Surfacing Materials Guide Debuts in Redbook 2010

To be successful in commercial and contract furniture and millwork, fabricators must be agile, innovative and well informed about materials, trends and the needs of the market.

UPDATE:

See the Material Intelligence articles here:

Selling Value

Decorative Surfaces Primer

Texture: The Final Frontier

Redbook Advertorials Produced by Material Intelligence

Original news release:

In an ever-expanding universe of decorative surfaces and engineered substrates, fabricators have to track global design and application trends like never before.

Price pressures from offshore manufacturers [of standard products] and the heightened expectations of a new generation of sophisticated and informed consumers require fabricators to “think outside of the shop” to be successful. They must bring to bring to market products that offer functionality, durability, and design impact that makes price a second- or third-tier issue.

To help its readers meet this challenge, Vance Publishing Corp. has teamed up with Kenn Busch and Material Intelligence for a laminate-focused section in the March 2010 Red Book Illustrated Resource Guide. The goal: to help fabricators that receive Wood & Wood Products and Custom Woodworking Business to better understand their decorative surface options, and to help them sell the value of these materials to their customers.

Busch is the founding editor of Surface & Panel and Laminating Design & Technology magazines, and has been covering the role decorative surfaces play in successful projects and products in North America and Europe for the last 15 years. He launched www.materialintelligence.com in early 2009.

“Material Intelligence is designed to help the architect and design (A&D) community better understand how to specify different kinds of decorative furniture surfaces,” says Busch. “This is a category of materials about which there are a lot of misconceptions. In reality, these materials can solve a lot of the challenges they face on every project; they just don’t know it yet.

“Fabricators are perhaps the most important part of this equation. If they have tools and information necessary to guide their A&D customers to the best and most innovative surfacing materials, they’ll get more orders and net higher margins.

“Too many professional specifiers are choosing materials for their projects that don’t measure up because they don’t really understand their options,” says Busch. “Fabricators who can help them choose more wisely will quickly become valued suppliers.”

Busch cites examples of materials misuse he sees again and again when covering commercial interior design projects.

“I can’t believe how often I see fine veneer on transaction counters or hotel luggage stands.  Within a month it’s scratched and marred and looks awful. It devalues the whole project and is essentially just a huge waste of wood. These specifiers should have picked a more durable material, like laminate, engineered to handle that kind of abuse and still look great for years.”

“Our new materials guide will focus on how fabricators can value engineer products for professional design specifiers ,” says Laurel Didier, publisher of Wood & Wood Products and Custom Woodworking Business. “There’s a lack of this kind of information in the market. The more our readers can be a resource on materials options for their A&D customers, the healthier their businesses will be.

“Selling on value is always better than selling on cost. This special section will help our readers create greater value by building better products and helping their A&D customers create better projects.”

Redbook’s Materials Overview will cover the range of decorative surfaces and their real-world applications, matching-materials programs that allow for more effective value engineering, standard and lightweight panel innovations, and the powerful green story that laminated components bring to a market that’s particularly concerned about the environment.

It will also feature stories on healthcare, commercial, retail, hospitality and related projects where the right materials choices have played an important role in their success.