Mohawk aims to revolutionize the resilient market for flooring retailers with two new innovations that answer consumer's demand for high style and sustainability.
"When you ask the vast majority of consumers, what do you associate with resilient or LVT, the top two are 'durability' and 'easy-to-clean'. What were the lowest two qualities they associated? Sustainability and style. Those are two areas where there's an unmet need," said Seth Arnold, vice president of residential marketing, Mohawk.
To answer those needs, Mohawk has introduced two new innovations to help flooring retailers tell a better story.
For the sustainability story, Mohawk launched PureTech, a planet-friendly, PVC-free resilient flooring made of renewable and recycled materials. Positioned as a sustainable alternative to WPC and SPC, Mohawk will market PureTech as a new category of flooring: Renewable Polymer Core (RPC).
Although PureTech is not the first PVC-free product on the market, it has a lot of attributes that are attractive to retailers and consumers. First, PVC-free products are usually more expensive than other resilient options, but Arnold said Mohawk will sell these PureTech at the $2.99 to $3.99 retail price point in an effort to grow volume. PureTech is also domestically made in Thomasville, North Carolina, which answers issues retailers have had over the last few years with supply chain issues and product quality related to imports.
"There's not too many launches I've been a part of where our dealers are on the cutting edge and they're able to offer lower prices than what consumers could find at home centers—that's strong," Arnold said.
PureTech also tells an attractive sustainability story: every purchase of PureTech will go toward stopping ocean plastic in collaboration with Plastic Bank. Plastic Bank was launched in 2013 to champion sustainability with its Social Recycling movement. Community members collect and exchange discarded plastic for income and life-improving benefits. These exchanges are recorded through Plastic Bank’s proprietary blockchain-secured platform, enabling traceable collection and verified reporting. Then, the collected plastic is processed and recycled into feedstock for reuse. Mohawk’s ‘Live Pure’ campaign will come to life with PureTech assets that can be used to tell the Plastic Bank story.
"Something like 93% of consumers want to do business with a company that will take a stand on environmental issues, so this is a universal human desire to be a good steward," Arnold said.
The second innovation comes through style. Through much research and development, Mohawk is now able to use its patented Signature digital printing technology, which was used on laminate, on the new SolidTech Premier with Signature HDX.
"It's really three things that set us apart: it's our ability to capture the Signature detail and design in the wood, and then our ability to take that design and build a Signature texture," Arnold said. "It's a layered design process that allows you to get the color and the feel of natural hardwood. The third piece is the clarity finish for true color clarity. Now we can design LVT products with zero loss of color detail."
The SPC collection will retail between $4.49 and $5.49, lower than WPC but higher than RevWood, and is currently made in Europe but will soon be made in the United States.
"We feel our responsibility to our retailers is to provide them with the options," Arnold said. "The market is big enough that we need to provide a good portfolio, which is getting back to the 10 product lines that we built for each of these brands. We're trying to build them for a unique consumer to provide differentiation, good stories, all of that."
