Design Centre to house all units under one roof
July 4/11, 2016; Volume 30, Number 27
By Ken Ryan
Shaw Industries recently broke ground on a three-story, 67,000-square-foot Create Centre in Cartersville, Ga. Scheduled for completion in late 2017, the Centre will house the commercial division’s marketing, design and innovation associates including its Patcraft and Shaw Contract teams.
The Create Centre is intended to facilitate collaboration across Shaw’s broader business, integrating soft surface with hard surface, according to Brenda Knowles, vice president of marketing, commercial division.
This new building will be based near Shaw Plant 94, where the company’s commercial design and marketing teams are currently located. That facility will continue its custom manufacturing operations and will become home to Shaw’s Custom Design Studio and hospitality customer service teams once the Create Centre is complete.
“We find value in locating manufacturing, design, marketing and others in close proximity to one another in the same region, the same state or, in this instance, the same county,” said Randy Merritt, Shaw president. “We’ve found that it sparks new ideas, greater information sharing and more meaningful engagement with one another. The Create Centre will be an important tool in supporting our vision of growth for our commercial business, including global expansion and domestic market leadership.”
Knowles concurred, adding the new workspace will provide a collaborative environment while fostering Shaw’s culture of innovation, diversity and inclusion. As such there will be no separate offices, just open space. “When we first started this journey it had to be a space that inspired our team,” Knowles recalled. “Our design teams will create products. We will have showrooms here for each of our brands. We have high expectations for all our inspirations here.”
Designed by architecture firm Gensler, the Centre is expected to be USGBC LEED certified and will feature ample daylight and open collaborative spaces. “This building will be as beautiful as it is functional and sustainable — much like our own products,” Knowles said. “We are committed to continuously providing clients with the best solutions for their projects, and the Create Centre will provide the ideal setting for our talented team members to create, dream, collaborate and solve challenges.”
The new $24 million facility represents Shaw’s ongoing investment in its commercial business. In the past few years, Shaw has significantly grown its commercial sales team, opened new showrooms throughout the world and invested more than $85 million in an additional carpet tile manufacturing facility. The latter is slated to open in Adairsville, Ga., later this year.