Expo Wrapup: Coverings 2017

We just got back from one of the biggest shows of the year, Coverings 2017. It was a great show with over 25,000 stone and tile people who rolled into Orlando to see the newest design trends in the stone and tile industry. I guess this is a pretty big event, even for a large city like Orlando.  I was surprised to see that the Mayor showed up for the ribbon cutting ceremony.  He declared the week of the show to be “Tile and Stone Days” in Orange County, Fla. I had always thought that the only thing of real importance in Orlando was Disney World. But I guess stone and tile are getting some real attention around here.

This year Basic Diamond has been incredibly busy trying to make sure our orders get fulfilled on time, organize our inventory, and develop new tools and new blade designs.  In light of the fact that it has been so hectic, and since the show was all the way across the country, we decided not to put up an exhibit this year. It just would have taken too much time to herd all those cats and get everything to the show.  Instead, we flew down and attended the show to check out all the new products, meet with key customers and vendors, and just enjoy the great weather in Orlando. This is a great event, because there are over 1,100 vendors and tons of clients all in one location from over 40 countries.  It was great to meet with a few of our vendors and catch up. It was really fun to see some of our customers walking the aisles of the show and talk about all the work everyone has!  So busy these days!

We saw lots of exhibits from most of the big players in the industry. Cool booths, and they even had some new features on the pavilions that everyone was talking about. One of our favorite booths was the Antolini booth. It had samples of some of their interesting stones hung all around the booth that were very cool to see. We took a look at the new machinery from people like Park Industries, Northwood, Baca, etc.. We had a chance to talk with them about how our tooling can improve the performance of their machinery.

2017 Stone Trends

We continued to see that Quartz is still the leading design trend when it comes to volume. But It was interesting to note that Quartzite is really increasing in popularity. If you don’t know what Quartzite is all about, see our article about it cutting quartzite. After looking at all the quartzite displays at the show, I realized this is probably why we have been getting so many requests to learn more about our new quartzite blades, and how to use them. We are also seeing the porcelain and ultra compact stone slabs starting to gain momentum.

All in all, this was a great trip, full of work from sunup to sundown, but Orlando is such a great place, who can complain? Let us know if you need any help on cutting quartzite, and we can show you the best techniques. We will probably do a blog post on it soon.