By Jenna Lippin
Martin Lesjak, CEO and founding partner of Innocad, explains the concept of Moving Floors.New York—At Mohawk Group’s media event held here May 7, members of the press and design professionals were given an exclusive look at the company’s latest offerings, which now comprise a complete program featuring broadloom, modular carpet, LVT and hardwood.
In carpet tile are the Iconic Earth and Moving Floors launches, the latter being Mohawk Group’s major design collaboration for 2015 with 13&9 Design of Innocad, an innovative Austrian-based design firm offering architecture and interiors services for residential, office, hospitality, healthcare, mixed-use, retail and interiors. Moving Floors’ varying patterns are designed to “move” based on your point of view, “thus serving as a design tool that creates a personalized solution for individual moods and needs of the space, environment and floor,” the company explained. The collection features high performance Duracolor Premium Nylon fiber and is backed with ExoFlex NXT, preventing water damage, unraveling and enforcing dimensional stability.
Iconic Earth is made of ColorStrand solution-dyed nylon and is offered in complementing 12 x 36 and 24 x 24 formats. Metallic yarn accents create a unique effect that mirrors oxidized minerals. Each of the three patterns in the collection has a metallic sheen.
New products in broadloom come from the Durkan brand: the Modesto (which has since won a Product Design award at HD Expo) Existence and Lakir Collections, all featuring selections developed by the company’s new Definity precision sculpted technology that emphasizes dimensional effects with layering of patterns and textures.
“[Mohawk can] be almost everything to everybody,” said Mark Page, senior director of color and design. “But we were short of one key component: Axminster. All Axminster carpet is made overseas because from a labor perspective there are roughly four people to one person that would be required to make [product]. All that technology has been made in China and India and Eastern European where labor rates have typically been cheap. When we’ve looked at Axminster business it doesn’t make much sense for us to get into that market. But there was a lot of interest in looking into something that could be made here in the States and offer the same capabilities.”
With Definity, branded to Mohawk Industries and Durkan, the brands can create everything Axminster can, but at a whole new level. “What [we] can really offer is an Axminster product at the price points and performance points that [the end user] wants but with a higher look,” Page said. Axminster cut pile products typically have 63 tufts per square inch; Definity has doubled the number of tufts per square inch, which creates a higher definition design.
In addition to high style, all of Durkan’s new broadloom collections are Red List free, meaning they are free of harmful chemicals. Existence and Modesto both have Declare labels, which serve as ingredients labels listing all materials in the product.
Mass Appeal is Mohawk Group’s big LVT launch this spring. The line was created as a spinoff of last year’s successful Hot and Heavy release. Mass Appeal “still plays off of that heaviness about the product but in a different format of 18 x 36,” explained Angie Carter, senior brand manager. Visuals from the collection are inspired by natural stone, metals and linen-like textures. With 5mm thickness, Mass Appeal (and Hot and Heavy) works seamlessly with Mohawk’s carpet tile, eliminating the need for transitional strips. The latest designs from Mohawk Group in both product categories are designed to coordinate for a uniform look.
Urban Patina is a floating resilient tile with wood grain visuals available in 14 colors, ranging from traditional to trendy. Linear and hand-scraped styles are available on 7 x 48 planks, which are installed with a multi-fit locking system that is milled into all four sides of the product, making for a fast and easy installation.
This spring also welcomes Mohawk Group’s first-ever commercial hardwood collection, called Reroot. An engineered product, Reroot is offered in three styles: Reclaimed Revival (antique oak), City Feel (redefined oak) and Collector’s Edition (engineered oak and maple). “Designers love real wood,” Carter said. “This is definitely on that high-end level of hardwood. It’s light commercial so it is very niche.”
For more, see the May 25/June 1 edition of FCNews.