Campaign For Real Underlay Feedback

I often get a respsonse from people from flooring companies from my posts on here. It surprised me at first, but then there is virtually nothing else written about flooring in the UK outside of the trade magazines. The whole point of this blog is to offer my opinion rather than rehash press releases or just plug new products. Anyway, Interfloor’s Marketing Director, Steve Woodhead explains a little more about The Campaign For Real Underlay:

“I’m glad you like the Campaign for Real Underlay web site. It’s been very popular so far with hundreds of visits from the UK and overseas. An increasing number of customers have been returning to rubber over the last few months due to its popularity with consumers, its performance and its innate “sellability”. As you know there are a lot of people out there promoting PU underlay so we thought it was about time that the case for rubber was also heard so that customers can make an informed choice.”

And he does have a point of course. There are a lot of wholesalers in particular pushing PU underlay to independent shops, so why not promote and re-vamp the idea of rubber underlays? Interfloor have dominated for so many years now with Tredaire and Duralay beating all-comers.

So powerful is the Tredaire brand that it’s almost become a generic term for rubber underlay. Many of our customers will refer to their rubber underlay as ‘Tredaire’ even though it’s another brand (a little like Hoover did with vacuum cleaners) – now that’s a successful brand for you!

Whereas Interfloor/Tredaire have attempted to compete with their own PU underlays in the past with brands like Seventh Heaven and its Softwalk and Dreamwalk underlays, perhaps their focus is better served reinforcing what they do best. Not that there is anything wrong with Seventh Heaven and we used to sell a fair amount of it until our Headlam Group suppliers dropped it.

Let’s see how it all pans out…

(Originally posted on 3rd February 2010)