Dan Frierson, chairman, The Dixie Group, shares changes that shaped the flooring industry.
The impact of Stainmaster
When I started in this business, we had a mill that ran waste from our cotton mills, which we fed to the chenille operators and then the bath rug producers. We were making tufting yarns out of the waste from our cotton mills, then we went to rayon, acrylic, spun poly and polypropylene and finally to nylon filament because each one provided a better product than the previous fiber. It wasn’t like the world just started in 1986, but when DuPont came out with Stainmaster, they put enough money behind it to make it a brand. And to this day, I think it is the only consumer brand the industry has responded to. Stainmaster changed a lot of things— and it was also about the time they were able to make solid color product out of filament—and that was a huge change for the industry. You had filament nylon you could use, but we typically made high-end critical products, so we could not use much of the nylon filament that was being produced. It wasn’t consistent enough. It wasn’t just the advent of filament nylon; it was the ability to use it in critical products along with the Stainmaster brand.
Advances in manufacturing technology
Product development and differentiation started years ago with the spinners. You had no filament to operate with. It was the spinners that would develop a lot of different products out of a blend of fibers or a blend of yarns. It then moved to the fiber producers who started making lots of different products, different deniers, different sizes, different denier per filament, different dyeing capabilities and so forth. But then it came to the tufting machinery manufacturers who started making equipment on which you could make products that looked more woven. This really began to change product development in the industry.
Mills extruding their own fibers
Extrusion was a dramatic change that started when the mills proved they could make polypropylene successfully. However, it made a lousy carpet. The industry did sell a lot of berbers though. If you remember, DuPont went into the polypropylene business and got their head handed to them. And Amoco was big in their Genesis products. It became clear that if the mills could extrude it, they could do it a lot more inexpensively and have their own colors. It began with polypropylene, but it quickly went to nylon. That led to filament polyester. Spun polyester was a lousy product. There was a lot of it sold, but it hasn’t been a major factor after 1986. The backward integration put the last fiber companies out of business: DuPont, Monsanto, Honeywell, BASF. They really had a major influence 40 to 50 years ago, and that, of course, is totally gone.
Solution-dyed polyester
There was a movement to solution-dyed filament polyester; Bob Shaw led that charge. You had Mohawk with their PTT, which is similar, but that only impacted them. I wouldn’t put it on the same level as what has happened with PET extrusion because the market is now 80% to 90% PET.
The growth of LVT
One of the smartest guys in the industry was whoever decided that vinyl tile ought to be called luxury vinyl tile. This accelerated the erosion of carpet’s share. Because at one point it was just carpet and sheet vinyl. People were still covering up wood. They hadn’t figured out yet they could rip up that carpet and refinish the wood.
The growth of the buying groups and big boxes
Today, I believe the big boxes are losing market share in soft floor covering, but they gained it for years. Everybody was in fear of them. But, if you remember, The Great Indoors (Sears) and the Home Depot Expo Design Center looked like they were going to eat the world, but they determined they excel in DIY-type applications. The home centers scared a lot of the retailers and probably made them better, but they did take a lot of volume out of the specialty retail segment.
The Great Recession
The Great Recession resulted in the most dramatic decline in business our industry has ever faced. You just didn’t know where the bottom was as you were going down. But once we got to the bottom, the industry was off about 40%. It was horrible, but we shot out of it pretty quickly and the carpet industry—and this is what I think is going to happen when we make the turn this time— grew for about eight years. We were able to double our market share over the next five years because we continued to invest as things were going down. But it was a difficult period, no question. This period has not been as severe, but a heck of a lot longer.
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