Frasers of Ellon, Aberdeenshire were the first retailer to receive our new updated wall units. The units have been recently redesigned to lower overall weight and incorporate more uniformity amongst our POS.
Frasers also put a piece of Fine Worcester Twist FW118 Stildon Sky down in front of the stands, as well as a full Mood Board unit.
The overall effect is stunning.
Adam Carpets sent a team to the 60th Kidderminster Golf Day, a two day event with a competition on both days, organised by the carpet industry to raise money for local charities. This year was the 60th anniversary and the two days were extremely well attended including an evening meal which saw 126 sit down to dine.
The meal also included an auction and it was hoped that £15,000 would be raised over the course of the event.
Opportunistic as ever, our team was called ‘Fine Worcester 25′, just in case it had escaped anyone that we are celebrating 25 years of Fine Worcester this year.
Left to Right: Eamonn Prescott (Sales Director), Alan Folwell (Chairman), Tony Cook (Commercial Manager) and Tony Quinn (Operations Director)
Our thanks to East Coast Carpets of Louth for these wonderful images of our Catherine range installed onto one of their clients staircases.
Our thanks to Fludes for their use of our Mood Boards in their window in Beales of Bournemouth.
Beales are located right in the centre of the seaside town and the boards were certainly making an impact as shoppers stopped to view them.
If you have any window displays or room sets that you would like us to feature in our newsletter, then please feel free to send them to us at info@adamcarpets.com.
All newsletters are tweeted out via our Twitter feed. We can also use the images on our Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter social media outlets and you will always get a credit.
Adam Carpets stripes collections are still proving popular. This month we had installations sent to us by Hart Carpets of Hartley Witney in Hampshire and also by Bridge Street Flooring of Buckingham. Our thanks to them for these wonderful images.
Hart’s used our VS03 from our Revelation range which is pictured first, whilst Bridge Street used SK30 Pistachio from our ever popular Kasbah Stripe, pictured below.
Visitors to our stand at the show received a treat when they were able to view all 126 colours that had passed through Fine Worcester in one place. We were able to track down all of our A4 folders and launch cards from 1991 and an impressive display they made.
Followers of us on Facebook and Twitter will know that the marathon task of posting and tweeting every single colour we ever did has begun, but seeing them all together brought a lot interest and some surprise at how the colours had changed over the years and how some colours had come back in very similar shades.
All 126 colours that have graced the Fine Worcester colourbank were on display at the show for the first time ever in public
Our stand this year featured a new wall display which was commissioned to celebrate the 25 years anniversary. The display featured all the features and benefits that one associates with Fine Worcester Twist plus quotes from retailers about its quality and why they like it so much.
Also on the display was a brief timeline out lining the history of Fine Worcester and some of its more notable moments. The five points were:
May 1991 – Fine Worcester Twist is launched with 20 initial colours
May 2002 – An additional 14 colours were added to the range bringing the number of colours up to 65 (the same number as today)
June 2006 – Fine Worcester Twist FW52 is installed into the main parliament buildings in Stockholm on behalf of the Swedish government. At 2,994 sq/m it remains the largest single installation of Fine Worcester anywhere in the world.
February 2015 – Adam Carpets introduce the ‘Hugo & Ella’ collection for Fine Worcester Twist. This is the first time any new launch of colours has been done as a named collection. The response is amazing. The themes are ‘Blues & Pinks’ and are also named as Pantones ‘Colours of the Year for 2016′ some ten months later.
May 2016 – Fine Worcester Twist celebrates 25 years of successful production.
There are of course many, many more memorable milestones which we will touch on over the next couple of months.
A brief timeline on our wall display proved an interesting read for visitors to the stand
The Buying Group National Floor Show (BGNFS) took place at Solihull recently. Mixed weather did not deter members from attending and we saw retailers from all the buying groups on our stand.
There’s no doubt what the main attraction was and that was the amazing carpet put together by Tony Cook and Lee Harrison. Each letter was cut by hand, as was the ‘FW25′ logo. The result was a stunning border to our stand celebrating the 25 years of Fine Worcester.
In all 36 of the 65 current colours were used including all 11 of the original 20 that are still active today.
Last month saw Part 1 of our interview with former Sales Director, Jim Bennett and David Adam regarding the launch of Fine Worcester Twist 25 years ago. This month, Jim tells us how the name and colours were decided upon.
Q. With the construction decided upon, how did you go about deciding on the name ‘Fine Worcester Twist’ and the initial colour bank?
JB: “Hilary Terry (Designer) and I got to know the dyer at Walter Walker very well. We were doing lots of colour trials, at least four at a time. I’m not sure how many we did, but it was a lot!
We were lucky as Hilary and I both had the same appreciation of colour and we knew that we wanted colour to be a cornerstone of the range. Many of the initial colours came from the environment, fabrics and fashions. I believe that is still the case today. We were determined not to be swayed by other peoples ranges.
The name “Fine” came from two sources. One from the yarn as it was a ‘superfine’ yarn and the second because it resonated quality as in ‘Fine Bone China’. The “Worcester” element was simply taken from the city in our county. It is one of the finest in England, so it made sense to use it.
