With regulatory complexity and corporate red tape demanding increasing amounts of time and effort to navigate, flooring experts and industry suppliers across North America have identified the power of joining forces as a single group…
In what has become a highly competitive field, Starnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partnership (Starnet) is a dynamic purchasing cooperative that provides invaluable support to its members, freeing them to do what they do best on the customer-facing sides of their businesses while enabling seamless product and service procurement behind the scenes.
“Members don’t have to haggle; they don’t have to negotiate. Products have already been approved, and they can just buy off the menu,” says Mark Bischoff, President and Chief Executive Officer. “There’s no compliance risk, there’s no friction in the transaction.” The organization offers all this while supplier members grow their customer bases by securing longstanding clients.
Starnet’s commercial flooring members serve a wide range of industries, including education, healthcare, hospitality, retail, and office facilities. Many of those serving the latter sell office furniture, while there are also real estate-focused operations serving multi-family and mixed-use properties. The materials used include a spectrum of resilient flooring types like poured and polished concrete with or without epoxy finishes; terrazzo, a hardwearing stone composite; and other engineered materials alongside ceramic, broadloom and tile carpet, and wood. There are also members focused on sports facilities who are installing synthetic turf, running tracks, and providing other specialized services such as fitting protective padding, acoustics, and locker rooms.
Meanwhile, Starnet Floor Care teams, mainly comprising members in installation and product sales, service vast areas of flooring space.
Starnet also helps to address longstanding problems in the industry through technology—developing, for example, a custom exoskeleton for hauling onto site and protecting fragile rolls of flooring material weighing up to 700 pounds, upon request of its members who have been battling this specific challenge for over a century. Of course, end users also benefit from the savings that are passed down to them. They also enjoy accessing professional, trustworthy installation as part of the purchasing process. Then there is the fact that members can negotiate installation times on new builds to be in sync with those of other trades, entirely erasing the chaos that often reigns on building sites.
Moreover, once people learn that renovations and revamps in existing buildings, sometimes on extremely short notice, are far easier when done by a Starnet member, they never go back to old-fashioned bidding and contracting. As members have access to a host of trades, end users can bypass the bidding process by employing a member to complete projects in record time with significantly reduced hassle. “That’s part of the reason why we like these cooperative agreements, because there’s not a lot of red tape or friction to that transaction, so it can occur right away,” Bischoff continues.
Helping its members handle everything from managing their teams to maintenance, repairs, and operations, Starnet helps free up time and capital on back-end infrastructure. This ensures smooth front-end operations, which enables a job well done and delivered on time and within budget. This makes it easier to offer higher value on projects that outsource an increasing number of functions, while also having easier access to the latest technology to further support this process.
“We’re in a strange time where traditional industries like construction and commercial flooring are more difficult because of the regulatory framework and the complexity of the business world. Part of our job is to help our members deploy technology to reduce the friction in the traditional model,” Bischoff explains.
Complete with its own online university, the organization provides connection, education, standardization, and profit sharing to members in the industry. Starting as Comspec in the 1980s as an initiative among select companies and fabricators in the industry to establish best practices and protocols and create networking opportunities, the organization was later formalized as IMG International Marketing Group. This gave operators in different parts of the country an opportunity to compare notes, join forces, and expand their reach. As a result, the organization began closing agreements with fabricators and developing products it found niches for in the industry before taking it from being privately owned to member-owned as a cooperative in 1992. Now operating as Starnet, the organization went on to expand its range of services, its products, and its reach.
Today, Starnet members benefit in myriad ways beyond improved processes and purchasing strategies. Two annual meetings and a flurry of get-togethers throughout the year allow members to connect with other operators outside their field of expertise or area of the country, providing opportunities to network with members and manufacturers. There are also training sessions, installation and technology workshops, webinars, and other similar gatherings. Each member receives dividends paid annually according to their branch-level purchasing support, which is reflected in incentives paid to the organization by the participating manufacturers on every purchase by a member.
Beyond purchasing, Starnet forges other close ties with manufacturers and material partners. Joining forces to audit and critique processes for its Starnet Floor Care division, they weigh in on product composition and equipment. These collaborations offer important insights and opportunities for improvement and fine tuning of chemical compositions and fabrication processes, while establishing members as trusted service partners for manufacturer-approved aftercare following installations.
Member committees act as data capturing mechanisms, keeping the organization up to speed with developments in the Canadian and American sectors on an ongoing basis. Based on this information, Starnet then develops relevant initiatives to inform, educate, and inspire its members to continuously evolve.
In this way, Starnet keeps members abreast of the latest technology and developments in related industries like real estate. One case in point is the notion that the commercial real estate space stands to be monetized in a similar way as Airbnb monetizes private property as guest units. To this end, Starnet is keeping its finger on the pulse of a trend that can be a considerable game-changer for its industry. “If [operators in flooring] continue to operate as they did in the ’80s and ’90s, they’ll be left behind,” Bischoff says of the technology, information value, and education Starnet provides.
Of course, one of the main member benefits remains driving value through cooperative purchasing. Having established trusted working partnerships with cooperative purchasing groups like Sourcewell and OMNIA, the organization’s buying power translates into robust savings for its members. “Government entities have a lot of regulatory oversight around how they buy things, because they’re trying to eliminate corruption and still get the best deal,” explains Tanner McHugh, Marketing and Member Services Associate.
As the cooperative buying process eliminates bidding, the onboarding process is greatly simplified while the amount of complexity and risk usually forced downstream onto subcontractors by general contractors is mitigated. “The advantage there is the end user is using the cooperative agreement to take the complexity out of their business,” Bischoff says.
The organization is also home to the Starnet Design Awards. Led by McHugh, these awards acknowledge members for outstanding performance in their fields. “We saw a big spike this year in the evolution of some of our tech providers, who make execution so much easier for our members,” he says. From easing administrative tasks to improving project flow, products like Spec-ID and Syncly are changing the way flooring providers operate. There is even an application, CLīMIT, which monitors the real-time humidity and temperature of building sites, saving costs by helping operators choose the right day to call teams onto site to ensure they can execute in ideal conditions. Another sophisticated system, Independent Floor Testing & Inspection (IFTI), uses laser technology to map floor topography, or flatness, assisting in preventing injuries through improved safety in tiling by eliminating sub-product cavities caused by natural undulation of concrete, which can lead to damage of ceramic, terracotta, and porcelain floor coverings.
Other partners include Pittsburgh Paints—a respected coatings brand providing quality high-performance paints and finishes, who recently joined Starnet—and MDC, an exciting commercial interiors expert that leads with outstanding customized architectural finishes.
Bischoff is clear about Starnet’s continued contribution in modernizing the world of flooring, which has certainly left an indelible mark on the industry. “Our message to members is simple: lean on Starnet for the latest and the greatest, and we’ll build the frameworks that allow you to deploy so you can spend more time, energy, and resources making things real for your client,” he says.
As for Starnet’s advice to members to future-proof their businesses, its guidance leaves no room for confusion. By keeping operational costs to a minimum, flooring specialists free up cash flow crucial for field operations and new technology as industry changes forge ahead.
As field teams grow alongside project scopes, Bischoff believes demand for wider ranges of trades from a single operator will become a trend as clients develop trust and comfort with seamless servicing, not to mention the overall time and money savings involved. “Everything that they deploy inside these cooperative systems so that they work seamlessly is better for the end user because then they can focus on what they do best rather than construction or renovation projects outside of their field,” he says. With a focus on cost reduction on one hand and driving evolution on the other, Startnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partnership continues refining its offering and revolutionizing the flooring industry as we know it.
