2022 has been a year of growth and innovation for our team. From collaboration on new and exciting partnerships to developing soon-to-be-released announcements, we’re looking forward to 2023 with enthusiasm. I want to take this opportunity to thank you personally for being part of the Life Floor story and for your commitment to making aquatics a space for people of all ages and abilities to enjoy.
This year, our team celebrated the following top highlights:
We celebrated our 2021 Make a SPLASH! Grant Contest Winner at the grand re-opening of Wells Park Splash Pad in Albuquerque, New Mexico this Summer.
We announced Splash Island at Sammy Haggard Park in Danielsville, Georgia as the winner of the 3rd annual Make a SPLASH! Grant Contest co-hosted by our Preferred Installation Partner, Inside Edge Safety Surfaces. This Grant Contest enables us to give back to deserving communities in need of safety surfacing.
We announced a new partnership with Waterplay by MAKR.
We received a Leading Edge award from WWA for Aqua Nick at Nickelodeon Riviera Maya. Baha Bay at Baha Mar also received a Leading Edge Award.
Life Floor was named as the Floor Covering Supplier by Aquatics International for two Dream Design Award-winning waterparks in 2022 at Baha Bay at Baha Mar and Atlantis Dubai Aquaventure.
We led educational speaking sessions at WWA, NRPA, and GRPA trade shows with topics including design, safety, and accessibility.
Numerous partners represented Life Floor in their trade show booths this year including: Inside Edge Safety Surfaces, Martin Aquatic Design and Engineering, Waterplay, WhiteWater, Paddock, Daldorado, Aquatic Design Group, Rain Drop Products, and Prairie Surfaces. Thank you to all for recommending our safety surfacing.
We released 120 new standard Inlay shapes to significantly expand our Inlay Library and provide new theming and design possibilities.
We launched our new Designed for Play Brochure and Lookbook Volume 9.
The list of countries featuring Life Floor grew including our first installations in Anguilla, Czech Republic, Egypt, Grand Cayman, Qatar, and Switzerland.
We were recognized by the USDA this year following our growth and development after receiving two of their grants in 2015. These funds enabled our company to transition manufacturing from Vietnam to South Dakota, allowing us to proudly state that Life Floor is Made in the USA for western hemisphere projects.
We collaborated with Ka’ana Wave Co. and Daldorado on Ka’ana’s first pop-up surf park in Britannia Beach, BC, Canada.
We saw our Cruise line customers return to business in earnest which saw us doing work with 7 different brands in 2022.
We manufactured over 150,000 Life Floor tiles (600,000 sq ft/55,740 sq m) between South Dakota and China!
We have some exciting news to come in 2023. Keep an eye out for milestone projects, new partnerships, and product updates!
Thank you again to all of our vendors, partners, and clients for working alongside us in 2022. We look forward to partnering with you next year as we further our mission to make aquatic facilities safer, more beautiful, and more accessible for all people.
Warmly,
Jonathan Keller | CEO of Life Floor
It’s been a strange spring so far, with most of our favorite outdoor activities put on hold, cancelled, or otherwise changed to create safer spaces for the world at large. So it only makes sense as we spend time in the Great Indoors that we at Life Floor decided it was time to work on our Great American Injury Mystery Novel (an injury mystery is like a murder mystery except far less grim).
We’re flooring experts, not novelists, but we think we may have something here...
Our Cast of Criminals:
The Slippery Sir Amic, tiling on problems and never quite knowing what people are going on a-grout.
The Poor Ian Place, always falling apart at the last minute, a softer touch than most to be sure, but can’t handle the heat.
The abrasive con, Crete, has fallen on hard times. She’s a slippery character and tends to let her experiences stain her perspective, and it always seems like she’s everywhere.
Something always happens after days like these. Folks go out into this whole soaked world and think that they can get away with anything. It’s all fun and games until someone, somewhere, slips up and takes the fall.
