Laminates: Waiting for the Next Big Color
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Laminates: Waiting for the Next Big Color

It seems like just yesterday I was holding a brand new piece of Cognac melamine in my hand and beaming with pride as I showed it off to a room full of closet designers. We all knew in that moment that we were looking at the future of the custom storage industry.

And believe you me, in 1999 Cognac hit our industry like a freight train. I remember one customer calling our office to request that we completely disassemble his recently installed Evans Cherry colored closets, throw away all of the parts and reinstall the exact same design in Cognac. Well, we sold and installed thousands of other Cognac closets after that, too. We assembled showroom displays and even plastered pictures on the sides of our vans showing a slice of custom-storage heaven dipped in Cognac sauce.

Even today the color is still holding strong. Whether you call it Cognac, Summerflame, Sunset or Wild Apple, customers nearly all over the country are still craving that golden red bliss. And as much as some of us might like to find a more modern replacement, we just can’t seem to shake it from our customers’ pertinacious color-pallets. But can we? After all, the Summerflame can’t burn forever; the Sunset eventually will lead to another day; and Wild Apples eventually will go bad or out of season.

In all sincerity, when will new colors in our industry take hold with the same amount of vigor that Cognac once had? Today we’re seeing a variety of new melamine offerings entering the market. Exotic woods have inspired many of the new papers that melamine companies are working with. Many have amazing textured surfaces that easily could be mistaken for real wood veneer. Design patterns are now ranging from wide sap-lines to tight grains that customers would have had to have paid a fortune for in a real wood equivalent. Satin finishes, glossy finishes — many of us are seeing so many choices it’s almost overwhelming. Albeit, in recent years nothing has hit Main Street like Cognac once did. So what will the next charge be?

Source: Nathan Klomp is the former sales & marketing
manager for JB Cutting. For information
visit JBCutting.com or call (586) 468-4765.

 

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