Family owned and operated since the founding of its parent company, Pelican Creations, nearly 25 years ago, Pelican Creations Home has made a name for itself in the ever-crowded flooring market by offering a variety of popular product categories and exceptional customer service to its retail partners.
Since its inception and growth thereafter, the brand’s goal has not changed—create design-forward programs for its partners that make the selling process simple. “We’ve grown a lot since 1999 and continue to innovate and look for new ways to bring style and modernization to our customers,” said Mike Poulin, president, Pelican Creations Home. “Our 15-plus years in the flooring industry has enabled us to gain a certain level of expertise in identifying the average consumer’s flooring needs. We make sure we provide this invaluable experience when putting together a program with retailers and distributors. By choosing the right spec, color and technology based on past and current consumer needs and flooring trends, retailers can be confident that our programs will translate into sales.”
What’s more, while Pelican Creations Home may be expanding, the company is still a family-run business, which brings major benefits to its retail partners. “I’m sure any family-run business will tell you they have their ups and downs, but we feel truly blessed to be able to not only work in an industry we are so passionate about but to share it with our loved ones,” said Michael Poulin, vice president, Pelican Creations Home. “We also all come from different backgrounds so we bring a different perspective to the table, which is extremely helpful when brainstorming new innovations.”
Product prowess
One of the main pillars of Pelican Creations Home is its prowess with product. The company relies on its experience in the industry to guide its design process—all with the goal of providing the best programs for its customers in mind.
“We provide a combination of high-quality products at a fair price, which is a win for retailer and consumer,” explained Yuni Choi, vice president. “We offer vinyl (SPC, WPC and LVT), laminate (standard and water resistant), engineered hardwood and carpet tile. We do this so we can offer our customers a variety of options to suit their needs and a huge array of styles and colors to suit their personalities.”
Michael Poulin added that the company works hard to stay at the forefront of flooring trends and innovations. “There are myriad flooring manufacturers and suppliers in the industry, [which makes] it difficult to differentiate from one another aside from the typical factors such as price and color. Instead, we’ve taken the proactive approach by developing a new category of vinyl flooring in partnership with Unilin Technologies called CushionTech featuring Comfort Core Technology.”
The company’s CushionTech featuring Comfort Core Technology features an innovative and patented layer that blends optimal ratios of vinyl, EVA pad and SPC thickness to help deliver the most comfortable and quietest flooring, without sacrificing any of the benefits of standard vinyl flooring, according to Choi. After more than two years of rigorous research and testing across China and Europe—and a worldwide patent—the technology was unveiled at Surfaces 2022.
Most Pelican Creations Home products come with lifetime residential and 10-year light commercial warranties.
Customers react
With a decade and a half under its belt, Pelican Creations Home has made partnership with flooring dealers and wholesalers who don’t have to be hard pressed to tout the benefits of the partnership.
“We’ve been with Pelican for over 10 years,” said John Sturla, co-owner, Medallion, a distributor who services the California, Hawaii and Nevada markets. “They consistently bring ideas, products and solutions to our business. They have a variety of products that we’ve been selling over the years that are unique and I wouldn’t be able to find myself. They help us with sourcing, which is extremely valuable to us.”
Bill Schollmeyer, vice president, Wego International Floors, Great Neck, N.Y., is a new partner, but agrees that Pelican is something unique. “We’ve been working with them for about eight months or so now, and one of the major benefits of partnering with them for us is having access to their CushionTech product,” he told FCNews. “It’s hard to make money on SPC these days, so to us that is an extremely unique product that is just different than all the other SPCs on the market. It’s a non-commodity item with some real selling points. They’ve got a long-term view of growing the business rather than ‘let’s sell containers.’ They’ve listened to what the market is calling for, what it’s missing and they help us develop the marketing and merchandising tools to enter that market. It’s a real partnership with them.”
Beyond product, Schollmeyer said working with the people behind the product is a real pleasure, which can be hard to find. “I wouldn’t even call it customer service; I’d call it customer care,” he explained. “They are great to deal with. Yuni is just a pleasure to work with. She is thorough and professional—and so is the whole team. That’s what it is for us—unique product and a great partnership.”
