Our Mission

….to find you the perfect floor

Most people who buy floors don’t buy one every day. In fact, most people only buy two or three floors in their life! For this reason, it’s no surprise we’re not experts. Before we launched Kite, I bought a floor, and I definitely wasn’t an expert. In fact, the whole process was time consuming, confusing and stressful.

Like most people, I visited shops and ordered samples. Most of them looked the same. And I really didn’t understand why they were priced differently. I also didn’t understand what I really needed. Confusion came quickly. At every turn, be it online, in a shop, from my builder, architect or even my parents…. I was given a different opinion. When I tried to dig a little deeper on technical questions, there was rarely any science behind the answers. This confusion led to stress. 

Was I buying the wrong floor? Would it work with my family life? Could it be fitted easily? Was I overpaying? Would the colour work with our kitchen?

Buying the floor turned out to be one of the hardest parts of our refurbishment….and in hindsight, I actually got it wrong!

So, fast forward a couple of months and with the help of some flooring experts, we launched Kite, on a mission to help people find the right floor.

We launched the business basing it on 5 key aspects, which we explain a little on the following pages. 

You’re welcome to read through these… or you can cut to the chase, and get in touch to start the journey to find your floor.

Best Wishes

Ed Grant

Kite Flooring

A simply buying process – We ask our customers to think along three lines – colour, so light, mid-tones or dark, shape, think patterned or straight, and finally texture, so reclaimed, smooth or something in the middle. This helps us get quickly to the right floor. We also try and provide as much technical and design advice as possible. This comes at the beginning when you’re choosing a floor, but also during the fitting process, even if we’re not fitting.

A curated range – Guess what, you don’t need 1,000’s of options. The reality is wood is a natural product, so across planks you will always get colour variation. There is no point in having more than 7/8 colour variations across a floor types otherwise they have too many similarities. It’s also one of the reasons we recommend viewing the large sample boards of our floors, either through arranging a site visit, or at our showroom. Only then can you appreciate these colour variations.

Products with provenance – The requirements for a good wood floor are, i) an accurately milled product (so it slots together well), ii) defect-free timber, iii) a controlled manufacturing process and iv) high-quality oils. Before we started working in wood floors, like many people we viewed a floor as a commodity, and simply hunted for the cheapest price. To supply this market, manufacturers inevitably cut corners to hit ever cheaper price points, whether it’s poor quality oils, less staff on a production line to pick our defects, machines that are not properly serviced, factories that don’t have sufficient moisture controls (you get the idea..). When we launched our business, we sold some of these cheaper products, and then had problems. So, for this reason, we i) fully audit all the manufacturers we work with, ii) fit the products we supply, and iii) for the majority of floors we work with, actually go and see them being made!

Transparent pricing – Wood flooring is typically priced in an opaque way. On the one hand, Online retailers continually discount, on the other, Premium retailers don’t explain their pricing; they have different pricing to different customer groups (trade or consumers etc.). We offer a fair price to everyone, and clearly explain the features of each floor and why it’s priced a certain way. That way you can be sure you get what you pay for.

Supply and fit – Whilst we’re happy to just sell flooring, we also have fitting teams. This means on many projects we can take end-to-end responsibility.