When it comes to the importance of flooring in the workplace, it’s simple according to Roby Isaac: if there wasn’t anything on the floor, we would be walking on a concrete subfloor.
The vice president of commercial design at Mannington said flooring adds beauty and all the performance qualities that the space requires. It is the literal foundation of any commercial interiors project.
We caught up with Isaac to learn about his journey in the industry, trends affecting the flooring market and things that inspire flooring design.
OI: How did you get your start in the industry?
Isaac: So I grew up in Philadelphia and when I was in high school, I was introduced to a contemporary art studio that did what they call fine arts printing. They printed onto fabric and they worked with contemporary artists. I was introduced because my high school art teacher talked about an apprenticeship program through this studio for inner city students. I was intrigued at that age and I was drawing and being creative, but I didn’t know anything more about what I wanted to do with it. So I got the apprenticeship and then just stayed with it. It was supposed to be a three-month program and I stuck with it for about six years. I graduated from the program and then became a studio assistant. While I was there they told me about the textile design program at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Sciences. And so I took the tour and got into the program there and the rest is history.
Isaac graduated with a degree in textile design and weaving. He went to work for Monterey Carpets, a flooring manufacturer in Southern California. He then moved to Milliken where he worked on the soft surface carpet side of the business. Isaac has been with Mannington for about 12 years on the hard surface side of the industry. A few years ago, he oversees all the design functions, creative design functions for product development.
OI: Walk me through flooring design at Mannington and for our readers who may be more familiar with furniture, how does flooring differ from other things that are designed to go into a commercial space?
Isaac: A lot of times when I try to describe what we do, even to friends and family who have no idea what my job is, I try to talk about it in a way that really shows the value of what we do because otherwise, why would anybody be interested in flooring or flooring design for that matter? I related to the fact that if there wasn’t anything on the floor, we would be walking on a subfloor, concrete, unfinished. At some point you’d want it to not only be beautiful or at least attractive in some way, but have the performance qualities that space requires. Fortunately, at Mannington we work in multiple categories and each of those segments require different things, whether it’s aesthetics or performance.
OI: What is needed, say, in a healthcare environment when it comes to flooring?
Isaac: In a healthcare environment, the rigors of what that floor needs to put up with are bigger than a workplace environment. Not that workplace doesn’t have any stress points, but in a healthcare environment, you’re dealing with probably chemical agents or cleaners that are a little bit more abrasive, where in a workplace environment it might include vacuuming and water extraction.
OI: How does the design process begin at Mannington?
Isaac: To start off, what we do is we try to understand what those market needs are or those segment needs are, and then we’ll design accordingly. In a workplace environment, we’ll try to build the aesthetic which might be tailored or textural, not really bright colors or a lot of bold patterns, but something that will fit into that workspace so that the occupant, that office employee can just get in and get the work done. When we go to something like a healthcare environment, you’re probably not going to put carpet in there; you need hard surface. So we’ll design those products the same way, but we think about what the performance requirements are andwhile we’re doing that, build the aesthetic value into it. I think the same thinking goes on in other categories, textiles, wall covering and even laminates. But we feel like the pressures of the maintenance piece are a little bit higher because everybody’s walking on it, bringing dirt and dragging it, and then the maintenance is pretty aggressive in a lot of ways.
OI: What about trends? What are some of the things you’re seeing in floor covering in terms of trends?
Isaac: What we’ve seen over the last several years is this “desire for” something that feels more like hospitality. If you think about what you’d see when you step into a boutique hotel where you’ve got pattern, but it’s a little bit more elevated, maybe a little bit more elegant, but still fun, and it’s less clinical or clerical. There’s this idea of people returning to the office in workplace environments. And if it’s all beige and gray with no pattern or texture, it could be boring or might not feel inviting and warm. There are places that want something very subdued and subtle because they’re wanting it to be a little bit more timeless. So we’re seeing a little bit of both. We’re seeing this very strong desire for hospitality in workplace environments. We’re seeing it in healthcare and education. We’re seeing hospitality on one side, but we’re seeing some of the understated elegance or understated luxury in some areas also. I know that’s not one single trend, but what we are seeing is less of the garish brights and bolds that might be reserved for smaller spaces, but color is subdued, color is warm, and really creating a sense of warmth and comfort to get people back into the spaces that they’re designing for.
OI: What about Mannington specifically? When designers look at what Mannington offers, how would you describe your style or look? What is Mannington known for when it comes to design?
