Mohawk spotlights soft surface design & innovation at Edge Summit
[Calhoun, Ga.] As soft surface enjoys a renewed consumer interest, Mohawk is building fashion and creativity into both its products and merchandising — all of which will be revealed at the Mohawk Edge Summit this December in Nashville.
Edge Summit is about spending time and building relationships with Mohawk’s customer base, said Curt Hutchins, president, residential carpet. “It helps to better understand their business models so that we can help them achieve their objectives,” he offered. “It puts us in a position to understand how our customers want to grow and be profitable and what we can improve. There is always an opportunity to get better.”
As the leader in soft surface, Hutchins revealed, “We’ll be showcasing new Mohawk, Karastan and Godfrey Hirst products and merchandising and put a significant focus on SmartStrand.” He added that there has been an evolution and revamping of the Karastan brand and Godfrey Hirst was revamped in 2022. “There will be a significant focus on Mohawk product in the ’23 launch,” Hutchins said.
Leaning into a Legacy
SmartStrand has been a cornerstone of Mohawk’s soft surface assortment and at Edge Summit — it will take its rightful place center stage. “We will have live SmartStrand demonstrations,” shared Hutchins. “There will also be new SmartStrand merchandising that accentuates the Silk product — it’s color and softness.”
Mohawk will also lean into the exclusivity of SmartStrand as well as its proprietary technology. “SmartStrand has been and continues to be, in our view, the best and premium fiber in the industry. I reflect on the marketing we did in [prior] years and we need to rejuvenate that,” he said, adding “It’s All Pet all the way. It’s exclusive to us.”
With All Pet protection and the warranty it carries, performance is at the core of soft surface introductions. But beauty too is a driver of product launches.
“You will continue to see elevated design from us,” Hutchins noted. “We’ve come a long way with style and innovation and which design trends are influencing our product. We are going to tell these stories through sales training and education to help [retailers] understand those trends.” He said too that the Karastan Lookbook will be a great tool for retailers when it comes to identifying design trends.
Soft on the Rise
The last Edge Summit was held in 2018 and Hutchins reported that there has been a lot of change since then. “The pandemic forced consumers to reflect on how they live and work. That’s resulted in a renewed focus on carpet,” he said. “The things we hear from consumers and channel partners is the focus on comfort and warmth.”
Soft surface indeed is ideally positioned to answer new needs of the consumer. “If you try to do video conferences in the house with hard surfaces, sound abatement becomes a real thing so how do they make their home multifaceted for work, living, even schooling space,” Hutchins pointed out.
With technology continuing to evolve at a faster pace, he said, “It was serendipitous that we made investments in recent years in tufting technology and dying technology that [impacted] the fashion of our product and gave it cleaner finishes and better definition that has played well with consumers and has been good for our business.”
Sustainable by Design
Sustainability impacts everything Mohawk does and is even part of its entire design and development process, asserted Hutchins.
“We need to understand the implications from design to lifecycle. For manufacturing, we are committed to our fingerprint on sustainability.” For example, he said, “Close to half of our facilities are zero waste to landfill.”
From a product standpoint, he continued, “We continue to tell the stories of SmartStrand and EverStrand. And, we are expanding ReCover (recycled backing).” EverStrand, for example, is produced with recycled bottles with more than 6.5 billion bottles a year diverted from landfills.
On the cushion side, Mohawk has had a more than 20-year relationship with Susan G. Komen. “SmartCushion doesn’t just serve and protect carpet but is a path to saving lives.”