Being a reputable wood floor manufacturer across Europe, RIVA floors is zealous to deliver the finest quality, spectacular designs, and elegant colors of engineered hardwood flooring, with its core competence and 85 years of excellence in the engineering of luxurious and 100% unique European oak flooring. RIVA is recognized for breathing life into residential and commercial spaces with its supreme quality hardwood flooring having absolute perfection. The family business of RIVA floors dates back to 1937 when they initiated a small workshop in Vigo, Northern Spain. Spanning over four generations, today RIVA floors has massively flourished into a giant hardwood flooring manufacturer that has pioneered to sell European engineering hardwood floors in the United States.
The CEO of RIVA, Borja Iglesias, is all set to transform the engineered hardwood flooring industry in the United States with his vision and the knowledge that he has inherited from the past four generations of Iglesias under the brand name, RIVA. With a passion to overcome the supply shortages of birch affecting the entire engineered hardwood market across the globe, triggering irregular price hikes due to war in Eastern Europe—RIVA has come up with a splendid substitute to birch that is exotic teak. The main suppliers of birch plywood cores —Russia and Ukraine—have completely disappeared from the supply chain, causing a shortage of supplies of hardwood flooring.
“From the moment that we saw our birch supply was being compromised due to the situation in Eastern Europe, we conducted a series of tests that measured resistance to moisture, temperature changes, stress, and durability.”, Iglesias described. “From these tests, we determined that teak was the optimal species to use for RIVA Core, even outperforming the Baltic birch plywood.”
There are sophisticated quality checks at every step to preserve the tradition of commitment to supplying superior quality hardwood flooring, following the footprints of its founders and ancestors. From the choice of raw material to the delivery of the flooring—RIVA takes pride in following the highest quality control standards for smooth quality assurance at every stage of the hardwood flooring production process.
RIVA’s hardwood flooring offers the luxury of experience connecting to nature with the highest quality of wooden flooring. The innovation in design makes the hardwood flooring absolutely timeless while the warm, neutral, and cool undertones of natural wood are channeled to add an aesthetic appeal to any space —residential or commercial.
The CEO added, “Switching to teak ensures our hardwood engineered floors achieve upgrades in strength, durability, and resistance as well as design advantages,” said Iglesias. “We were using birch plywood, but due to the war in Eastern Europe, we don’t want to use it anymore. Thanks to the amount of wood that we have in the factory that we have amassed over the years, we were able to test the characteristics of different species. We decided to go with exotic teak based on its density, strength, and weight. It makes for a more stable and more sustainable product.”
Introducing the latest RIVA Core —a reformed version of RIVA’s engineered hardwood flooring— that employs teak for the core material to project the company’s decades-long manufacturing expertise and excellence. It’s a new launch at RIVA featuring hardwood flooring construction with three-ply, having the European white oak as the top layer, the middle layer having new exotic teak, and the bottom layer having European pine. “As a family-owned business passionate about elegance, quality, design, and empowering our growing clientele, it is an honor to bring RIVA Core and an exclusive raw material like exotic teak to market,” said Borja Iglesias. Teak makes the engineered hardwood flooring more robust, enduring, and highly resistant to the external environment as well as adding more luxury to the space.
RIVA ensures a stable supply of hardwood flooring at comparatively stable prices with its large inventory of wood species —including oak, maple, ash, teak, pine, walnut, etc.— that their ancestors have built up over the course of decades and due to which RIVA doesn’t need to cut the living trees.
“Right now we have 20 million square feet of exotic teak in stock at the factory,” Iglesias claims. “We don’t need to bring any more material in the near future. More importantly, we will be able to guarantee the price for the next year. This will provide some stability in a volatile market.”
The CEO of RIVA, Borja Iglesias
At RIVA, environmental protection and sustainability are very serious concerns, for which they take commendable initiatives and ensure compliance with the strictest environmental standards set by FSC (Forest Stewardship Council). For this, they keep their practices sustainable enough —across each step of production— to be aligned with the goals of global environment protection authorities. RIVA is globally recognized as an environmental-friendly company through various certifications for causing little or no emission at all, no health hazards, and no volatile organic compounds. Its products are acknowledged and declared safe to use indoors.
Iglesias claims, “Sustainability has always been a priority for RIVA, as all our current products (European oak, Baltic birch, pine, and teak) are 100 percent FSC certified, just as our factory is also an FSC certified manufacturing facility.” Therefore, adopting sustainable work practices is one of the noblest work ethics at RIVA.
Iglesias says, “We understand that sustainability is the future, especially in our industry that heavily depends on the proper care and maintenance of forests. At RIVA, wood is and will always be our main priority. For this reason, we are working on implementing environmentally-friendly initiatives in every aspect of our business!”
RIVA adhered to sustaining the highest quality, design standards, and finest finishing keeping the company at the front line of the industry. Its engineered, prefinished hardwood collections are available at the showroom of Wood Floor Planet in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The president of this hardwood flooring store, Eddy Laboy, is passionate to address all your queries to better comprehend the benefits of incorporating teak into hardwood flooring of the residential and commercial spaces.
Wood Floor Planet showroom is located in 425 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036
