Every year Mohawk holds a convention for its aligned dealers, its Floorscapes and ColorCenter retailers. We had an opportunity to attend last year’s the event in Orlando, and what an event it was, drawing in excess of 1,600 attendees. While we were there we conducted loads of interviews, one of which was with David Duncan, Senior VP Marketing at Mohawk; check it out now in the TalkFloor.com archives.

Now anyone who knows David knows that he’s not only a walking idea machine, but a bona fide character as well. I only wish that I had had my camera close by when David made his grand entrance on the general session stage with his “Flying V” guitar in a performance that would have put Jimi Hendrix to shame.

Although you won’t find that particular stellar performance in the archives, you will find David outlining what was really the big news of this whole get together and that was product innovation and the new products the company rolled out at this event.

The big news was in carpet and soft was the story from Wear-Dated Embrace, the company’s new soft nylon launched to complement SmartStrand and SmartStrand Silk. David talks about the company’s brand new approach to marketing soft to consumers while they’re inside a retail store and the research the company did to determine preferences. They basically entice consumers to just touch and rub their hand over a selection of carpet samples on new, very cool and very tempting displays and, once the touch happens, for many their whole belief system about carpet changes and soft becomes a very important part of a decision.

We had an opportunity to talk with a number of retailers at the convention to see if this touchy-feely thing really performs as planned and every single person we spoke with answered with an enthusiastic “Yes!” You can also listen to a number of conversations in the archives and hear it for yourselves. 

One more thing you may want to also check out on the site: if you’re a floor covering retailer, you definitely have found no scarcity of things to worry about especially with all of the mayhem in Washington and the perpetually uninspiring and unpredictable economy. And even though healthcare for the last several years been an incessant source of apprehension for most businesspeople now that Obamacare is about to enter your future, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

Because this new legislation will be such an overarching part of the economy and because the new law imposes new compliance regulations and employer mandate taxes – not to mention an overabundance of indirect costs for both small and mid-size businesses – we invited David Pennington, the president of Advanced Insurance Strategies, to join us on TalkFloor.com.

By the way, David is also the mayor of Dalton, Ga.

In the TalkFloor archives you can listen to David talk about the tax increases associated with the new law; 10 of its 18 new tax hikes have yet to kick in. He talks about the specifics of the new costs this law brings, and the flood of compliance regulations you’ll have to deal with. Also of prime interest, he discusses the penalty employers will have to pay if coverage is dropped, the exchanges, and how the law will change the basic way healthcare will be delivered in the U.S. If you run a business, Obamacare will most assuredly be a new source of worry; David may help clarify it for you.

These are only some of the audio and video interviews we post daily on TalkFloor. There are lots more; we just don’t have the space to talk about. Also, we’d love to hear your thoughts as to some of the industry people you’d like to see on TalkFloor; send your thoughts to me at davefoster@talkfloor.com.