Richard Morris, Global Business Development, Carpets Inter: Every interior has different challenges and needs with respect to aesthetics and ambience

Richard Morris, Global Business Development, Carpets Inter tells Suchitra C of WOH News that having forayed into the India market, the company aims at providing appealing texture, colour and design for floor covering systems in the country

Carpets Inter has forayed into the India market. What is the market potential you are looking at?

After the boom in business during 2004-09, the luxurious 5-star hotels sprouted in every major tier-1 and -2 cities across India, charging in excess of US$ 350/room per night. Domestic hotel brands changed strategy to build numerous medium-sized (120 to 150 keys) 4-star hotels. However, the typical floor coverings available were either imported wall to wall carpets or low cost resilient flooring with the added expense of a locally manufactured hand-made area rug.

With hoteliers now accustomed to using modular resilient flooring, the challenges of preventing smooth surfaces triggering airborne dust was always an issue in India as well as suppressing annoying sound travel as a result of poor acoustic flooring properties. Hence hoteliers were eagerly looking for something new – an alternative to expensive wall-to-wall carpets.

We have come up with a 100% solution dye continuous filament Modular Carpet Tile option; almost all options available in the market have hard backings and most resemble typical office aesthetics, so choices are limited for hoteliers.

Carpets Inter, part of TCM Flooring, is the commercial brand of Royal Thai (formerly Tai Ping) Hospitality and has a natural affinity towards hospitality interiors. It combines the affordability of a low wastage modular recycled ‘EcoSoft’ cushion-backed system with high performance and aesthetic appeal aligned for hospitality interiors.

Thus, EcoSoft cushion back Modular Carpet Tile helps to enhance guest experience, reduce the negative impact on the indoor environment and most importantly provide unsurpassed return on investment to the facility operators.

What characteristics are important for consideration while deciding on the flooring?

Hospitality interior spaces use a combination of flooring types, specifically chosen to ensure aesthetic appeal, ease of maintenance, health & safety, and overall high performance across the whole space. The primary requirement governing the selection of flooring is that it should be ‘fit for purpose’, i.e., the functional performance of the flooring should match the user’s requirements for a particular facility and purpose. This definition not only covers the physical or functional performance, but also the many factors that impact users and occupants, and are a recognised part of the occupant’s experience, e.g., acoustic control, wellbeing, underfoot comfort, health and productivity.

What are the different kinds of products you plan to market here and which specific sectors?

Historically, modular carpets have been used primarily in the corporate commercial sector, but with the increasing sophistication of design capable tufting machines, more extensive solution dyed yarn palettes, and cushion backing systems, modular carpets now offer the broad decorative appeal and underfoot comfort characteristics preferred by leading interior designers for use in hospitality locations such as hotels, service apartments, theaters, convention centers, airports and other public spaces that lend themselves to using creative pattern on floors.

It is a favourite among interior designers and architects who want to bring the benefits of textile flooring to their projects. With such a diverse choice of colour, structure and pattern, carpet tiles provide creative possibility, transforming the mood of interior environments and defining space. Yet, in order to offer an even wider range of products and to meet growing demand, Carpets Inter is offering different size modules. Squares and rectangles combine to add flexibility and to ensure that modular carpet can work for any interior – from offices through to hotel rooms.

Our new FlowSoft anti-viral & anti-microbial healthcare product launching Mid 2021, utilising recycled PET EcoSoft back, will revolutionise floor coverings for Aged Care, Senior Living, Education and Wellbeing facilities. Our investors continue to support sustained growth and new ventures for Wall Acoustic, again manufactured with 100% Recycled PET Plastic Bottles to provide unsurpassed and affordable acoustical solutions combining the high performance of both our cushion back modular flooring and wall acoustic panels.

Our products are anti-microbial ‘Sanitised’ treated as standard with anti-viral treatment now an option, meeting the critical low VOC standards required under the globally recognised IWBI’s WELL Building Standard.

