With increasing market competition and product homogeneous in resilient vinyl flooring products, flooring retailers have a need to expand on flooring product offerings with unique and more exciting floorings. Exploring quality luxury vinyl flooring supplier from China is an effective way to help flooring retailers to expand and grow. Here in this post, we explain how to find a top quality vinyl flooring supplier from China to support flooring businesses to expand and grow in the flooring market.
Why Importing Floorings from China
There are many advantages by importing floorings directly from China. As China is the largest global producer in building materials, including luxury vinyl floorings, importing vinyl flooring products from China is extreme cost effective. Many flooring importers, whether small or large, brands or white labels, has gained significant market growth and profit margin by directly importing floorings from China. Pricing factors as well as large amount of collections to select from has puts Made in China flooring product at a very competitive goods in the retailer market.
Therefore for any business that works around building materials, constructions, or floorings, considering to import floorings from China is a very attractive option.
Not All Manufacturers has the same capability
When it comes to working with a resilient flooring manufacturer, not all manufacturers has the same capability. In fact, if you are already importing vinyl flooring products from China, you will find out that product quality and service you get from different suppliers can vary significantly. Some manufacturers provide flooring product that use recycled compositions that expose the flooring importer with product risks, while other manufacturers outsource their manufacturing without sufficient quality assurance system that dead to product failures. Therefore to avoid international trading risks, there are some factors that importers needs to consider before making the decision to buy from manufacturers in Asia or China.
Factors to Consider when selecting Vinyl Flooring Suppliers
- Factory Site
- Production Equipment and Facilities
- In-House Production Capabilities
- Raw Material Suppliers
- Management Systems
- Quality Standards and Inspections
- Trade History and Experience
- Unique Flooring Products & Innovations
1. Factory Site
As an international buyer, you wanted to make sure that the supplier you are dealing with is an actual business entity. Be a legitimate vinyl flooring supplier, they need to have an actual factory site.
For example, here at Hengdi New Material Group, we have a factory site that has over 190,000 sqm of land space, and we have two factory buildings to support the manufacturing of luxury vinyl flooring planks and wall panels.
2. Production Equipment and Facilities
As a luxury vinyl flooring manufacturer, whether big or small, needs to have their own production equipment and production facilities to support high quality vinyl plank productions. A full set of SPC production lines will include extrusion lines, UV curing lines, slotting lines, underlayer adhesion lines, and packaging lines. For flexible LVT production lines, base layer calendering line and thermo hydraulic press lines are also essential.
Facilities on the other hand focus on the factory space. Whether its for finished good storage, a thermo-statistic conditioning rooms, and space for capacity expansion, is all vital factors to capacity expansions.
3. In-House Production Capabilities
In house production is perhaps one of the most important aspect in high quality control managements. In manufacturing of luxury vinyl planks, not all the production process will be carried out in-house. However, with increasing out sourced components, quality control across suppliers are harder and can cause potential quality issues as different grade of components are laminated together.
There are also different levels of production outsourcing, and here we uncover some of the common outsourced parts across the industry:
- Full Product Outsourced: Happens when the supplier does not have any capability to produce such product, or does not have enough capacity to fulfill in-house productions. A common scenario is that a specialised SPC manufacturer (that only produce SPC) will outsource its LVT orders to another supplier that has the ability to produce LVT.
- Wear Layer Outsourced: Not every components are in-house made. Wear layer, is a component that is commonly outsourced. If you ask the manufacturer if they make their own wear layer, over 80% of the factories will tell you its brought from a wear layer supplier.
- Painted Bevel: You will be surprised that painted bevel for vinyl planks is actually a highly skilled work. As mix of paints requires experience and know-how, many suppliers has to outsource this production process as the industry lack talents in this field. Here at Hengdi, we have our own technician that supports our painted bevel productions in house.
4. Raw Materials
Raw materials is the single most important factor to the quality and safety of the vinyl flooring products. As the old say goes, “What goes it, what comes out”. As a top quality supplier in resilient vinyl flooring, Hengdi only use virgin materials that are safe and toxic free. However, as increasing competition among suppliers across China, unethical manufacturers will use uncertified recycled compositions to drive down costs. This has tremendous issue as it will lead to product issues such as dimensional instability, increasing VoC, and heavy metals in LVT and SPC. As a importer, it is important to inspect where the suppliers source their materials from.