Isaac: Historically, Mannington has been a performance brand. We’ve been around for [more than 100 years] and on the carpet side it’s been 50-plus years. For a long time, performance was synonymous with Mannington. Over the last 10 to 20 years, design has come into high focus. There’s this sort of attachment between what we are in design and this idea of longevity. One thing that we’ve been talking about a lot lately is this idea that longevity is equivalent to sustainability. We look at what’s happening in the marketplace in regards to trends, but we want it to feel as though we’re not just hitting a trend so that we can hit it and then move on and that trend is replaced by something else in three years. We want it to be more long lasting. We’ve been using this tagline, “Crafted with Purpose” for several years. Everything that we try to do, we try to be very thoughtful about our approach. We try to create this idea of this understated elegance.
OI: Explain or try to help me understand how you guys come up with a collection or a new design.
Isaac: When I talk about what those market needs are, we build a business case. So let’s say for 2024, we are surveying what’s happening in the market segments. We believe that healthcare and education are still going to be strong. Workplace may be a little bit flat. Once we identify what the calendar needs are in terms of launches, our design team will run with that. That’s one bucket, that’s the business case need. On the design side, we start with a design direction for all of the development that we’re going to be doing. To be very specific, we’ll start designing products based on a thematic approach. I like to think about it like a concept album where all of the songs on there, they kind of relate, but they’re not intended to match when they go out into the market. Still, they can very much be paired together nicely. So in the terms of that concept album, we’ll use the structure of a design word. For example, last year’s word was “harmony.” We had eight collections that came off of this word or stemmed from this word harmony.
OI: How did harmony translate into what you showed at the last NeoCon?
Isaac: All of the flooring that we launched or showed in the showroom were based on the theme harmony. The first collection when you walked into the showroom was a collection called Natural Optimist. Another collection that we did is called New Composition, and that was [inspired by] the art of Wassily Kandinsky and how he incorporated or explored harmony in some of his paintings, specifically the ones that he called “Compositions 1 through 8.” We developed a product collection that was inspired by his use of shapes that were disparate but blended to create harmony. So when we work on these collections, they independently are circling back to this design theme or design word, but can be very independent on its own.
OI: How do you make sure your designs will resonate in the market?
Isaac: Once our in-house designers are at a point where they’re comfortable showing the prototypes they’ve developed, we’ll go on the road and we call it Voice of Customer or VOCs. We’ll take several prototypes out on the road and hit multiple markets across the U.S. We’ll hit maybe 10 to 15 cities, and we’ll do multiple visits in each of those cities. So by the time we get back, we have in excess of 50 design firms or so that we’ve talked to. We may start with a dozen prototypes in order to get to the three that we believe are the best to go. There’s a qualitative questionnaire, but there’s the quantitative piece too. So we’re asking them not only what they like personally or aesthetically, but what would make sense for the spaces that they’re designing for. So we rely heavily on that interaction and that feedback, and it gives us the opportunity to take what these designers in the field are saying, come back and edit accordingly. Then we use our expertise and internal gut to get to the next stage of refining.
OI: How long of a process is it from bar napkin to being produced and put into spaces?
Isaac: On the business timeline, it says about a year, so it’s about 54 weeks. But on the front end, what we’re doing on the design side is a lot of trend research, design research, and exploring concepts. So we’ll probably add another three months to that. So all in all from the very conceptual piece to getting into the market, it takes about 14 months. One thing that we pride ourselves in is immersive design research.
OI: What would you say is the direction of design aspirationally for Mannington? Where do you hope to take the company’s designs going forward?
Isaac: We believe internally that our product development process, because of the authentic space where we start, is a human approach and focus on a human-centric design understanding. We believe that we have an opportunity to share that story even in a greater way. But ultimately what we want is for specifiers, end users, designers to relate Mannington commercial design to be synonymous with good design, that we’re really thoughtful in our approach, that we’re not trying to do something whimsical or super trendy just to catch a trend, but that we’re trying to align with this idea of longevity and just good design.
OI: What inspires you? What do you bring to work that from the rest of your life that you think helps you do your job?
Isaac: This might sound cheesy, but I think that we’re all given this opportunity once, right? To do what we like to do. And I believe that those of us in this field that have an opportunity to be creative are really fortunate. I know that when I started in the industry, I thought I had to fit a mold coming out of college. I thought I had to put on the corporate design work suit and be a commercial designer. I don’t think that works. I think that creativity is too valuable to waste if you’re being quiet about it. So I encourage our design team and any designer that I run into to just be themselves and share their voice because that’s what’s going to change the face of design. Otherwise, we’ll just do the same things over and over again.