About Q&Y International Limited
Q&Y International Ltd was incorporated on 24th February 2011 and our head office is currently in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. We are an importer and financial operator of real wood-engineered flooring. As one of the biggest flooring distributors here in the UK, we produce and supply for some of the industry’s biggest names in flooring and our turnover is steadily growing over the years.
The company was founded by Sean who is currently chaired as the director. He graduated from Tianjin University with a major in Mechanical Engineering. Upon completion of his degree, he worked as an office clerk at Tianjin Economic and Trade Commission for a short period of time. Later he moved on to start Forex trading as well as being a freight forwarding agent at the same time. In 2003, he started his first freight forwarding firm and by 2007, he already owns six offices in Tianjin. At the height of his career, he decides to migrate to the UK just after his wife, Yvonne, obtained her doctorate degree here in 2010.
We started with only three product lines and now we stock over one hundred types of flooring products. We may have grown tremendously since our humble beginning, but the same people-centric philosophy remains at our heart and has never changed. It is our firm belief that attitude and dedication to service is the reason we have succeeded and grown over the last decade in the business.
At Q&Y, going the extra mile for our customer has become our second nature. We have earned a reputation in the industry for outstanding stock availability, customer service and value without compromising any product quality. We especially take pride in our strict quality assurance from our manufactures and insist that all products must been tested to the highest standards before the packaging and shipment process.
The Journey of Our Products
Oak is the most common wood species we used for manufacturing engineered wood flooring. It has been favoured in the trade for centuries and has stood the test of time due to its hard-wearing nature and being abundant in supply. No wonder it easily becomes the most popular choice by our customers.
Besides oak, we also offer other exotic spices such as Ash and Walnut. Most of our timber, both the veneer and the plywood, are ethically sourced from Europe. As a timber importer (operator), we have an obligation to trace all our floorings back to the forest of production per UKTR regulations. Therefore, all of our raw logs are harvested from sustainable and specially selected areas of forests.
After the timber arrives in the factory, raw lumber is then sawn and dried before being further refined and graded. The drying process removes moisture from the lumber hence increases its stability. Our factory’s kiln is dried in humidity and temperature-controlled chambers, which will bring out the most desired moisture content. We fine-tuned the required level of moisture to set between 8% ‒ 12% specifically for the UK market.
The finished product is then quality-checked and packaged. We are always looking to reduce and improve our packaging material as per our mission statement. Our factories are also strategically built near the canal for the ease of transportation, both the inbound raw material and the outbound finished product. Freight transports done in this way produce the lowest CO2 per ton.
After around 35 days of sailing on a container vessel, our flooring products arrive at a port in UK. Since a large segment of our business is direct container fulfillment, the container is usually directly hauled to our customer’s site for devanning. The rest will go to one of our warehouse facilities before its final journey of arriving at a beautiful home and being cherished for years to come.