Have you ever wondered what the real value of the Maltese market is? Does anyone in the business of providing services to this market, small as it may seem to be to us, ever wonder of its real potential?
Design & Build met up with Daniele Bonanno; proprietor and Managing Director of Tutto Parquet to gauge why his company – absolute specialists in wooden, pvc flooring and decking – introduced itself into our shores, and how it managed so successfully to integrate herein.
“W e were very appreciative that Daniele was prepared to be very explicit and willing to talk about his business and his company. And about his experiences. As you may have guessed, he wasn’t even based in Malta to start off with. In fact, his company was set up some 30 years or so ago in Italy and has had a local branch for only a handful of years now.
Daniele explained that the parquet industry is quite a particular one and, in many ways, does not function on general lines as one might think. Meaning that it is not simply buying the raw material (the wood part) and getting on with it. The parquet is produced in their parent company in Italy to exacting standards and then brought here for clients’ appreciation. This may sound like a job anyone can do but, as he explained, it does not eliminate the important need for the supplier and the layer to really know the material he is working with: the wood itself. He or she should know all the best variations of the different types of wood available, how the parquet is made and how it would react to the various climates, the location, and the stress its users would daily be submitting it to (children and pets come to mind immediately as well as the frequency of high heeled footwear etc). “With parquet it is never a cut and place situation!” said Daniele in his rolling Italian that belies his many years of experience, indicating that if you want to do a good job in his field you’ve really got to be experienced.
Coming to Malta
Turning to his local involvement Daniele said (with a joking tone in his voice) that their Malta involvement actually started rather playfully in some ways – “Quasi per gioco!“ (which doesn’t really translate well into English to reflect his idea).
“At the time we had placed some publicity about ourselves and our quality work through Facebook and there was an immediate and hefty response from Maltese people. This encouraged us tremendously but at the time we had no set up for servicing this demand. The idea then came up – why don’t we go for a vacation trip to Malta and find out what it’s all about… and do a bit of market research in the process too, perhaps even meet some of the people who had contacted us?”
The base underneath the solid wood of our engineered wood …is composed of various strata of different and complementing woods that come together for a better-quality product
So Daniele and his team came over, looked around, checked out some outlets, looked at what sort of products were available that might be their competitors and so on. Daniele felt that the kind of products available in their field were of an inferior quality to their own products. There also seemed to be little or no in-depth knowledge or feel for the materia prima involved in this kind of flooring. “This encouraged us to further consider our involvement in the Maltese market,” he explained.
Continuing, he explained that they purchased the raw wood themselves and with the help of the various hi-tech machinery they invested in, they were able to produce the required wooden products needed to high standards indeed. This included the varnishing and treatments necessary for the product to maintain its qualities for many years.
Specialised effects and products
“Over the years we have developed an intimate understanding on how to enhance the beauty of a room through the aesthetic placement of the parquet according to its natural veins. These are in turn enhanced through certain brushing effects which accentuate vertical, diagonal or horizontal effects,also thanks to our years of focused work on parquet flooring,” he added.
A commonly shared notion is that no other flooring material beats the aesthetic qualities and feelings of warmth and comfort of natural wood flooring.
“The base underneath the solid wood of our engineered wood gives us far greater stability than normal wood since it is composed of various strata of different and complementing woods that come together for a better-quality product,” explained Daniele. This, he added, combats situations of humidity and other natural deteriorants but it also gives one the opportunity to experiment and create more designs and ideas in the product itself.
“We turn the wood’s vulnerabilities into its advantages,” he said. Even the laying process is a labour of love since the various wood layers come in to play by complementing each other.
There has been a great ongoing investment by the company in purchasing the very specific machinery and technology required to produce this high-end product they specialise in. This also means that quality checking and testing is ongoing both by the company and officially by Italian certification boards which guarantee an optimum product that can be easily used and adapted to various requirements, including laying directly on concrete flooring.
The setup
Daniele explained that at the moment the company employs eight Italian professional flooring installers in their Malta operation. These were chosen for knowledge and expertise and most were personally known to him too. “This means that for the client there is peace of mind in our expertise and that delivery and installation times are quite fast as we are able to meet some tight deadlines. “This can even be within a week” he explained, adding that “obviously, the fact that they are fully supported by the parent company in Italy means that we have a great fall-back advantage here too. This can help us meet specific and difficult situations which interior designers and architects might be facing.” At the same time, he said, the company visits regular parquet fairs in Italy and overseas to keep abreast with the changing styles of the market and of customers’ tastes worldwide.
Tutto Parquet’s intelligently designed engineered wood provides the best of both worlds: – the top layer of natural wood (“legno nobile”) which provides the comfort, warmth and beauty of natural wooden flooring, and the underlying compressed layers of natural and man-made woods, which gives the top layer the stability required to beat Malta’s fluctuating temperatures.
