Las Vegas—Floor covering distributors and commercial contractors in search of quality, fully curated commercial carpet tile and resilient offerings via a single-source supplier now have another option: Arch 180. The upstart firm, led by commercial industry veterans, Leah Ledoux and Ben Giamichael, aims to ease the burden of sourcing and product selection for end users.
“We’re looking to service the commercial flooring contractor that needs a quality product that’s in stock for immediate delivery—but not something that’s cheap,” Ledoux, co-founder and managing partner, told FCNews at a sample screening of its Contract 180 program here earlier this year. “It’s a mid-range offering, but it’s also high performance. And the really cool thing about the program is everything is designed to pair and/or coordinate. Every color combination has a scheme.”
How the Contract 180 program works: Ledoux and Giamichael—whose careers overlapped at NRF Distributors—handle much of the legwork on the front end by partnering directly with select suppliers on developing coordinating lines of commercial carpet tile (CCT) and hybrid resilient terrazzo (HRT). The CCT offerings, according to Giamichael, skew toward the higher end, a little more “fashion-forward, solution-dyed nylon. It’s a little more expensive, but clients can enjoy immediate access on a quick-ship basis,” he said.
The HRT offerings, by comparison, feature a fiberglass reinforcement and an extra-thick wear layer for demanding, high-traffic commercial applications. Coordinating products such as vinyl cove base, stair treads and even rubber landing tile are available as well in some programs.
“The program gives distributors something they can offer Starnet members and Fuse dealers and sell with confidence,” Giamichael said.
Made to order
Arch 180 can build a program around a specific manufacturer’s label or on a private-label basis. “We offer an exclusive to the client—whatever territory we can carve out for them,” Ledoux noted, citing a current partnership the company maintains with All Surfaces, a top 20 distributor. “But the real key behind the concept of what we’re doing is everything is meant to be very intentional and work together.”
Take the CCT products, for example. The curated package for All Surfaces entails the City Collection and the Let’s Go Collection. “What’s unique about that is we lined up all of these names with the cities that are in All Surfaces’ footprint,” Ledoux explained.
Keith Anderson, chief commercial officer at All Surfaces, attested to the strength of the program. “Arch 180 delivers an ‘outside-of-the-box’ approach to serving the needs of the specification and commercial end-user community. Leah and Ben’s partnership in developing the Contract 180 brand with All Surfaces stems from their personal experience in commercial floor covering distribution and their intimate knowledge of the specification sales process. Contract 180 provides our flooring contractors and specifiers with a uniquely curated collection of hard and soft surface products—all designed to pair and applicable to almost any commercial application. It’s a meaningful addition to our commercial portfolio and a platform we’ll continue to expand.”
In coming up with its go-to-market concept, Arch 180’s founders looked at traditional means of product sourcing, selection and specifications—and it saw an opportunity. “You don’t see many manufacturers developing a private-label line when they’re trying to help their distributors sell more stuff that they don’t even get paid for,” Ledoux stated. “We’re doing this because we care and also because there’s an education element that we bring as well.”
Indeed, the approach that Arch 180 takes represents a departure from traditional supplier-to-distributor routes to market. Having previously served on the distribution side of the supply channel, the company’s principals know exactly where the pain points are. As Giamichael recalled: “We would have these big manufacturers, and they would do a lot of the specification work. We would just inventory and they did a lot of the selling. But it was challenging for them to go to market with the ‘B-level’ products. So, now, we’re bringing distributors a turnkey solution that’s designed and in stock. They can literally go out and say, ‘It’s all done for you.’”
To further assist clients in their selling/specification efforts, Arch 180 has the ability to produce professional-grade architectural binders, brochures and the like—all of which can be tailored to the client’s needs. “We’ve branded our folders and promotional materials under the Contract 180 banner, but we can also take it a step further and promote the manufacturer’s or distributor’s brand as well,” Ledoux said.
These well-designed architectural folders and brochures pro- vide distributors with a valuable marketing tool. “This gives them daily routine. They can have this little design box that offers the entire product line as well as samples. I have a few designers that I work with who like the folder because it’s small and can sit on their desk. It’s easy.”
Indeed, the program by design aims to simplify the process. “We’re trying to bring them this turnkey package that’s really easy,” Giamichael added. “They don’t have to be a designer in order to go into a meeting with a client. Now they can go out into the market with a little more confidence and try to sell into spaces that perhaps they’ve never tapped into before. We’ve just elevated them.”
Planting the seeds
The seeds of Arch 180 were planted during the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, when shifts were happening across the flooring distribution supply chain. While sales and home improvement activity bounced back more quickly on the residential side of the business, commercial contract was a different story.
“When the pandemic hit, there was a gap,” Giamichael recalled. “All the manufacturers started getting rid of their salespeople. So that’s when we saw an opportunity to fill the void for the manufacturer. We knew we wanted to adopt the distribution model, and we considered starting sourcing product and bringing an actual brand to market. We’ve created a brand that’s a private-label line that offers turnkey solutions.”
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