FloorCoveringNews

Cartersville, Ga. — Shaw Contract Group opened a showroom in Mexico City on March 1, providing its customers with greater access to Cradle to Cradle certified flooring products and services. The showroom, a LEED-registered Commercial Interior showroom, pending Retail certification, showcases the complete range of flooring solutions available to customers in Mexico City.

Dalton—Shaw Floors has announced the comprehensive Celebrate Your Home Sale, a spring promotion that inspires consumers to create a beautiful home environment for themselves and those they love with the help of a new Shaw floor. Offering special, per-room pricing, the incentivizing campaign includes retro-inspired bright and bold POP for participating retailers who can capitalize on the act-now messaging. The simplified sale includes carpet, area rugs and laminate floor offerings of $499 for one room, $899 for two rooms and $1,199 for three rooms. Hardwood floors are included in the pre-room selections for an added $100 to each price offering.

Company will break ground on manufacturing facility in April

Cartersville, Ga.– Shaw Contract Group opened a sales office in Shanghai recently to provide customers in rapidly growing Asian markets with greater access to its high performance Cradle to Cradle certified carpet tile. The US-based flooring manufacturer’s LEED-registered Commercial Interior space, pending Gold certification, will be followed by sales offices opening in Beijing and Hong Kong later this year.

Dalton—Shaw Industries has released dates for its 2012 winter markets. During these events, the mill will unveil a variety of introductions within the Anso nylon and ClearTouch brands along within the new HGTV Home Flooring by Shaw program. Tuftex will also display a variety of new carpets. And in the hard surfaces arena, new floors will be introduced in the Epic hardwood collection, as well as visuals in the solid hardwood, laminate, resilient, and tile and stone categories.

100% recycled product on sale through December

Dalton—Shaw Industries is holding the first-ever sale on its Grand Canyon hardwood collection. Running through Dec. 31, it includes an impressive discount for consumers. Kevin Thompson, hardwood product category manager, said the sale includes a minimum of 25% off depending on the product. (Ask your sales rep for specific details.)

Dalton — Shaw recently announced the company will once again be the exclusive flooring provider and sponsor for the HGTV Green Home Giveaway set for spring 2012. As the flooring partner, Shaw will provide stylish and functional floors from the HGTV HOME Flooring by Shaw collection to be featured in this highly-anticipated show home in the sustainable living community of Serenbe, Ga.

Dalton — Mohawk is pleased to announce Jeff Meadows, a 30-year veteran of the flooring industry, has joined the company as senior vice president of sales for the Home Centers and Aligned Groups (such as CCA Global, Abbey, Carpets Plus, Empire and Floors2Ceilings). Meadows will be responsible for driving positive sales growth for these key business units through his strategic leadership.

Dalton – Four Shaw Industries manufacturing facilities in California have been recognized by the CalRecycle Waste Reduction Awards Program (WRAP) for the seventh consecutive year. The awards are designed to recognize the leadership of businesses and organizations with highly successful waste-to-landfill reduction initiatives.

By Matthew Spieler

With the massive slide laminate had been on continuing to level off in 2011, officials remain upbeat the category will soon see better days—albeit not to the degree they once were, but compared to where they have been recently, any improvement is a welcome sight.

Executives admit there are still tremendous challenges even beyond the economy but feel laminate’s realism, performance and overall value will win back the post-recession consumer.

By Louis Iannaco

Much like last year, while most tile producers did not see economics conditions in 2011 rebound as quickly as they would have liked, they continue to make investments in technology and look to do more of this going into 2012. Digital printing technology has made a huge impact on what manufacturers can create, and it seems as though they’ll continue this trend moving forward. Mills are also being challenged from abroad, with an increase in imports from places like China only adding to pressure on pricing.

Carpet mills continue to invest in technology, hope for a turnaround

By Louis Iannaco

In broadloom, it continues to be about the housing market and, according to mill execs, jobs. 2011 can best be described as flat, and as for what executives see for 2012, all indicators continue to point to housing/the economy and unemployment as key indicators for the category’s health.

This is not to say mills have not invested in themselves, and plan to do so in the coming year with technology and social media playing major roles. A light at the end of the proverbial tunnel continues to be commercial, which once again fared better than residential.

by FCNews staff

OPERATION REBUILD: The end of August saw five states—Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut—hit by Hurricane Irene resulting in extensive damage to residential and commercial establishments. To assist dealers in these states, Mohawk has launched Operation Rebuild, in which sales and credit teams from Mohawk and its Karastan division have been instructed to work together to help rebuild stores and provide retailers with the necessary credit to continue operations. In addition, an aggressive finance offer, complete with buy downs, has been prepared for both Mohawk and Karastan, allowing consumers to finance their flooring needs at essentially no cost. Both soft and hard surface products are included in the promotion. For more information, contact your Mohawk or Karastan territory manager or call 877.275.6648.

DALTON—Shaw is introducing the 2011 Dream It Do It fall promotion. This season, flooring consumers will be enticed with buying incentives offered through the inspiring Dream It Do It sale. Beginning October 1 and ending November 14, the revitalized fall sale includes free gifts, special financing and scratch & save cards for the consumer. The promotion capitalizes on the fall buying season while offering exclusive discounts to Shaw buyers.

DALTON—Shaw Industries Group, Inc. has released its third annual corporate sustainability report, the company announced. The report can be accessed online at shawgreenedge.com.