That’s where a guy like me comes in. See, I’m a Private Investigator getting to the bottom of this city’s grittiest crimes and slipperiest criminals. Folks call me when they want somebody in their corner to help them get a grip in this crazy mixed up town. What can I say? I’m a softy, especially when somebody’s been dealt a tough break.
After somebody gets hurt, folks like to call me and see if I can get to the bottom of it. I’ve done work all over this city, everything from the top of the tallest stair tower all the way to the full bottom of the slide. It’s dirty work, but a guy like me? I don’t let it get to me. When the world tries to grind me into the pavement, I always get right back up.
Another day, another injury. Time to get to work.
---
The first door I knocked on was one of the folks who seemed to be everywhere in this city. Crete was a con-woman to be sure, abrasive at her best, and able to slide right out from under anyone’s watchful gaze. But she’s been a good source to me before, so I swung by one of her old haunts.
These days I was starting to see some cracks in her slick armor. She’d fallen on hard times before and again, and she had a habit of letting one or two bad spills stain her for good. Didn’t help she was hanging out with a new crowd. Some team over from across the pond, a lowlife calling himself Sir Amic, if you’d believe it. Seems like he never knew what people were going on a-grout, and boy he made a picture.
”Look what square the cat dragged in, if we don’t have Lyle F. Floor. What sort of angle are you working at today?” She said, straight to the point like gravel in your shoe. So I did her the same favor and pulled a picture out of my pocket of the crime scene. “Do you know anything about this? Kid took a dive at the aquatic center over at 4th and 9th. Fell for the water in all the wrong ways if you catch my drift.”
She took a look at the photo with her grey eyes - a con like Crete had seen all kinds of things in her day. Bumps, bruises, abrasions like she was fixing to give sandpaper a run for its money. Sure enough she didn’t bat an eye and played hard ball, “Looks like an everyday accident, Detective. I would let this one slip you by, you wouldn’t want your agency to hit a rough patch.”
Now, I’m not the kind of guy who takes a dive for anybody, and anybody who knows me can say I stick to something like glue when I get a lead on it. I took a look at the photo and saw some telltale signs of rubber pellets around the corners. An unintentional calling card from another old rogue. Chances are if he’s leaving a mess, he’s down on his luck again. Looks like poor Ian Place is probably up to his old tricks again and falling apart on the job. I’d have to take a turn around the city and see where he’d gotten caught up this time. He wasn’t that bad of a guy in the right situations, but when he got in over his head you’d see the breakdown for years.
“I’ll be seeing you around, Crete.” I said.
“Oh, I’m set on that.” She said, closing the door, “I’m everywhere.”
This was fun, but we should probably just stick to making safety surfaces for aquatic facilities… Happy April Fool’s Day!
2019 is all about the Product Hack: How can you use everyday items in astonishing and unexpected ways. If you’re anything like us then you probably have RACKS on RACKS of impervious, slip-resistant, impact cushioned pool tile just covering every inch of your office. We’re here to help with some Hot Tips for your cool floor:
While there are many lessons that can be learned from the Red Delicious, the lesson we’d like to focus on is when a product becomes the default for the wrong reasons. The best selling fruit should not, as The Atlantic put it, become “the largest compost-maker in the country.” [x] (My family used to go apple picking in the Hudson Valley every year. We never touched the things. Go for Empires or Honeycrisps. - Ed.)
Tiles Produced in Madison: 30,545
Last July set us off to a relatively modest start as just 12 tiles were sold off the line -- though there were numerous trials being run at the same time -- but the pace has picked up nicely as we sold more than 5,000 tiles produced at Falcon in June, 2016. Those 30,545 tiles translate to more than 60,000 linear feet or more than 200 football fields, and they’ve ended up all over the world. From the decks of Carnival cruise ships and waterparks in Dubai to the Florida Aquarium and a splash pad in Tennessee, Life Floor tiles have ended up in a huge variety of places.