EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – WOOD & LAMINATE
Neel Bradham, CEO of Parador, talks about how important the relationship is between his company and installers in the UK and the company’s next-generation floor that stands for progress, sustainability and strong design performance
How central is the flooring contractor to your thinking at Parador?
They’re absolutely critical. At the end of the day, our product doesn’t look that impressive sitting in a box. It only really comes to life when it’s installed properly.
We can talk all we want about design – and we do have a strong design ethos, with in-house teams around the world thinking about aesthetics and holistic concepts – but none of that matters if the person laying the floor can’t execute it. That final stage, that ‘last foot’ of the journey, is everything. It’s where the designer’s vision becomes reality, and that’s entirely in the hands of the contractor.
How are you planning to reengage the trade more directly?
We’re putting more focus back into it.
We’re planning a dealer training programme – or ‘dealer’ is the term we tend to use in the US – to bring installers in and actually walk them through the product properly. That includes installation techniques, practical tips, and the small things that make a big difference onsite.
We’re looking at doing that online and in person, working with partners in the UK and potentially bringing groups to Germany, where our closest major facility is. We’re also exploring sessions in our London showroom and other industry spaces.
What’s the main objective of that training approach?
It’s about confidence and capability. Many installers in commercial environments are used to carpet tile or different systems, and they don’t always have deep experience with wood or engineered products. So there’s a learning curve. We want to bridge that gap – give them the tools, the shortcuts, the ‘trade tricks’ that make installation smoother and more efficient.
Beyond training, what does a ‘good partner’ look like for Parador?
A good partner is someone we can rely on – but just as importantly, someone who knows they can rely on us. We want preferred installers who understand our systems, know how to work with our products, and crucially, know who to call when something goes wrong. That support network is everything. If a contractor can pick up the phone and say, ‘I need help,’ and know someone like David Domiecki at Parador will respond and solve it – that’s where real trust is built.
Because when you have strong partners and a strong network, you can handle almost anything that comes up onsite.
What’s the core message you want to get across to the trade?
It’s simple: we’re here, and we’re here to stay. We want to do business with contractors, not around them. But that message has to be consistent. One challenge in the UK market over the past 10–15 years is that Parador hasn’t always been consistent – sometimes we’ve been very present, sometimes not. Sometimes we’ve had a team in market, sometimes we haven’t. Sometimes we’ve had a showroom, sometimes not.
That inconsistency creates doubt. And in this industry, trust is everything. You don’t just arrive and expect it. You earn it over time.
Why now?
We’ve made a clear decision to plant a flag in the UK and stay. That’s the commitment.
But now we have to back that up with consistency – in people, in presence, and in messaging. When I looked at Parador as a brand, what stood out to me was it already had strong recognition for design and product performance. The foundation is there.
Now it’s about reinforcing that, staying present in the market and ensuring the trade knows we’re serious.
You mentioned consistency – how important is it for Parador to actually ‘earn’ trust in the market?
You’ve got to earn it, and you’ve got to do it every day. Parador has been doing that for over 50 years in many respects, and I think that foundation is absolutely there. But in the UK specifically, we need to be far more consistent in how we show up and communicate that message.
It’s not enough for me to sit here and say, ‘we care about flooring contractors’ – that has to be backed up in the market, every day, in a visible way. Otherwise it’s just words.
Consistency is about behaviour as much as messaging. We need to make sure the trade community feels genuinely valued. And if they don’t feel that, I want to know about it directly. I mean that seriously – pick up the phone and call me. I’ll absolutely be in your corner. That doesn’t mean every claim we see is automatically our fault – we’re still running a business and we have to assess things properly. But what I don’t ever want is for installers to feel like they’re less important than architects, designers, sustainability consultants, or any other part of the chain.
That’s not how we see it at all.
Is that something you feel the industry sometimes gets wrong?
Sometimes, yes. And I’ll be honest – sometimes we don’t ‘act right’, as we might say where I’m from in the south. It’s important we correct that. Because the trade is absolutely central to how this industry functions.
What does closer collaboration with the trade look like in practice?
There’s a saying – ‘when you sweat together, you stick together’. Something like that.
And I don’t think we’ve sweated enough with the flooring contractor. We haven’t really co-developed with them in the way we should. We haven’t consistently gone to them early and said, ‘What do you think about this?’ That’s a gap.
So what needs to change operationally?
A lot, actually. Customer service needs to be available outside standard working hours. Teams need the authority to make decisions on the spot – not escalate everything.
If a decision needs to be made within a certain value threshold, they should be able to make it in the customer’s interest without delay.
The same goes for logistics and finance. People need the freedom to release goods, even in situations where credit limits might technically be exceeded, if it’s the right thing for the customer and the project.
That sounds like a big cultural shift.
It is. It’s about moving decision-making to the ‘point of attack’ – where the customer interaction actually happens. That’s where things need to be solved, not three layers up in the organisation. And once you start doing that, you quickly realise how important the flooring contractor actually is in shaping how the whole system should work.
Is the ‘last mile’ really where the biggest opportunity is for Parador now?
Yes, absolutely. And yes, we’ve had to build capability around that as well. But I think the biggest pain point – and the biggest opportunity – is in that last mile, which is the flooring contractor.
That’s where we’re now really focused. And I’d genuinely like to hear more from them. I really would. I’d even like to do a Teams roundtable, or a session in a showroom, or something similar, where we can just ask: what are your biggest challenges right now?
Is labour an issue? How do you need to be trained? How should a brand actually be helping solve your problems? That’s the key question for me – how does a brand genuinely participate in solving the problems of the flooring contractor?
What do you think they actually need from you beyond price and product?
Price, quality, on-time delivery – we all know those matter. But you can give someone ‘cheap as chips’ pricing, as you might say in the UK, and still fail them on service. So it’s about balance. We need to understand what they need from us, and they also need to understand what we need from them.
And ultimately, it’s about mindset. We should see the flooring contractor less as a customer and more as a teammate. That’s the shift. Because you don’t let your teammate down.
What does ‘treating them like a teammate’ mean to you?
It’s really about relationships. That’s the core of it. We want to create a space where we can listen properly to what they need, but also where they feel comfortable telling us what those needs are. We won’t always be able to solve everything, but it has to be a two-way relationship.
That sounds like a shift in mindset as much as process.
It is. I often say it’s like any relationship – whether it’s a friend, a partner, or family. You have to understand what the other person needs.
What’s your ‘love language’, so to speak? What actually makes you feel supported? Is it pricing? Is it service? Is it responsiveness? Is it technical support? Because for some contractors, it’s one thing. For others, it’s something completely different.
www.parador-interiors.com