DALTON—Shaw Industries has announced its sponsorship of the Special Olympics Georgia 2011 State Fall Games. The event, to be held Oct. 21 to 23, will attract more than 1,500 athletes, where seven competitions will be hosted as part of the three-day Special Olympics celebration. The sponsorship commitment consists of the Opening Ceremony, Oct. 21 at the Dalton Trade Center, and awards presentation support for all sporting competitions.

DALTON—The Shaw Learning Academy, the training division of Shaw Industries, has received the Chester Klevins Outstanding Workplace Literacy Program Award from the Commission on Adult Basic Education (COABE). The award recognizes Shaw’s commitment to improving the lives and performance of its associates through improved workplace literacy. To this end, nearly 1,500 Shaw associates have obtained their GED and almost 1,000 have participated in Shaw’s English as a Second Language program. The Chester Klevins Award honors a single organization for an outstanding workplace literacy program that meets the needs of business.

ROSLYN, N.Y.—Following a two-year hiatus, Shaw Industries was voted the industry’s Best Overall Manufacturer in the 15th Award of Excellence competition. This was the third time in the award’s history that Shaw took top honors, which it last held in 2008. Shaw also repeated its performance from last year by taking home the Award of Excellence for Environmental Leadership, which was first awarded in 2010.

Roslyn, N.Y.—The 15^th annual Award of Excellence competition, sponsored by Floor Covering News and the World Floor Covering Association (WFCA), is a way for manufacturers’ customers—retailers, distributors, designers, installers, specifies, etc.—to honor the companies they feel consistently provide the best service, professionalism of sales force, management responsiveness, value, design, B2B, handling of claims and ease of doing business. In other words, those manufacturers help them do the best job running successful, profitable business operations, whether it be a retail operation, distributorship, design centers or installation workrooms.

While every category has been hit hard by the recession and the new attitudes of the consumer as the country slowly recovers from the economic downturn, it seems like laminate has been taking some low blows lately and executives are fighting back, telling FCNews there is plenty of life left in the category going forward. “Low end continues to attract the most volume,” noted Travis Bass, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Kronotex, parent company of Formica. “However, there has definitely been a trend back toward the higher price points with consumer confidence growing.”

DALTON—Shaw Industries will close Plant 82, a spun yarn facility located in Chatsworth, Ga., in the upcoming weeks. In recent years, the entire carpet industry has seen customer preference drastically move away from staple yarn systems in favor of carpet products manufactured with filament yarn.

Hardwood has been a flooring category generating plenty of buzz recently. The Lacey Act revisions two years ago sent ripples from Washington, and the recent anti-dumping case brought many manufacturers flocking back to government agencies in an effort to understand just what is at stake. While hardwood has long enjoyed a strong domestic manufacturing presence, recent shifts in the trade balance have shed a light of uncertainty on the category’s future. Coupled with the troubled economy and a struggling building sector, this last year is one that is best left behind in the books.

The industry’s two largest manufacturers, Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries, were once again ranked by Training magazine as having two of the best employer-sponsored training and development programs in the country. The business publication for learning and development professionals announced its Training Top 125 at an awards gala at the Training 2011 Conference & Expo last month in San Diego.

ORLANDO, FLA.—Working together has never been more important in light of the U.S. economy slowly coming out of its worst recession in 70 years and a new type of younger, more interactive consumer emerging in the marketplace. “Unity: Connect for Success” was the central message Shaw Industries presented to a record crowd of roughly 3,000 people at its biennial Shaw Flooring Network (SFN) conference here.

LAS VEGAS—Laminate manufacturers, distributors, retailers and suppliers gathered at the Mandalay Bay during Surfaces here to not only get an update on the state of the category but to find out the winners of the 5^th annual LAMMY Awards.

Presented by the North American Laminate Flooring Association (NALFA), the awards are “a great way to formally recognize companies and individuals for their efforts within the industry and encourage others to do the same,” explained Bill Dearing, president.

MOBILE, ALA.—Putting together an “open house” event at your store can be stressful in and of itself. Throw in a lingering recession, a rare Bengal tiger, a kangaroo and a kinkjous (a nocturnal tree-dweller from Central and South America) and the stress level rises exponentially in the hopes that not only will people show up but hopefully the animals will not destroy the store.

DALTON—For the last three years, four if you count 2011, Shaw Industries and HGTV have had an ever-building partnership as the manufacturer has been the exclusive flooring provider for the HGTV Green Home giveaway. That relationship took a big leap forward with the announcement of a co-branded, exclusive flooring collection labeled “HGTV-Home Flooring by Shaw.”

Fayetteville, N.C.—Eighteen months after Shaw Industries and DAK Americas announced the creation of a joint venture company, Clear Path Recycling (CPR), to recycle post-consumer plastic drinking bottles, executives of the three companies gathered to cut the ribbon of the completion of phase one on what will eventually become the largest recycling facility in North America.

WASHINGTON—The Coalition for American Hardwood Parity (CAHP), an association of U.S. manufacturers of engineered wood flooring, filed an unfair trade petition on Oct. 21 regarding imports of multi-layered wood products from China.

The petition, filed with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission (ITC), asserts that imports of the product are sold in the United States at dumped prices, and that Chinese manufacturers have gained an unfair competitive advantage.