Commercial tiling: The ins and outs of supplying tiles to New Zealand’s most recognisable brands

There are a number of factors to consider when tiling in commercial spaces. It’s about finding balance between aesthetics, functionality, durability, price and more.

Commercial flooring often must be able to accommodate incredibly high volumes of traffic: airports, shopping centres, department stores, restaurants, and to make an investment in flooring tenable, they must be durable for many years into the future.

To make things more complex, each of the above commercial sectors will have vastly different requirements. Restaurant kitchens must be resistant to spillages of foods, fats and other liquids, while the front of house must look polished and be easy to maintain.

Department stores need not be concerned as much with spillages, but must be up to the task of receiving many thousands more footfalls while having an aesthetic in keeping with the wider retail space.

This is to say nothing of the rapidly changing trends in the tile industry — with tastes skewing towards larger format tiles, varied colours and more.

All of these factors must be carefully considered and applied with precise expertise in order to achieve the best outcome. That is why it’s of paramount importance to work with or consult the right partner, with the right experience and knowledge, when working on a commercial flooring project.

Tile Space, a New Zealand-owned-and-operated company with a nationwide branch and reseller network, is one such partner. Dealing only in high quality products, the company imports its tiles from all over the world — and with over three decades under its belt, it knows the ins and outs when it comes to the needs of its commercial customers.

Mahsa Halajpour, one of the Commercial Sales Consultants at Tile Space, says the company’s primary focus is on the best quality and price.

“We make sure we do our due diligence before we import anything,” says Mahsa. “We always strive to deliver the right product for the right circumstance, with the aim of it lasting for a very long time.”

In New Zealand, Tile Space has been instrumental in providing flooring solutions for many of the most recognisable brands in the land, such as KFC and Farmers. With such high profile customers, Mahsa says the company is kept on its toes — but the company has been able to take on all the opportunities and challenges as they come.

If you’ve been into a KFC branch in New Zealand recently, chances are the tiles you’ve walked on were supplied by Tile Space. The company has worked with KFC to retile any store that is going through a flooring upgrade — so Tile Space is well acquainted with the requirements of the popular fast food company.

For a multinational behemoth like KFC, keeping a consistent aesthetic with other locations is extremely important for the brand’s image. Just as important, however, is the quality of the tile.

“There are lots of challenges for fast food locations,” says Mahsa. “With a high proportion of both foot traffic and potential spillages, the tiles need to withstand both. So we do a lot of testing to make sure that the tiles are easy to clean and maintain, and that the durability of the tiles are consistent with the number of people expected to be there every day.”

Tile Space also needs to cater to the KFC aesthetic: this means a neutral palette, in keeping with its many other locations.

Since Tile Space is the port of call when a KFC branch needs a flooring upgrade, the company needs to make sure that it has enough stock in its warehouses to support such a project when needed.

It’s for this reason that Tile Space maintains one of the largest warehouses for tiles in the entire country.

“The quantities for these projects are often very high, so we like to be prepared,” says Mahsa. “And we just recently added another warehouse in Auckland to expand our stock levels even further. We find we always need more space to meet customer demand and service expectations.”

Another of New Zealand’s most recognisable brands, Farmers can be seen in all of New Zealand’s major population centres. And as a large, popular department store, foot traffic is high — and this means more emphasis must be placed on durability than in hospitality spaces.

“Farmers is on a whole other level,” says Mahsa. “It’s a high traffic area, so we want to make sure the tile lasts forever. We use heavy commercial tiles that don’t necessarily need protection from spillages, but must be easy to maintain on a regular basis.”

There’s also an extra layer of complexity for Farmers’ tiles: since each store has multiple different ‘departments’ — cosmetics, clothing, whiteware, furniture and the like — there are often multiple considerations for each of these areas, introducing further complexity into each project. Not so much complexity, however, to vex the Tile Space team.

“We always try to hit the mark for each particular area of the shop,” says Mahsa. “And after all of our testing and completed Farmers projects, we’ve had remarkable success nationwide.”

And, Mahsa reiterates, this is all down to the high quality of the tiles themselves.

“At the end of the day, our goal is for our tiles to last forever,” she says. “We strive to deliver tiles that won’t break, scratch, discolour — these things can happen to low quality tiles, but we’ve never had those issues.”

Click here for more information and to reach out to Tile Space’s commercial division.