Carrollton, Texas— LM Flooring has announced its largest product launch in the brand’s 20-year history with four new collections as well as extensions to four of its most popular lines, totaling 55 new SKUs launching in the fall.
A leader in engineered wood flooring, LM Flooring’s broad portfolio includes wide-width, long-length, textured products in both sliced- and sawn-faced configurations. According to Kevin Whaley, vice president of sales and product, LM has a strong reputation for innovative products and speed to market. “Our aggressive hardwood strategy has been geared toward mix improvement and providing our retailers value-added products that they can profitably sell to their customer,” Whaley said. “We have focused on various ways to provide the best product at the best price for customers, backed by our well-known quality.”
Two New Flagship collections: The Reserve and The Glenn
The Reserve and The Glenn offer the same colors and proprietary reactive staining techniques. The Reserve offers a 7.5-inch fixed width; and The Glenn a multi-width 4-inch, 5-inch and 6.5-inch option in the same box. Both collections are ½-inch thick with lengths up to 75 inches.
LM Flooring makes its own reactive stains for these collections in-house, giving the wood an aged patina, allowing natural color variation and character to come through each plank. It brings all the vibrant colors of nature into the home, with contemporary weathered colors that bring sophistication and elegance to a new level, the company said.
LM Flooring said it has expanded capabilities to manufacture wider and longer products and create more sophisticated surfacing and texturing techniques such as wire-brushing and reactive stains, like those used in The Reserve and The Glenn collections. “We have developed a very structured process to ensure consistent color standards in this highly variegated visual,” Whaley explained. “Instead of a stain that covers or masks the grain and inherent beauty of the white oak species, our process reacts with the natural tannins in the wood to enhance the grain and to bring the true color capability of the species right to the surface. The best way to describe the difference between a traditionally stained product and our proprietary process is like the difference between watching a tube television from the early 90s and a high-definition LED flatscreen available today.”
Other new introductions are:
- Solano, a 9/16-inch-thick, dry-sawn select grade European white oak. Very contemporary, Solano is lightly wire brushed, with a focus on smooth and sleek design with a light and natural color influence for the eight SKus in the collection. The planks are 7.5-inch wide with lengths to 75 inches.
- Waterford, a dry-sawn 9/16-inch-thick North American hard maple, is a new floor created in response to the growing request from customers to offer alternative species to white oak in wide and long formats. The hard maple in a dry-sawn format has a very interesting and attractive grain pattern that most consumers would not expect to see in this species. LM gives it a subtle yet inviting texture using enhanced wire-brushing techniques.
Line extensions to the LM engineered hardwood portfolio include:
- Hermitage: Wide Plank 9-inch, dry-sawn European white oak in planks up to 86 inches, in three new colors—Sylvan, Vander, Georgetown—in lighter and natural tones.
- Bentley Premier: Bentley Premier is a select grade white oak in a ½-inch format with a 2mm sliced face. LM expanded this collection to showcase more lights, naturals, whites and taupes.
- Lauderhill: This entry price point product in a 3/8 x 6.5 x 72 length format is available in six new colors: Weldon, Camino, Penrose, Covington, Castle Blanc and Anchor.
Originally made in Shanghai, China, LM Flooring has spent the last two years transitioning all of its products to AHF Products’ Sihanoukville, Cambodia factory. At the same time, the company has been rapidly expanding capacity from 10 million square feet annually to 37 million square feet, and added four stain lines, as well as 30% more pressing and profiling capacity.
In addition, the labor force has been increased 28% to 900 people. In 2022, the factory will be operating at a capacity of 55 million square feet. The Cambodia facility not only services LM Flooring, but also supplies AHF Products’ other leading hardwood brands, including Bruce, Hartco and Robbins.
“Our goal is to offer a complete and well-rounded product offering for our LM distributors and retailers out of one factory location,” Whaley said.