Keeping Customer Experience on the Radar
How Innovation & Sustainability are Helping Halstead Grow
By Carole VanSickle Ellis
In the world of flooring, the customer experience never ends. You start with wherever you are standing when you realize you need new flooring, and you’re still going years later when you have to answer the questions:
» “Is this pleasing in my sight?
» “Is my floor functioning properly?
» “Did it provide me with everlasting beauty?
“That is why our number one focus, our whole focus, is on the customer experience, because if you focus on providing the best customer experience in the flooring marketplace, the other elements take care of themselves.”
With this bold statement, Eric Anderson, president of global flooring manufacturer Halstead, a member of HMTX Industries, sums up his view of flooring. This view is elegant, sweeping, and surprisingly comprehensive. It also explains a lot about how the company operates on such a successful global scale today.
“We have incredible resources and very strong strategic partners,” said Anderson proudly. “Innovation, quality, supply-chain excellence, and sustainability are all things that keep you ahead of competition and ahead of the curve. We achieve all of that by never taking our eyes off the customer experience radar.”
Anderson, who has served as Halstead’s president since 2019, started out in the industry as a “manufacturer’s rep” selling a variety of home-repair and -maintenance products to “big box” DIY stores like The Home Depot. He recalled driving 92,000 miles during his first year on the job, but added, “It was really fruitful for me [later on] because I was able to learn so much about the type of customers we serve at Halstead today.”
He remained in that position for five years before moving on to national account management with another company and, eventually, transitioning to his current position at Halstead. “That foundational learning really set me on the path to position myself to be a great supplier as well as a helpful and knowledgeable source of information,” he concluded.
During those foundational years, Anderson worked closely with The Home Depot, the company upon which Halstead’s supply focus rests today. “Getting to know their culture and their values so early has been invaluable to me since then,” he said, adding, “What is really awesome is that 34 years later, HMTX’s values and culture very much align with that of The Home Depot’s.”
Succeeding Throughout the Customer Experience
Halstead employs every medium available to create the “seamless” customer experience Anderson describes so passionately. In addition to offering written product and installation guides, the company also hosts detailed videos, offers live chat with installation experts, supports a phone service team, answers emails, and has created a “DIY Genius” social media brand featuring practical information and videos as well as décor and design advice.
“It is not enough to only work to drive innovation and product development, although we certainly are doing that on a daily basis,” Anderson said. “You have to bring it all together from the idea and the creation of the product all the way to the sale of the product off the shelves and the execution of that product for customers.”
In this case, “execution” refers to the acquisition, installation, and ongoing use of Halstead products in a residential or commercial setting.
Anderson explained Halstead’s resources are designed for professionals and DIYers. “I have to keep my eye on the ball so that we are always in alignment with product development when it comes to presenting a value-add proposition to customers that they can effectively execute,” he said.
The company prioritizes communication with vendors and customers alike so that all parties can make good decisions about what types of flooring to install and how that flooring should positively affect the ongoing use of the building. “We have a product for every application,” Anderson explained. “The formula for success is, ‘application equals product type plus spec.”
One of the things Halstead is particularly proud of, Anderson said, is the level of authenticity in its LVT (luxury vinyl tile) flooring. This type of authenticity costs more to achieve in LVT and LVP (luxury vinyl plank) because it requires the texture of the flooring to match the pattern of the wood or tile pattern exactly. “At Halstead, we invest in EIR (Embossed in Register) embossing plates to create this authenticity,” Anderson said. EIR creates a highly realistic effect that contributes to higher home values as well as more general aesthetic appeal.
“With real wood, if you pick up a piece of flooring and there is a knot, you will be able to feel the knot when you touch it,” Anderson explained. “In most types of LVT flooring, the texture will not line up with the image of the knot even if it is scraped or otherwise textured to make it look a little more authentic. Our team realized years ago that achieving this match would be incredibly valuable to property owners by providing a premium flooring look, so we heavily invested in EIR.”
Research & Development Sets Halstead Apart
Once the authenticity angle had been “mastered,” Anderson said, HMTX Industries began developing a new product it would name Isocore.