Carpets Inter’s manufacturing diversity continues to evolve unique floor covering solutions for all commercial sectors, engineered to provide facility management with the best return on investment. Our unique MegaPlank carpet tile – supplied as a 2.00 m-wide x 20 m long module – will reduce the average installation time by half, achieving minimal disruption to occupied spaces.

Tell us about your Headlands Collection and its applicability.

Every interior has different challenges and needs with respect to aesthetics and ambience, just as every designer has a different vision for their projects. Headlands was inspired by the angular formations on the cliff edges and how they merge and blend into more natural soft organic form where they meet the water.

Gentle sparks of accent colours on top of very neutral earth tones give a wide selection of options to suit the palette of many interior spaces. Combine Headlands with our flatlands products as shown in the brochure and the possibilities are endless. Whether you are defining different areas with different aesthetics, transitioning from one area to another or helping to navigate safely around a building, Headlands gives you so many options.

Designed to suit both working environments and hospitality spaces, this collection is very versatile. Soft neutrals can be suited to rest areas and guestrooms, add a little vibrant colour to meeting spaces and dynamic office environments, and add character to corridors and walkways using coordinating combinations.

Which are the critical areas you plan to focus on from the perspective of the hospitality and leisure segment standpoint?

Typically, hospitality interior spaces use a combination of flooring types, specifically chosen to ensure high performance across the whole space, aesthetic appeal, ease of maintenance, safety and best return on investment to the owner. Aside from spaces that require various types of hard flooring (e.g., marble, stone, homogeneous, ceramic, wood) or resilient flooring (LVT, vinyl sheet, etc.), carpet is the proven choice of interior designers as a ‘canvass’ to introduce aesthetic colour and pattern into a functional floor covering. To this end, patterned woven or over-print tufted roll carpet installed on a cushion pad has until now been the norm.

However, in our ever-changing world where facility owners and operators are challenged to provide the customer with an enhanced experience at more competitive rates and diminishing budgets, interior designers often have to sacrifice colour and design and opt for textural or plain hard surfaces instead, such as LVT.

This can diminish the guest experience and as a result impact revenue of the hospitality facility operator, and the irony is that quite often area rugs are purchased at additional expense to place on top of the hard surface, such that the overall budget is actually higher than if installing wall-to-wall carpet in the first place.

The forgone solution for Carpets Inter was therefore to provide appealing texture, colour and design into a floor covering system that could be installed quickly, and cost effectively with negligible wastage, easily maintained and provide luxurious underfoot comfort to the occupant, whilst providing durability and appearance retention to the interior.

How is your company planning to market its products to the hospitality sector? Which quarters of hospitality and leisure are most lucrative for the solutions you provide?

Since 2007, under our former brand of Tai Ping Carpets, TCM Flooring have supplied over 435,000m² of carpet to numerous leading hotels pan-India. We are the manufacturer of all carpet types under one ‘environmentally operational’ diversified facility.

TCM Floorings Hospitality carpets sold under the Royal Thai brand are manufactured within the same facility as the corporate flooring solutions under our Carpets Inter brand. The inherent relationships that we already have built over the last four decades with the leading global hoteliers and hospitality-focussed interior architects assure that the service detail of design & sampling, planning & site surveyance, manufacturing, professional project management to oversee Installation and after sales service expectations are always met.

With budget engineered design solutions and the onus to handle the ‘on-site’ variable details often left to the appointed Fit-out Contractor, we like to make ourselves part of the solution to deliver and complete projects on time. The goals have always been to build lasting business relationships built on trust and performance.

Thus, TCM Flooring brings a complete package solution, enabling colour coordination and transitional synergy across the overall interior space, enabling freedom of expression for interior designers and clients, while ensuring alternative fit for purpose types of carpet construction are supplied within the overall budgeted lifespan.

Our team can literally audit the overall space to be carpeted and estimate traffic flows and factor this into constructional density, pattern, colour and products module dimension. We can basically ‘bake the cake to suit the taste that is affordable to our customers preferred budget’ and all this with a warranty of performance.