Amazing Finishes…from Olympic Gold to Xtreme WRT

Last night watching the Olympics, one of our team members started thinking about “amazing finishes.” Competition for Olympic gold creates some amazing finishes, like the US win in the 100 x 4 freestyle relay. This come-from-behind win, if you watched it, was truly a site to behold. Results from the official Olympic website state, “In one of the all-time great relay swims, the United States overhauled the French team in the shadows of the finish line to complete a stunning Men’s 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay win on Monday, smashing the world record by nearly four seconds in the process.”

Granted, the connection between the men’s 100 x 4 freestyle relay finish and our Xtreme WRT cork oak flooring finish is quite a leap, but we decided to make it anyway. When the word ‘amazing’ comes to mind, both of these achievements take center stage. Excellence sustains us, strengthens us, and supports us. These “amazing finishes” remind us that what we do today to reach our goals, and achieve our dreams, inspires others to make their own unique contributions for generations to come.

We hope you saw our post on Xtreme WRT (our amazing finish!), and if you get a chance, you may want to check out this (and other…) Olympic finishes as well.

From our team, to all the winning Olympic teams in Beijing…
Congratulations!

Team Wicanders

(L-R) Garrett Weber-Gale, Jason Lezak, Michael Phelps and Cullen Jones celebrate. (Photo credit: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

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The Mighty Penny—A Lesson in Conservation & Sustainability

Walking over the Mississippi River bridge from Rock Island, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa in the dead of winter with the wind blowing in your face at 25 knots or more isn’t exactly pleasant. For the lack of one shiny penny, a person dear to us tells the story of why she always stops to pick up a stray penny. Seems bus fare across the bridge was one penny more than she had that winter morning many years ago. So she walked to her job and never again turned a cold shoulder to bending down and picking up the pennies so many people simply ignore. Valuable lesson indeed.

“Penny, penny, bring me luck. I’m the one who picked you up,” is a childhood chant repeated hundreds of times over the years in our friend’s household, and at the NeoCon show held recently in Chicago, Illinois, the shiny penny once again took center stage at our Wicanders Cork Oak Floor display. Simple as it may seem, the Xtreme WRT finish that protects and enhances our floors does an amazing job of shinning dirty, old, forgotten pennies into their once pristine copper beauty.

Imagine taking the edge of a penny and scratching it across the surface of a cork oak floor, again and again, using as much elbow grease as you can muster. Imagine if you did the same thing to a recently installed hardwood floor. That’s just what our R&D professionals did at the show to demonstrate the benefits of our WRT finish. To us, the results are still amazing, even though we’ve seen the demo a lot.

Our Xtreme WRT finish contains tiny ceramic micro beads. When the penny is rubbed along this surface, all its accumulated dirt, grime, oxidation and years of residue is transformed into a powdery substance that is simply brushed off the floor with the quick swipe of a tissue. Our cork oak floors remained untouched…no scratches, no scuffs, no anything. Attendees at NeoCon couldn’t believe what they had just seen. As you might imagine, the hardwood floor—put to the same test—had a “hard” time, and wound up with enough scratches to call in the refinishers.

So, you may wonder what this Xtreme WRT surface feels like, and if it takes away from the natural beauty of the cork oak. Although it is the strongest varnish ever produced, Wicanders cork oak floors remain soft and velvety warm to the touch, unlike the typically slippery and cold aspect provided by usual floor varnishes.

If you are a frequent visitor to our blog, you already know about the environmentally-friendly properties of cork oak, and how the Montado cork oak forests are crucial in minimizing the world’s ecological footprint by the rentention of nearly 4.8 million tons of the world’s CO2 each year. Now you also know that Wicanders cork oak floors with WRT will most likely last for generations, as will our shiny penny story and childhood penny chant.

Let us hear what you think about the penny test. And remember to pick up and conserve the stray pennies you come across each day. They may save you some serious walking.

Until next time…
Team Wicanders

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