Today it seems that it’s necessary to describe in great detail the specifications of any product that you’re trying to market. You’ll see a specifications sheet somewhere in the literature of almost anything in the health and fitness market, along with testing results from an outside party. I suspect for most of us, we run across the specifications sheet and our eyes immediately glaze over. That sheet is subsequently shuffled to the back of the pile of material and we focus on the photos of the product and its unique benefits. After all, what do specifications really tell you?
Well, we do need to address them, as much as both manufacturers and customers tend to have distaste for them. For architects, they’re necessary to show clients that the product is appropriate for the use they are recommending. For installers, they lay out precise installation guidelines necessary for the product to perform at its best. For manufacturers, it is a protection that lays out the best way for the product to be installed, and used, so that if a problem appears down the road and the recommendations of the specifications have not been met, the manufacturer is not culpable for any resultant damages. For the customer, it is protection as well: ensuring that the manufacturer, installer, and architect have all done their jobs; that the product is safe for the use intended, and that they too are protected should the product fail or be installed incorrectly.
Every manufacturer will also reveal the testing that has been done on the product and who conducted this testing. This gives the specifications validity, since they can show that an objective third party has been able to back up the properties that the manufacturers report the product to have. The chief testing bodies are: the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and, especially in the sports flooring arena, Duetsches Institut fur Normung, or DIN Testing.
Both organizations are highly regarded. ASTM is best known in this country and they were originally founded over 100 years ago when a number of engineers came together to address the breakage of railroad tracks. They created standards for steel used in tracks and have since developed standards for thousands of materials in various trades. DIN Testing was developed at the Otto Graf Institute, which is affiliated with the University of Stuttgart in Germany, and they too have thousands of standards for products as diverse as electrical wiring and machine lubricants. Both organizations are well respected and passing their tests indicates that a manufacturer’s product is safe and effective for its intended use.
Interestingly, this testing is also used as a sales tool. In fact, the very introduction of the DIN standards to the United States in the sports flooring field was exclusively done to create a unique selling proposition that no other manufacturer would have. In the early 1980s, DIN Testing was imported here for a sports floor that was manufactured in Europe. Since the manufacturer was European, they naturally had their product tested using the nearest lab and the one they were most familiar with, which was at the Otto Graf Institute. When the product was imported, the company cleverly realized that they had a unique advantage over competitors, as their flooring had passed testing that few had ever even heard of in the United States. In the sales process, if a customer was weighing the advantages between two products the sales people would casually ask if the competitive product was DIN approved, which of course it would not be, causing doubt about the safety of every other competitor’s product.
DIN Standards typically are made up of a number of individual tests. A product can pass some, or not all, of the tests, but they can indicate that they have been DIN tested. Some manufacturers have lines of products in which some of their products meet the DIN standards and some do not. Often they will point to the systems that pass the DIN standards and hope that the client will believe that all of their systems pass all of the standards, when in fact, the system that they select may not.
What does all this mean to you? Well, more than anything else, testing under any standards indicates that the manufacturer has spent the money and time ensuring that its product is approved by an impartial agency, regardless of whether it’s DIN or ASTM. I’d encourage you not to get bogged down in these details, since there are few manufacturers today who can not show test results from one or both of these groups.
Manufacturers want to manufacture safe and effective equipment that will serve their intended purpose and last for years. If a salesperson asks you to consider the testing aspects, I wouldn’t spend much time researching who has been tested for what, but rather ask the competitive manufacturer for references for the equipment you’re considering purchasing. If you find that the references are all pleased with the performance and safety of the equipment, then you have all the answers you really need.
Steve Chase is the General Manager of Fitness Flooring. He can be contacted at 866.735.5113, or by email atsales@fitnessfloors.com, or visit www.fitnessfloors.com.
