Stop and Smell the Roasnbliatn - Natural Surfaces Fueling the Retail Revival

Retailers vow to keep a grip on their in-person clientele as our safety and pandemania has caused us to become increasingly dependent on online ordering.  The online experience is evolving to be immersive and so realistic, we almost feel like we ARE in the store. The store we remember anyway. Retailers need to rethink the in-store experience.  It must attract the senses that can not be accessed behind a screen.  Touch and feel, smell, in person visualization.

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Reviving Retail: Why Building Materials are Key to Getting Customers Back in your Store

2021 brings with it the opportunity to get back to life as we knew it.  Back to our families, back to our offices, back to shopping and dining at restaurants.  But these spaces, as we knew them, are not the same, and we are not the same.  We have established ourselves as fully capable of providing for ourselves remotely.  This reality will be a challenge for retailers and restaurants alike as they strive to draw their customers back post pandemic.  Building materials will prove to be a critical part of this “return of the customer,” and probably not in the ways that you think.

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It’s Terrazzo’s Time: Eco-Savvy Options to the Terrazzo Trend

Most of us have heard of terrazzo, that chunky, colorful  airport floor we (used to) dash across to make our flight, or maybe a decorative lamp or bowl that we picked up at a thrift store a couple years ago.  Terrazzo has deep roots, centuries back to the Italians, or some would argue back millenia to Turkish roots; but we will leave that argument to the Europeans.  Regardless of its founders, terrazzo was recycling and ingenuity at its finest, where scraps from the quarries were repurposed into exterior walls for homes in a clay or other suspended matrix.  People really can live in glass houses and throw stones to make them. If you’re seeking the look and feel of terrazzo but you’re ballin’ on a budget or simply don’t have the withall to handle the complications that can come with it like King Tutankhamun and building pyramids (Have you seen those??) then we offer some great alternatives. 

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CaraGreen launches GEOS -  durable, beautiful, recycled glass surfaces

Meet GEOS: the latest Modern Surface to join CaraGreen's collection of healthy surface materials. To help you get to know GEOS a little better, we've broken it down, letter by letter:

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Sinter vs. Printer - How “sintered stone” differs from porcelain

There is confusion about the sintered stone category, and how it differs from porcelain and we will explore the largest of those differences here:  is it printed or not? Let's break it down. 

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August Vignette - She’s Got Range

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5 Reasons We Love the New Durat Solids Collection

Our favorite design tool just got even better. Introducing the Durat Solids Collection.

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Circularity in Action: Introducing Durat Baltic Sea

As part of their 2020 initiative to continue to create beautiful yet sustainable material that works to close the loop, Durat has created a new marine inspired color: Baltic Sea (or J30JNF).

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Fin is In - Scandinavian Design in Building Materials

With respect for nature comes a built environment that embraces the principles of biophilic design.  Be it surfaces, color, integration of wood, or orientation of the spaces, Finnish building materials take those core principles and present them as part of the product. 

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Home is where the health is: how our “new normal” will impact design

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