Thinking about buying an engineered wood floor or for that matter even a solid exotic wood floor which is Made in China? You might want to think about where you spend your money and for the consumer, the implication of warranty and technical support. You will find an interesting article at this link regarding a pending lawsuit over alleged dumping.
Many of the companies you find on the internet selling flooring are selling engineered and solid exotic wood flooring from Chinese manufacturers. Many of them don’t own any of the flooring, they simply sell it from the Chinese manufacturers U.S. stock. Some of the companies are the largest and have large advertising budgets on tv and in sports. China has very few native wood species which are desirable for use as wood flooring for visual or technical reasons. China relies on shipment of raw materials from North America, South America, Europe and Africa to manufacture their engineered and solid wood flooring with few exceptions. There are sure to be winners and losers in the pending lawsuit regarding engineered wood flooring and duties are likely to be imposed, albeit not likely the 240% being requested. What impact, if any will this have on warranty issues and support? How will the Chinese flooring manufacturers react to a potential negative decision against them? Chinese have long offered manufacturing capacity, but they have never had a brand name and that is where well known and not well known American & Canadian companies come in to the scene. They manufacture offshore and private label.
At stewartfloor we are proud to buy all of our flooring from family owned manufacturers in Brazil, Paraguay & Peru. The factories we buy from have high safety and environmental standards and working conditions are very good. Employees are paid many times more than Chinese workers, have health& social benefits and some have living expenses paid for as well, such as housing. I know this because I personally visit the companies I buy from and always have.