The product
We faced Daniele with the general belief that parquet seems to have earned for itself the reputation that it is an expensive product but also a very difficult one to maintain.
To our direct question he replied equally directly – “our prices for the product we supply are easily comparable with similar, but inferior products that are accessible to most in the marketplace. Our quality is what it is, well made to last and to enrich the environment. Yet low quality products make the parquet look expensive and not long lasting… and the customer would be right to feel disappointed. But in our case, the quality is already there and we want our product to deliver that really expensive look and feel yet to still remain within the parameters of market’s prices. “This gives us an advantage over our competitors,” he said, adding that parquet got the reputation of doing poorly with regards to maintenance because the finishing and polishing of the past was not as high-end as it is today. “This has become possible through other industry suppliers who have created superior finishing products over the last 50 or so years which are staple on all our products. We want our clients to enjoy their flooring solutions for a very long time.”
We turn the wood’s vulnerabilities into its advantages
He went on to explain that they have various types of parquet and various thicknesses, with their 2.5mm solid-wood thickness for bedrooms and 4.5mm for more lived-in areas being particularly high in demand. Daniele indicated that if laid well it should last for well over 30 years at the least (even 50 perhaps) before needing refurbishing. He joked that the wood of their parquet could easily outlive the purchaser “perche dovrebbe durare per tutta la vita!” The installation of parquet is very straightforward, and it doesn’t need any particular preparation of the site where it has to be laid. Nonetheless it obviously needs a good flat surface but “we recommend that we are involved as early as possible in the project where parquet is going to be laid to avoid problems later on. This is particularly important for new constructions and we would rather be there from these early stages,” he added. Therefore the use of parquet should ideally be included in the project’s management and not something as an add on.
photo: Tutto Parquet’s showroom at Dun Karm Street in Birkirkara
is dedicated exclusively to wooden, vinyl and decking parquet flooring.
is dedicated exclusively to wooden, vinyl and decking parquet flooring.
“You have to keep in mind,” said Daniele, “that not every installation can be done in the same way. “Sometimes one might need a particular underlay but from experience we have found that gluing to ground provides a more pleasant result than gluing the edges and leaving the ground to float does.” Tutto Parquet also offers its clients outdoor decking solutions, which is called Easy Change. Daniele explained that “this is a relatively new system on the market that we have introduced to Malta. The product incorporates both a base system as well as wooden top and any individual plank can be easily disassembled by using a special key, thus allowing for easy implementation of under-floor wiring, changing of planks, maintenance and general cleaning. “Commercial locales with changing uses find the system particularly appealing,” he explained. This solution is available either in solid teak or in uPVC.
Ambient advantages
The use of parquet as a flooring material has many other advantages apart from appearing attractive – giving a place or home a chic look, and creating comfort and a warm ambiance.
People who have used parquet flooring have often commented that the place also looks somewhat larger than before.
industry suppliers … have created superior finishing products over the last 50 or so years which are staple on all our products
“Since parquet is of a rectangular shape, and if it is laid length-wise (rather than width-wise) then the room can actually look larger or longer. Additionally, the natural lighting of the room helps a lot to further bring out the natural vein of the materia prima, the wood itself,” said Daniele.
When laid conscientiously, good parquet enhances both style and size.
“Our knowledge and expertise in this field is obviously available to the client and we will always advise the purchaser accordingly on what is the best way to bring out the optimal effect of the flooring in their room/s. Our parquet layers will automatically assess the way natural light affects the ambience and will suggest to the owner a layout based on their extensive experience. Our advice is always backed by a full description of the whats and whys we are advising in this way,” he added.
It needs to be underlined, he added, that Tutto Parquet serves both residential as well as commercial clients, whether through their architects or interior designers or whether directly with the property owner or developer. When working with developers who may have quite a number of parquet projects in hand at the same time, “we are able to work to both pricing and delivery requirements as required,” added Daniele. Flexibility is their maxim, he said.
Why Tutto Parquet?
Daniele Bonanno gave us a direct reply to this – which has probably already become clear in the foregoing though nonetheless needed further affirmation. “The great advantage of working with Tutto Parquet in Malta is that at present there is no one on the Island who has the set up and product that is anywhere similar to theirs.
“We create the flooring, from the base product right up to the special designs required and to the laying on site. It’s like buying a suit off the hangar or going to a tailor to be measured for a made-to-measure suit with the perfect fit. With parquet you can still go and buy an off the shelf solution but through us one can get a solution that no one else has. Individualised and not mass produced, with unprecedented value for money!”
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