When considering to import and purchase luxury resilient flooring products from China, there are major considerations to be made when it comes to Chinese factory and manufacturers. The true is, even for the same competitive quotations and prices, the quality of raw materials and quality of performance in resilient flooring products can be distinctively different. Therefore, flooring importers and flooring distributors has to really understand the ins and outs on how factories and manufacturers in China implement their manufacturing practices for improving product quality as well as other aspects of operations.
Here in this article, we will explain the 5 major factors that are highly associate with the quality of luxury resilient vinyl flooring productions. Once you understand these factors, you will be more knowledgeable on how to determine the qualities of your vinyl flooring suppliers.
Top 5 Factors that contribute to Quality Vinyl Flooring Productions
- Low price results in low quality.
- When it comes to quality, facility is more important than equipment.
- Improve efficiency with production equipment.
- Local resources for cost and quality improvements.
- Composition Formulation
1. Why low price results in low quality vinyl flooring productions
When it comes to buying resilient flooring from China, there are just too many manufacturers to select from. Price competition among Chinese factories can effectively result in getting a competitive quotations for resilient flooring products. However, when price starts to get too low, things can start to get ugly as some Chinese manufacturers start to use alternative compositions without telling the customers. In fact, back in 2023, a well known factory in Changzhou China was found to use low grade recycled PVC which resulted in serious heavy metal flooring for a well known brand in United States. Lowest price can lead to quality problems especially when dealing with unethical manufacturers and suppliers.
Good, Bad, and the Ugly in Resilient Flooring Manufacturing
When it comes to quotations for resilient flooring products, there is no doubts that price effect quality as the raw materials has a standard market prices. The truth is, unless there is a manufacturing technology break through, the fundamental costs in resilient flooring products have very little difference between manufacturers. Yes, while production scale can drive down the material purchase costs, but with increasing production scale also comes increasing overheads from increasing labor, managements, control and investments.
With such factors in manufacturing, if a supplier is able to provide well below market price for their vinyl flooring products, it will have an increasing risks in quality and services as manufacturers try to implement cost down strategies that does not align with buyer’s best interest.
| The Good Strategy | The Bad Strategy | The Ugly Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Fair price allows manufacturers to use proper and quality raw materials that lead to better quality and performance resilient flooring productions. | Below average costs, the manufacturer will try to reduce costs by adding reasonable amount of fillings. The flooring products can still pass the minimal standards by Floorscore. | With unfairly low prices, the manufacturer will use recycled PVC to reduce its costs. These recycled PVC compositions are not quality assured or certified and with unknown source of material, the flooring face risks for heavy metal and toxic issues. |
| With sufficient profit margin, Chinese flooring manufacturers can innovation with new product and services to support flooring importers to create new product niche and product road maps. | Below average costs can also lead manufacturers to outsource their productions to a third party supplier. In general, the third party supplier will not have implemented a proper management system and management practices, therefore are able to provide products with distinctively lower overheads. However, the quality variables from outsources suppliers are not | Unethical sourcing of PVC materials from concerned source of suppliers. By buying PVC materials that offers competitively unfair prices that does not align with global ethical sourcing practices, manufacturers can offer well below market prices. |
2. Why Facility is more important then Production Equipment
When it comes to quality of resilient vinyl flooring, the composition of raw material has alot to play in how well the product perform during its product life time. However, manufacturing and product controlling techniques are also vital for the quality of flooring products. This is where factory facility and production equipment comes into play.
Production equipment are associated with how much material the flooring manufacturer can process at a time. With increasing number of production equipment such as more extrusion machines and Hydraulic Thermal Press Machine can increase the maximum production output, but without the right quality control techniques, the vinyl flooring will be susceptible to quality issues such as dimensional stability and curling. In order to assure that the flooring products, whether its LVT or SPC planks, to effectively stabilize, the factory needs to build facilities that allows the vinyl flooring to season and age in a thermostatic condition. This means the more production output the manufacturer operate, the more space are equally required for the aging process. However, many workshop like suppliers in China does not have that capacity to build thermostatic facility due to limited building spaces.
Therefore when considering about resilient flooring production quality, sometimes the facility is more important than production equipment, as the facility will set the maximum production output quantity that a manufacturer is able to do.
3. Improving Cost Structure through New Production Equipment
Continuous manufacturing process will always have a low overhead costs compare to batch manufacturing process (sometimes also referred as the 2 step process). While rigid core SPC flooring are already being manufactured using extrusion technique, a continuous manufacturing process, not all suppliers can manufacturer flexible LVT planks using extrusion technique. Conventional two step process which involves extrusion of core layer, and laminating with hydraulic thermal press afterward.
4. Access local raw materials for
Different manufacturers has different raw material suppliers as well as preference. Therefore all resilient vinyl flooring factories would have a slight cost structure variations. However, due to the cost of logistics, as well as access to top source raw material suppliers, manufacturers on the coastal side of China (East China) will have a higher purchase costs in raw materials.
5. Composition Formulation
Composition formulation can save costs. By reducing PVC ratio with increasing filler ratio, manufacturers can save on raw material costs which makes up to over 60~75% of the price structure. Using modified formulation, some vinyl flooring manufacturers work with 1:3.5 PVC to Calcium Carbonate ratio. For extreme cost down, some suppliers also go for the 1:4 ratio, which has considerable risks in diminishing quality of vinyl planks.
How to confirm the quality of Luxury Resilient Flooring Factories and Manufacturers?
Putting these 5 factors into consideration, making the right choice with quality luxury resilient flooring can be easily determined. Here is the step by step process to ensure you get the best quality resilient flooring products when making purchase with Chinese factories and manufacturers.
- After Product Quotation, request for product sample and product test reports.
- Ask for composition ratio data
- Audit the factory to see their manufacturing process