Floorworx

For South African flooring company, Floorworx, the main challenge is how to maintain its leading position in Southern Africa. Managing director Dr Donald Platt tells Gay Sutton about the importance of quality, innovation and raising industry skills levels.

If you were to look closely at any major construction project in South Africa, the likelihood is you would find flooring from Floorworx, an independent South African-owned company that began the migration to its current form through a management buyout in 2004. The company’s history, however, goes back to 1953 when British construction materials company Marley plc opened a flooring outlet in Johannesburg. Within a few years Marley began manufacturing vinyl flooring at a factory in Nigel near Johannesburg and finally branched into plumbing and roofing products. “From the buyout in 2004 we were a South African-controlled company until November 2006 when we listed on the Johannesburg stock exchange,” explains managing director Dr Donald Platt. 

Today, Floorworx is part of Accentuate Ltd and enjoys a dominant position in the South African market, supplying some 66 per cent of the country’s requirements for flexible and semi-flexible flooring. “We have a countrywide footprint,” says Platt.  “Our headquarters are in Steeledale, Johannesburg, and we have sales offices in all the major urban centres—Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Durban and Cape Town. We also continue to manufacture vinyl from our 26,000 square metre factory in East London.” 

The company imports a comprehensive range of top quality flooring products from around the globe. “We’ve tied up with major resilient flooring companies around the world, and in most cases they manufacture and export their product to us under our Floorworx brand name.” So rubber products are imported from Germany, linoleum from Holland, safety flooring from Ireland, solid wood flooring from Sweden, sports flooring from Hungary and so the list goes on. The only exception to the rule is the Swiss company Forbo, which exports to Floorworx under its own brand name. “We are therefore a one-stop-shop for hard flooring products,” Platt says. 

The customer facing side of the business is managed through a knowledgeable team of over 35 design representatives who have a very top-down approach to construction projects. And this is where the breadth of product offering combined with over 50 years’ experience in the industry pays dividends. “They work very closely with the architects at the earliest stages of a project to develop the job specifications,” Platt says. Orders for flooring products then come from flooring contractors assigned to the job.

Large projects tend to have long lead time, but orders for smaller projects require a more nimble and reliable response. The company therefore keeps a stock of between 65 and 80 days of materials at its main warehouse in East London. “We can then guarantee that any order made at our national call centre before two o’clock in the afternoon will be delivered by close of business the next day in all the major centres. And that’s quite an achievement if you bear in mind East London is 1,000 kilometres from the main market which is in Gauteng.”

This punishing response is delivered according to a very strict time schedule. Orders placed by two o’clock are picked by four o’clock and loaded onto transporters which leave the warehouse at 6 o’clock bound for Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg, with stopovers in Bloemfontein on the way. At these regional distribution centres, the products are then divided and delivered to customers in the locality. For customers in the outlying areas, the guaranteed delivery time is 48 hours.

World class products, however, require high standards of installation and maintenance if they are to perform at their best levels. “As you can imagine, even the most fantastic floor can look like a dog’s breakfast if it’s not installed properly,” Platt says. “So we’ve invested heavily in our own training centre where we train fitters to lay the flooring correctly.” This service is not confined to fitters working on a Floorworx contract but is offered free of charge to the competition. And this has business and ethical merit. Fitters move freely between contractors, and by raising the skills level across the entire industry the company is able to maintain its reputation and improve the experience for the customer. 

The average guarantee for a Floorworx product is 15 to 20 years. “This obviously gives our customers peace of mind,” Platt says. “If a floor has been well installed and maintained but doesn’t live up to expectations then we will come back and replace it. But that doesn’t happen very often—in fact I’ve seen well-maintained floors that continue to look good after 40 or 50 years.”

To keep its floors in this pristine condition, Floorworx partners with specialist floor maintenance companies, supplying training as well as a range of highly specified maintenance products and adhesives that are manufactured for each flooring product by South African industrial chemicals company Safic (a company within the Group).

The marketplace is highly competitive, and for any company that reaches such a dominant position the challenge is how to remain there. Floorworx believes that innovation is key to its success, and is continuously scouring the global marketplace for the best flooring innovations. “Timing is crucial for us. Our aim is to make sure we secure the licence to sell the best of the new products here in South Africa,” Platt says.

A strategic view is always taken on the pace of new product introduction; and with the company’s reputation dependent on the quality, reliability and durability of the products it offers, great care is taken in product selection. All potential new products are brought to the factory and put through a very rigorous 30-stage verification process to evaluate their performance. “And only if it survives our Filter Process will we bring the product into the system.”

Floorworx products can be found in a huge array of construction projects from hotels and leisure complexes to hospitals and schools. Not surprisingly, with all the infrastructure development over the past 10 years, some 60 per cent of the company’s business has been with the State. However, the whole of Africa presents enormous opportunities for a company with the scope of expertise and supply chain stability that Floorworx has developed. It has already established a market leading position in exports to Namibia and Botswana, and has taken part in significant construction projects further afield in Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi and Mauritius.

“We’re very optimistic about the future,” Platt concludes. “There is such a backlog of infrastructure development in South Africa. Last week’s green paper on NHI [health insurance] will mean a huge refurbishment of existing hospitals and an eight billion rand programme of new hospital and clinic construction. And it’s a similar story with the schools. Every one of these projects will need floors—so there is a huge potential for us. And I believe that there is a real commitment in government to do this.” www.floorworx.co.za