce surface noise

Surface noise refers to impacts from footsteps, dropped objects and furniture movement.  Tiled floors produce 7 to 12 times more surface noise than wool carpets which cushion the impact of the noise source, absorbing the sound.  Carpet reduces impact noise by over 20dB.

Wool carpets reduce noise transmission.

Wool carpets reduce noise transmission through the floor in multi story buildings.   Because of wool fibres natural ability to absorb a wide range of frequencies wool carpets, and especially ones on sustainable wool underlay,  provide superior sound insulation for those below.

It’s time to cover up those noisy and slippery hard floors with some soft, warm, comfortable and quite wool carpets.

WOOL CARPET

WOOL ABSORBS NOISE!

SBID International Design Awards

Posted by Steven Parsons on

Wools of New Zealand are sponsoring the “Intelligent Design” category of the Society of British Interior Design’s International Design Awards.

Wools of New Zealand is sponsoring the Awards as part of a wider campaign to place sustainably produced Laneve™ wool textiles in front of influential interior designers.

The Intelligent Design category is pure interior design.  It invites entries that create a solution to a design problem through innovative thinking.  This category is specifically for contract projects that have delivered the best design solutions to meet the client’s brief for the budget available.

The SBID International Design Awards has firmly established itself as one of the most prestigious and enjoyable events in the design industry calendar.
The awards serve to recognise, reward and celebrate design excellence across a broad range of categories.

Winning a SBID International Design Award is a high achievement as they are voted for exclusively by leading industry experts both for technical content and aesthetic creativity using two tiers of judging processes.

The Awards will be judged by international industry leaders; among them is Theo Williams, Head of Design at John Lewis; Matthew Carlisle, Creative Director at Candy & Candy; Azhar Azhar, Director of Conran + Partners and David Lewis, Managing Director of Sunseeker London.

Laneve™ is a premium brand from Wools of New Zealand. Laneve carpets and textiles are manufactured to strict quality and environmental standards by licensed partners.  The Laneve integrity programme not only gives assurance of product traceability to identifiable farmers, but also the confidence of responsibly sourced materials.

Wools of New Zealand select partners for the Laneve programme who are committed to providing excellence in style and sustainability.  All Laneve™ products are made from 100% Laneve wool, sustainably produced and traceable right back to individual farms on the lush, rolling pastures of New Zealand.

Lavinia Engleman, SBID’s Marketing Manager says “We are really pleased that Wools of New Zealand has recognised the opportunity bought by the Society of British Interior Design and the International Design Awards to promote its Laneve brand to an international audience who are hungry for innovative and sustainable interiors.  SBID has worked with Wools of New Zealand before and we know they bring real integrity along with a portfolio of sustainable products that will be of interest to our members.”

The SBID International Design Awards ceremony will be held in London on November 29th.

bbc manchester

Laneve Wool within Camira Fabrics “Blazer” creating an impcat in the new BBC Media City
- Photo courtesy Camira Fabrics -

The Style Gallery

Posted by Steven Parsons on

As always we have to make it easy for people to fall in love with our products.
Today we have launched the Style Gallery to showcase the very best products that are created with the very best wool.

The Gallery includes products by Crucial Trading who are the latest brand to come on board with Laneve.

It’s a visual experience so the least said the better…

Just take a look at THE STYLE GALLERY

Crucial Trading Laneve

Kyoto in Laneve Wool by Crucial Trading

Emerald

Posted by Steven Parsons on

Its Emerald year, At least it is according to Pantone.

Emerald Pantone

Colour of 2013

Thanks to 17-5641 “Emerald” 2013  is going to be amazing so long as we all replace our carpets, paint our walls and dye our hair Emerald.

Sarcasm aside, there is something in creating your own sell fulfilled trends.

Pantone’s mission is to set themselves up as the authority on colour in order to give themselves credibility as a colour reference system.  You have to admit it, it’s working.

If you make a statement, tell enough people and back it up with some convincing rhetoric people believe it.  I spent a decade as a carpet designer, so my job at that time was to get in front of international design trends and to predict the next big thing.  This sounds daunting but what I learnt was that we the designers, product designers, policy designers, no matter what experience we create we are all designers..  We designers do not follow the trends we create them.

2013 is Emerald year because Pantone said so.    Now there are Pinterest boards, blog posts, key rings and everything cashing in on the rush to be seen as up with the trend.

What year shall we make it next year?   2014 Purple Wool Year!

Or maybe we should all get making Pinterest Boards like this.

Emerald Interior

Lovely Emerald Room

Immersed in the Laneve iBook

Posted by Steven Parsons on

Here is a way to get your story out and get people engaged..

Write and eBook, or in this case an iBook.  They are free to make and distribute so why wouldn’t you?

Getting found in the massively over-crowded iTunes store might not be the best distribution method, so I have made a webpage and put it there in both iBook and pdf format.

If you have some time to be immersed  in the story of sustainable wool and stunning interior design then grab for favourite reading gadget and get going..  And as always WoolBlog readers get the BETA version so please do report bugs and make suggestions via this blog.

go to www.wools-nz.co.uk/ibook or click the cover..

 

The Laneve iBook

Click to download the Laneve iBook

Staying On Track

Posted by Steven Parsons on

There have been mixed reactions to the little purple sheep that pops up around WoolBlog.

Staying true to Niche Marketing “Purple Philosophy” That’s a good thing.

Pleasing all the people all the time is an impossible task and one that leads to beige boring mediocre stuff.

Being a little quirky will win fans from people who appreciate quirky.

Fans like Hoopers Floor-coverings by Sunniva.

If you are in Royal Tunbridge Wells go and see how customer service and high quality natural floor-covering are sold to customers who keep coming back.

Sunniva  like the Purple Sheep so much they asked to use it as a motif on the rally car they are sponsoring..

I guess they like the humour, but more than that they want to be different, to stand out, and to stay on track.   Andrew Mollison will be driving at Rockingham this weekend.

Purple sheep just got a lot faster…  Baaa! Vroom!

Purple Sheep Rally car

Purple Sheep on Wheels