Q. The colour names have become almost as famous as Fine Worcester itself. How did they come about?
JB: The idea behind the names is a little less conventional I’m afraid. I got the idea from a Worcestershire directory I found in The Fruiterers Arms in the village of Ombersley where I lived at the time. I liked the idea of the village or town name followed by a colour starting with the same letter, for example Grafton Gold. We started with twenty colours, little did I know the legacy for naming that I left behind for Hilary!”
Q. With the range launched in May 1991, what sort of impact did Fine Worcester have?
JB: “Well it just took off. Both David and I were delighted that the retailers could see the quality of the carpet and that the public seemed to love it also. We had always planned to introduce new colours every season at Harrogate. By 1993 we had launched a further six colours and by 1998 we were up to forty. The colours increased with the demand for the product.
We also around this time realised that two-ply yarn was growing in popularity. Our other big range at the time was Castlemead Twist which was launched just after Fine Worcester. It was originally a singles range. We then changed it to a two-ply and our reputation for quality products was further enhanced.
I loved being involved with Fine Worcester Twist. In my opinion it is one of the finest, if not the finest, twist pile carpet on the market.”
Our thanks to Jim and Mr Adam for fascinating insight into the launch of Fine Worcester Twist.
Next month we will review the rapid increase in the number of colours to 65 and what colours shaped the turning of the millennium.
Thank you also to all the readers of this newsletter who have taken the time to either write or talk to us about this feature and especially Part 1 of the interview with Jim. We are influenced every day here by Fine Worcester and to receive such appreciation and interest shows how much it means to our customers as well.
Hilary Terry, the designer behind the most famous colourbank in the carpet industry. Pictured here with Tony Hardwick and Jim Bennett, both former Sales Directors at Jim’s retirement dinner.
Jim Bennett was one of the most well known names in the carpet industry during the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. He is probably best known for his roles as Sales Director of Quayle Carpets and then Adam Carpets. Jim retired after a successful 18 years at Adam Carpets in 2001. A period which saw the launch of Fine Worcester, Castlemead Twist and Kasbah Twist
Jim still keeps in touch with us here at Adam Carpets and we were delighted when he took the time to come in and talk about the idea behind Fine Worcester Twist and how it started and then evolved during the 90’s.
David Adam was the third generation of his family to own and run Adam Carpets. He oversaw the change from woven to tufted production and introduced such innovative and popular ranges such as Natural Perceptions, Inspirations and Kasbah Twist.
Q. How did the idea for Fine Worcester Twist come about?
JB: “When I first came to Adam Carpets we were in the process of switching from woven axminsters to tufted carpet. David Adam could see that tufted carpets were becoming more and more popular and he had invested in new tufted machinery.
David and I wanted to make a real ‘heavyweight’ twist and in those days forty ounces a square yard was considered heavy domestic. We therefore came up with the idea of a forty-six ounce carpet which we felt could more than rival ‘Super Charter’ from Wilton Royal and ‘Saxon’ from Quayles. We made it eighth (1/8th) gauge as opposed to five thirty seconds (5/32nd) which the others were using.
The carpet was incredibly popular. It was actually named it after my house, it was called ‘Uplands’ Twist. It was of course the fore runner to “Fine” Uplands Twist, which came later. David and I then decided that we wanted to make what we thought, in our opinion, would be the best wool twist carpet available. The idea for Fine Worcester Twist was born.”
DA: “Jim and I were in agreement that the new range had to be, in our view, better than any other twist on the market. The first thing was to decide on the construction of the carpet. Most twist ranges then, and now, use one staggered needle bar. This has just one feed going into it. This can mean that less yarn is going into the back needles in the bar than the front. The pile is therefore a little lower at the back than at the front of the bar. Whilst the difference is then sheared off to make it level, we didn’t like that. We didn’t want the machine telling us what we could do, we wanted to tell the machine what to do.
From that came the decision to use two straight needle bars, one in front of the other. This way we could have two feeds going in, one in each bar, where we could control the height of the yarn at the tufting stage. This is what gives Fine Worcester its famous smooth finish. To do this properly though you have to have the right quality yarn. So we had the machine, now we had to get the right yarn.”
JB: “The machine to make Fine Worcester is far more expensive than a normal staggered needle bar machine. Once we had decided to invest, it made sense to ensure that the quality of the carpet would match the quality of the machine. We then undertook to source the finest quality yarn we could.
The machine would be tenth gauge (1/10th) and we had to make sure the yarn would be ‘fine’ enough to get the finish we wanted. It had to be able to retain the twist, which others were finding difficult. The yarn was going to be one of the keys to its success.
David and I visited five different spinners in Yorkshire. In the end we opted for Walter Walker. We were very insistent that the yarn ‘had to be right’. The carpet we would be making was going to be fifty ounces a square yard with a low pile height. The weight would come from the number of tufts per square inch we could put in. We wanted that to be more than anyone else could do on a twist carpet.
At the very start we bought the yarn in dyed. Eventually we would control all the dyeing ourselves.”
With the construction of the carpet set and the yarn agreed, the task of choosing the colours began in earnest.
Next month in Part 2, Jim talks about how the colours were chosen, how the colour names were decided upon and the impact Fine Worcester had on its release.
The men behind Fine Worcester Twist and it’s success. Designer, Hilary Terry was also instrumental with her amazing colourbank.
Back from left to right: Mr Tony Hardwick (Sales Director 1995-2010),
Mr Jim Bennett (Sales Director & Consultant Director 1983-2001)
Front: Mr David Adam (Managing Director until 2007)
