I went to the COVERINGS trade show in Orlando today.

It's a HUGE trade show primarily for the stone and tile industry.

It's housed in the enormous Orlando Convention Center.

The displays are out of this world. BIG! Gorgeous! Marble, Granite, Stone, etc. Incredible designs.

Unfortunately, the amount of "stone care" products was kind of slim at this years show. But it was still cool to see the newest flooring designs from around the world. Amazing stuff!

I had a good time.

By the way... Our new line of marble, terrazzo and concrete grinding and polishing products matched for the Cimex are now on our website. Check it out...
http://www.excellent-supply.com/products.asp?cat=16

I've scoured the stone care industry in order to be able to put together a reasonably priced, quality marble care package. The products we now have represent a tight group of products that work with the standard Cimex machines. This will open the door for lots of carpet cleaners who may have only toyed with the idea of marble care up till now. Cool




Rick Gelinas
encapman

From the Restoration & Maintenance side of the industry, it can sometimes seem a little bit of a let down. Most of what your going to see, about ¾’s, is actually different types of floor coverings. Go figure, what are the chances, especially when you take into consideration the name of the event? They have more samples, of more different, of mostly hard and semi hard surfaces than you could even begin to imagine. Stuff from Spain, Brazil, Italy, India, the Orient, Canada, the US, just from literally all over the world. And I don’t mean one or two displays from a given country, I mean giant sections of the show dedicated to one specific country.

About the other 1/4 of the rest of the floor is HUGE fabricating machines mostly used for countertop fabrication and the support of that industry. This stuff runs $100,000 - $500,000. It’s kind a funny, you walk up to one of these booths and they ask you what kind of work it is that you do? At this point they’re your best friend. Then you tell them you do restoration & maintenance and then it all changes. Then there is a small amount of installation related stuff and then restoration & maintenance stuff.

If you can figure out a way to go sometime, take advantage of it. There probably wont be a whole bunch of stuff that’s going to “Rock” your world, but there will be a few things that you’ll find interesting but most of all it’s just amazing to be able to see so many different items and people from so many different parts of the world and how gigantic this show really is. There was one other thing that was pretty exciting that took place at this years show, but I can’t tell you yet. Not until everything has been finalized, but let it suffice that for at least the state of Florida as well as maybe, just maybe a few other places, there is good news. Keep in touch and I’ll fill you in as I can.

Take care.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

Rick, thanks for opening more doors for us carpet cleaners. I am going to order some of your lightning strip pads next week. When I first called you and ordered my cimex I did not realize the future value it had. I bought it as an encap machine only. Now I am interested in scrubbing my VCT accounts better, and who knows what doors you may open with other surfaces such as marble.