From Inspiration to Sophistication – The Envique Journey

 

Dallas, TX – Oct 13, 2015 – Quick-Step has taken design and innovation to new heights with its NEW Envique Collection, recently launched into retail stores nationwide. On pace with the latest styles and trends, Envique’s combination of true-to-nature looks and innovative technologies offers a new generation of laminate flooring that surpasses others in both beauty and performance.
 
What Is Special About Envique Designs?
“In Envique, we have created something new and different,” said Roger Farabee, senior vice president of marketing for Unilin NA. “Quick-Step is a fashion-driven product line. Our brand is proud to be the first to market with the hottest styles and most sophisticated features. Envique raises the bar in keeping up with the latest interior trends and uses our proprietary technology to increase the realism of the designs and create extremely deep, textured structures — achieving a look unlike anything seen before in laminate flooring.”
 
“Our new Envique Collection definitely lives up to the Quick-Step reputation!” added Farabee. “Envique is the right product addition to help keep our brand firmly in the position of style leader.”
 
Design Mindset
“What sets Quick-Step apart from its competition is that the Quick-Step designers have beauty and innovation firmly implanted in their minds – each time they create a new collection,” said Oke Nollet, Unilin’s design director. “While we’re pioneers in the way today’s laminate floors are made, it’s not just about quality manufacturing or innovative details. It’s about what our floors can do for a consumer’s personal interior style.”
 
“This design mindset is part of what has made Quick-Step the style, design, and innovation leader in laminate flooring — It’s in our DNA,” said Nollet. “From a design perspective, our goal is to create a beautiful floor that is ontrend today and will become a classic tomorrow.”
 
Design Process
The splendor and ingenuity of Quick-Step’s new Envique Collection does not happen overnight or by chance. Envique represents a significant investment of time, resources, and creativity.
 
“Our phenomenal laminate product development team in Belgium took ideas and dreams developed over a two-year period and created the most realistic, most deeply textured, and richly colored products in laminate flooring,” said Farabee. “No one who sees Envique believes it is laminate. It looks like what it was inspired by: high-end hardwood flooring that is totally on trend with today’s hottest looks in interior design.”
 
“In the creation of all Quick-Step products, including the Envique Collection, we identify new trends before they become mainstream,” said Nollet. “Our designers are also always in tune with the world around us, because the next Quick-Step creation may be inspired by any variety of things, including nature, events, or even architecture.”
 
Inspiration / Search For Originals
“Inspiration is the most important step,” Farabee. “In the development of Envique, our design team went to great lengths to find exactly the right originals to use as our jumping off point during the design process. We were going for a range of visuals, so in creating Envique, we were not afraid to do things with a strong, rich look.”
 
“The world is our inspiration,” said Nollet. “Our design team is continuously open to producing new, creative visuals. This openness lends itself to often times finding inspiration in different original sources than anyone else in the industry is using.”
 
“I remember one occasion — it was while I was on my way to work that I noticed an old wooden gate,” explained Nollet. “I thought it had a particularly beautiful texture and color, so I took pictures of it. Our design team then bought some oak planks and we started working on them, to give them the same look as that lovely, old wooden gate. It was an intensive process, and all means at our disposal were used. We even put the boards outside in the sun and the rain!”
 
Technical Abilities
“Quick-Step has the technical ability to produce visuals and an unmatched level of realism that competitors cannot,” said Farabee. “We take the original hand-selected, inspirational materials and then enhance them to get the very best final design,” explained Farabee.
 
“To maximize the visual, we may add special effects,” said Farabee. “Or, we might only use a portion of the design scanned in from the original material, and then add other natural or man-made things. It is these subtle changes and additions that make for a perfect design.”
 
“At Quick-Step, we believe that a floor is the start of a beautiful interior,” explains Nollet. “That’s why we invest heavily in design and push the possibilities of laminate. We aim to be the first to capture the latest interior trends and couple them with the newest flooring technologies. We have taken design, innovation, and quality to new heights with our brand-new Envique Collection!”
 
Brought To Life
“Envique’s designs are truly stunning,” said Farabee. “We were going for the look of high-end hardwood. When put side by side, even experts have difficulty telling the difference between Envique planks and premium hardwood planks that possess the same high level of design.”
 
Envique’s designs include softer European character wood looks; stronger character designs; and hybrid visuals that are not direct copies, but a blend. Envique features uniqueness of design; depth of texture; richness of color; embossing far greater than anyone else is doing; wider/longer planks, just like premium hardwood; and fashion- forward styles and designs.
 
Envique’s extraordinary visuals and textures include fire-charred, sandblasted, wood concrete, vintage hardwood, naturally weathered, chatter, cracks, saw cut, wire-brushed, splits, knots, smoked, charred, and handscraped. Not only does Envique look like premium hardwood, it feels like premium hardwood.
 
Envique offers six striking décors and also combines the best of Quick-Step technologies, HydroSeal and Uniclic, to offer an amazing 24-Hour Spill Protection assurance for each Envique product.
 
“Our overriding design goal is to bring the most beautiful floors possible into consumers’ homes,” said Farabee. “The entire Envique Collection is modern, stunning, and exceptional for the most discerning customer. It’s the perfect balance of beauty and performance. There’s not another product like it on the market today.”
 
For More Information
To learn more about Quick-Step’s new Envique Collection, visit us.quickstep.com.
 
About Quick-Step
Quick-Step is a market leader in flooring, providing solutions for a wide variety of interiors. Beautiful, durable, and virtually maintenance-free, Quick-Step puts the style in lifestyle. Widely-known as the style, design, and innovation leader in laminate flooring, Quick-Step continuously earns the flooring industry’s most prestigious awards including: 2015 Dealers’ Choice Award - Best New Laminate Product Of The Year (5th consecutive year); 2015 Award Of Excellence - Laminate Manufacturer Of The Year (5th consecutive year); 2015 Floor Focus Retailer Survey - #1 Quality, #1 Service, #1 Design (6th consecutive year); and 2015 RECO Market Intelligence Report - #1 Quality. Quick- Step is a registered trademark of Unilin Flooring, a Mohawk Industries company. Mohawk Industries is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a Fortune 500 company. Visit www.us.quick-step.com for more details.