5. Management Systems
Management system actually has an impact to the quality of vinyl flooring products. As management system put a set of acts and standards in the factory workplace, it ensures that each production process is properly handled by staffs across different steps and functions. Quality standards are also part of the management system where product defect are rejected according to product standards criteria.
6. Quality Standards and Inspections
Different manufacturers will implement different quality standard practices. Its vital important to check what are the quality standards set for the products. The best way to review the products (vinyl planks) is to ask for actual product testing reports and technical data parameters. Having a set of test data and technical data parameters
7. Trade History and Experience
Always ask if the factory has already traded with global partners, and if they do they will be able to tell you where about their markets are. If their existing market is similar to your location, then you can ask on their comments and suggestions on product recommendations. This will effectively allow you to determine if their claimed trade history and experience is valid or now.
8. Unique Flooring Products & Innovations
Not every factories has the capability of innovating. Therefore it is importing to inquire if the factory you are dealing with has some new product development roadmap. This will tell you exactly how much innovative afford the factory is putting in. If the factory does not have any R&D, then it is wise to look out for a secondary suppliers that has more innovation capabilities. This way, when the market demand shifts, your flooring business will be able to react in the fastest maner and not losing out on new opportunities.
What to do when reaching out to vinyl flooring suppliers?
Establishing an effective communication channel with vinyl flooring supplier is essentially the first step to get started. However, as different manufacturers has different capabilities and advantages, you want to be able to compare different suppliers (at least 2 or 3) so you can effective compare the suppliers and their products.
Here is a list of important subjects that you can inquiry with potential suppliers:
- Company Register Certification / Banking Information
- Company Introduction + On site photos
- Get free sample planks
- Production site auditing
- Raw Material Inventory In Receipts
- Product Certifications + Product Testing Reports
1. Company Register Certification / Banking Information
Company register certifications allows you to understand about the establishment of the company, mainly from company name, company address, founding year, and type of business operations. With the suppliers’ registration number, you are also able to do more background research to understand the suppliers’ conditions such as law suits (if any), employee numbers, and more.
Banking information helps you to determine the validity of supplier with its beneficially bank (s). Always make sure the company you are trading with is valid, and the banking information match the details of the supplier.
2. Company Introduction + On site photos
Without on site auditing and inspection, a company introduction and some on site photos will help you to understand about the production capabilities of the supplier.
Note: Sometimes unethical suppliers will make false statements and even certifications about their company. An experienced sourcing manager will have some technique to validate these information without confronting with the supplier.
3. Get free sample planks
Always ask for free sample planks as it allows you to see the products even if you are not available at the factory site. The product samples allows you to have a basic idea about the quality of materials. However, as samples does not always reflect to the actual mass produced floorings, so it is also ideal to obtain suppliers’ internal test reports, as mentioned in point 6 below.
4. Production site auditing
Ideally you want to be able to visit the suppliers before making the purchase. By visiting and auditing the factory site, you will have a good ideal of how much capability the factory has. A few hints for auditing any resilient vinyl flooring suppliers:
- Check and count how many extrusion machines the supplier has.
- Walk through the warehouse to observe the different brands’ product the factory produce for.
- Check the oil tank feed in system.
- Walk through the thermo statistic conditioning rooms.
- Check testing laboratory and testing equipment
5. Raw Material Inventory in receipts
The most important reason to inspect raw material in receipts is to ensure no toxic materials are used in making your vinyl flooring products. As raw material traceability are becoming a more important matter in global sourcing and global supply chain management, it is normal for importers to request details on raw material purchase and inventory in documents.
6. Product certifications + Product Testing Reports
Obtain suppliers’ product certifications and product test reports will help you to determine the final quality of your vinyl flooring products. As test data does not lie, if a supplier provide you a test report, their product has to live up to that performance criteria. If not, as an importer, you are able to make claim over false testing reports and product failure.