The average Canadian is a married, English-speaking, 40-year-old woman. She has at least some post-secondary education, and is at least the third generation of her family to be born here, probably in the province where she resides. She and her husband are both employed, making around $40,000 each. They have 1.5 children.
Reading the above description, you probably know exactly what kind of flooring choices to offer this woman. If you don’t, finding out shouldn’t be hard: just open any publication dealing with interior design and look at the products offered in the advertisements. Nine out of 10 of them will be aimed directly at this demographic.
Herein lies the problem. Each magazine, and each contractor’s mailbox, is stuffed with promotions from companies trying to grab the lion’s share of this huge, easily identified, easily located, middle section of the flooring market. There’s no question; that is where most of the money is. But with a legion of companies all trying to divide up the same pie, how do you manage to get more than a crust? And how do you manage to grab even that much without spending exorbitant amounts of time and money on advertising and sales?

Take a look around
While the above description fits the statistically average Canadian, we can easily observe simply by walking down the street that many, many people do not fit this profile. From this observation, we can reasonably deduce that middle-of-the-road offerings are missing the mark with large sections of the Canadian population. Of course, these people are still buying flooring, but they are ripe for the picking if someone can come to market with an approach or product that is more to their tastes.
One advantage that you, as a Canadian flooring supplier, have over large importers is that you are here and they are far away. You can take that walk down the street and get a sense of who is living in what neighbourhood. Leveraging that in-depth knowledge of your local market could reap some big benefits for your business. If you want to take a more scientific approach, the Statistics Canada (www.statcan.ca) website has a wealth of information about different communities and demographic trends.

They aren’t all living at home
One interesting revelation from StatsCan is that people under 39 are much more likely to own their own home if they live in a rural area or a small town, compared to those who live in an urban centre. Of those who are out of their parent’s house, three-quarters said that owning their own home was important to them.

New groups, new opportunities
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world settle in Canada each year, bringing with them tastes and design preferences that are quite different from our average Canadian baseline. Good. This means you have an opportunity to become recognized in an ethnic community as a supplier that understands its needs and carries the products and services it wants. Let’s look at two examples.
According to Statistics Canada, Lebanese immigrants tend to be younger than the average Canadian, with most of them falling into the 25- to 34-year-old range. Their incomes tend to be a little lower than the Canadian norm. However, they are more likely to be married and more likely to have university and post-graduate degrees, and they are more likely than most Canadians to work in scientific and technical occupations.
So a picture begins to emerge: young, married people without much money right now, but positioned to become high wage-earners in the future. Can you say: future homeowner? A supplier who gets in on the ground floor with young Lebanese couples buying their first houses may be looking at multiple repeat sales over the years as their families and incomes grow.

So how can you appeal to the Lebanese market? First, there’s location. Statistics Canada locates the greatest concentrations of Lebanese people in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Second, you could educate yourself on the styles and materials that are common in the Middle East, and make some attempt to carry those products. A quick glance at some Lebanese interior design websites shows an affinity for large, ornate, area rugs over red-toned wood flooring and creamy marbled tile. Tile/wood combinations seem popular, as is patterned wood flooring.
Another group worthy of consideration is the Chinese. They are now the largest non-European ethnic group in Canada and, like the Lebanese, growing at a rate that far exceeds the overall growth in the population. They tend to be younger, married and have university degrees. They are concentrated in Toronto and Vancouver. They are even more likely than the Lebanese to work in scientific or technical fields.
Designers point to the simplicity and minimalism of Asian interiors, with understated, monochrome features. Polished black wood is favoured for flooring, on earth-toned tile with no bright colours or patterns. Texture is important, and Chinese design often incorporates heavy wool rugs. Red is considered a lucky colour in China, and gold accents are common throughout most of Asia.

Target idealism
Aside from age and ethnic background, markets can also be segmented along philosophical and political lines. People who think in similar ways will tend to buy in similar ways, so market strategies appealing to certain ideals or perceptions of value have a chance to differentiate you from the mass of competitors.
The Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) group is perhaps somewhat different, in that it is a market segment aware of its own existence and now consciously trying to increase its membership and encourage its members to apply their principles to their purchasing decisions. LOHAS is focused on health, the environment and social justice. Their goal is to further these ideals through “conscious commerce,” that is, keeping their principles in mind when selecting products. Therefore, a product that contains toxins or is manufactured with environmentally unfriendly processes or made by a company that displaces aboriginal tribes is going to be avoided by this group, even if that means paying more. Approaching this group, which tends to be well off, by the way, is going to require that you show how healthy, ethical and environmentally friendly you are.

One way to advertise your environmental and social justice credentials is to seek environmental accreditation. A number of groups are surfacing, offering certification. Certification means that the materials in your products have come from a certified forestry or other raw materials program, which means that they were harvested without having an impact on important conservation areas or resorting to environmentally destructive practices. The certification process tracks the materials through all stages of manufacturing to ensure they aren’t mixed with uncertified products at any time. In short, if you have certified products, your customers can claim they are not contributing to the destruction of the environment.
The cost of certification varies, but it is often too high for individual small businesses to carry. However, sometimes groups of small companies can join together to obtain group chain-of-custody certification, effectively sharing the cost and allowing all group members to claim approval for their products.

It is almost like reading a non-discrimination policy in reverse: if you base a targeted marketing program with an eye toward age, sex, belief system or ethnicity, you may be providing that extra bit of service your customers will appreciate and approve.