Revolution Heather by Condor Carpets

Just as a footnote to my post last week about the very popular Revolution Heather by Condor Carpets, here is an image of the best selling colour for us, Damson 215. It’s available 4 metre and 5 metre wide and is very good value at between £8 and £12 per square metre. Anyway, here it is in all its glory:

(Originally posted on the 13th August 2010)

Greenline Carpets from Condor

Condor Carpets are launching an interesting new collection of carpets to be known as the ‘Greenline’ collection. Why do I say interesting you may ask? well, it’s kind of made from corn. Corn? corn??

I’ll let Condor blind you with their science:

“Condor Carpets uses the processed polymer Sorona® from DuPont in its new Greenline collection. Sorona® consists of 100% PTT polymer of which 37% is extracted from corn sugar.

During the production of Sorona® 30% less energy is required and the pollution emitted is 63% less compared to polyamide.”

Ah, so it’s down to DuPont, the masters of nylon. Good quality nylon carpets are very much missing in the UK market and if this new fibre/fiber has DuPont’s name on it, then it’s likely to be top notch.

There is a great video on the Greenline website in which a jolly Belgian-accented chap gets all excited by his wonderful new product. I shouldn’t scoff, it’s bound to be better than the endless identikit polyprop twists we see season after season. One of the things I notice when I head Stateside (okay so I’m weird and I go into carpet and flooring shops when I’m on holiday) is just how superior their lovely nylon carpets feel to our tired old polyprop – somebody really needs to address the lack of nylon carpets in the UK.

Anyway,Greenline promises softness, easy care and durability and let’s hope it delivers. I can’t wait to see some sampling.

(Originally posted on the 6th February 2010)

Revolution Twist by Condor Carpets: New Colours Launched

Revolution has been selling very well (if we can get stock of it) for a couple of years or so now, but during that time there has been no change in the colours available.

I was glad to receive my new sampling and there are……wait for it……. a whopping THREE new colours available. I get the feeling that creativity is not a big part of life at Condor Carpets, but what they do, they do well I suppose. Good value stuff that sells fast, so who am I to moan?

The new colours are 78 ‘Platinum’ (very dark grey’, 76 ‘Steel’ (silvery grey) and 75 ‘Raffia’ (beigey fleck). The spec has not changed to my knowledge and I believe the pile weight is 26oz.

I do quite like this range and it is a good bet for landlords, those on a budget and quick makeovers. It’s way more durable than the cheap and nasty twists available and it looks way better than Condor’s other budget twist, ‘Wembley’, which does not handle or work anywhere near as well. It’s also 4 & 5 metre wide and stain-resistant.

It now has a major competitor at this price and that is ‘Balmoral Twist’ from Ideal carpets. I will write a short piece on this one in the next few days. For those of you in the trade, you might want to use this as an alternative – same sort of price, a couple of different colours and also 4m/5m widths.

(Originally posted on 22nd January 2010)

Stainfree Destiny from Abingdon

Abingdon have unveiled a couple of new budget twists (should sell between £10-£15m) in Stainfree Destiny and Stainfree Essentials.

Destiny is the cheaper of the two and is available in felt or secondary back (unusual for Abingdon). Here is an image of the standout colour for me, which is ‘Zebra’.

Essentials is a wee bit heavier and handles a lot better. We’ve priced it £2 per metre more than Destiny and it looks well worth it I would say. Neither carpet is especially ground-breaking, but Abingdon’s ranges seem to crop up in many retailer showrooms and are distributed widely by Headlam.

The samples we have say 4m wide only, but I’m not sure if they are available direct from Abingdon in multi-width cuts – as they do with most of the Stainfree range.

As per usual, they carry the now ubiquitous ’10 year’ warranty info as well as the new ‘Clean Air’ branding, to convince us that apparently after all carpet is way better for us all than smooth floor with regard to allergies. Forgive me if I’m not yet convinced of the science behind that claim.

Overall then a decent couple of low-mid price British made carpets in a saturated market for this kind of stuff. Personally I prefer the likes of Stainbuster and Weaver’s Twist from Domo, or Carousel from Condor Carpets.

(Originally posted on 14th April 2009)