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Floor Covering News, the trade journal for the flooring industry, recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. In its anniversary issue, “Paving the Way for 4 Decades,” the magazine looks back on those 40 years, milestone by milestone. On the cover: the evolution of the flooring industry. From the introduction of laminate and glue-free locking systems to the 2013 launch of Coretec® Floors.
In the article “How Coretec Created a Category,” Piet Dossche, founder and then-CEO of USFloors, looks back on the origins of Coretec. The starting point was a problem the industry had been grappling with for years: a 100% water-resistant click flooring system. In Europe, click LVT was just beginning to gain traction at the time, but the construction wasn’t ideal: a click flooring system with a water-absorbing MDF core and a water-resistant LVT top layer.
Coretec® developed the solution: a water-resistant core, to which it added an integrated cork underlay with a wear-resistant LVT top layer. Not an easy feat, of course. It took years of research and development, numerous trips to production partners, and just as many failed samples before the formula was right and the product was introduced to the market for the first time at Surfaces 2013 in Las Vegas.
The growth that followed was more striking than that of laminate flooring twenty years earlier. While demand for water-resistant flooring set the entire industry in motion, Coretec® made a conscious decision not to join the race to the lowest price. From the very beginning, the focus was on maintaining quality, protecting the category, and building something that would stand the test of time.
The fact that Floor Covering News, an independent voice in the industry, is now chronicling this history itself in its 40th issue confirms what we have known for some time. Coretec® is the pioneer of the water-resistant, multi-layer flooring category—the original!
Coretec® Floors