“Isocore is the proprietary formula of the core of Halstead’s products and comes with a number of advantages over traditional vinyl flooring options,” he explained. The core brings rigidity to the flooring, which creates a more realistic look once the product is installed because it does not “telegraph” (conform) to the underlying topography of the floor. A particularly attractive element of Isocore for contractors is that there is no “weathering” period, Anderson added.
“Customers can order and install our flooring immediately rather than waiting for the product to acclimate to the local environment,” he said.
Anderson noted Isocore has an excellent track record of resilience post-installation as well, exceeding performances from more rigid products in the market like the near-ubiquitous stone plastic composite (SPC) products available in many markets today.
“SPC products have been out in the market for several years now, and we hear about a lot of failures post-installation because SPC is too rigid, causing it to crack and fail when too much surface pressure is applied to the floor,” he said. By comparison, Isocore’s “micro-flexibility,” the ability to withstand heavy and unequal pressure on the floor, “gives end-users long-term peace of mind,” Anderson concluded. Lastly, Isocore has one final advantage over competing products, he said. It is quiet, soft, and warm underfoot, a characteristic sometimes referred to informally as the “cozy factor.”
Another distinguishing factor in Halstead’s product line is its sustainability, or the “green” factor. This is a murky topic throughout real estate and real estate-related spaces, where terms like “recycled” and “repurposed” can be extremely ambiguous. Most products contain recycled materials, adhesives, add-ons, and other elements that do not truly fit in this circular space. Later in 2024, HMTX will be launching their new TPU product that is polyurethane-based and fits beautifully in the green space and circularity platform.
“Circularity means that when you buy this product and install it, you know with confidence that it can be returned and recycled to the point that the old planks are essentially going into the machine and new ones are extruded out. It is pure circularity,” said Anderson. “The last step in the process is to have an infrastructure to support the circularity. This means recover the old, transport it to a collection center, and then, ultimately, make new product with the old product.”
“Run Toward the Fire” & Earn a Customer for Life
Halstead has such confidence in its products that it is company policy to “run toward the fire,” as Anderson puts it, wherever there are flooring struggles to be solved. This might seem counterintuitive, but Anderson explained. “If someone is having a bad experience and we can come in and take the opportunity to change that experience to a positive one, not only is it the right thing to do, but the result is a customer for life. We see bad experiences as opportunities to create positive experiences and win lifelong customers.”
He said the company often encounters this type of situation with multifamily clients struggling to deal with the heavy use of floors in high-traffic areas of apartment buildings or frequently turned units. “We get calls where the client just says, ‘I don’t know what is going on, but our current flooring just is not working. It’s failing,’” Anderson said. “Many times, we are able to ship enough materials quickly so that they can at least deal with the immediate need. At that point, we usually have a new, happy customer and business we did not have yesterday.”
Anderson noted Halstead’s entire team is at the heart of the company’s service policy and successful growth. “They have such a desire to win, to provide product authority in our space, and to keep the customer as the central focus in the company,” he said, citing team practices like implementing an extensive pre-sale question series help keep new and existing clients from making costly flooring mistakes during purchase and installation.
For example, questions about the amount of weight and types of vehicles traversing the flooring regularly help the team identify potential pitfalls with certain products. “We work with many healthcare facilities where there may be wheelchairs or other equipment weighing 300 or 400 pounds regularly moving through the building,” Anderson explained. “The turning of those wheels on the floor means a click product [one that ‘snaps’ into place without adhesive] is not a fit for that environment, and if you do not know the right questions to ask and the client does not have previous experience with flooring, then you can end up with something installed that is unlikely to hold up under ‘normal’ use for that type of facility. We place a heavy emphasis on selling the right product to every customer, and we are very diligent.”
“Our goal is providing flooring products that enable our customers to lay the plank down and never look back,” Anderson concluded. “When we achieve this, the flooring looks great; it performs great, and customers love it. And when they love it, we love it.”
Learn more about Halstead products at HalsteadIntl.com.
