Carpet, Rugs, Bathmats and Trends: Bathroom Blogfest 2011

Mohawk Home Bath Mat

Bathroom Blogfest 2011: The U.S. Carpet Industry Takes it to the Mat as Carpet and Rug Institute’s Bethany Richmond Discusses the Colorfast and Furriest in Bath Mat Trends

A few weeks ago, I slipped and fell getting out of the bathtub. In a classic ass-over-teakettle move, I stepped out of the tub, placed my damp foot on the tile floor and slid, caroming off the doorjamb and falling, arms akimbo. (Wow - four of my favorite words in one sentence!)

It was my own blessed fault – I forgot I had taken up the bathmat to wash.

You might say I was a victim of my own messaging. For the past three years on the Carpet and Rug Institute blog, I’ve been telling everyone that carpet and rugs cut down on slip and fall accidents. CRI President Werner Braun is fond of quoting an old insurance industry statistic that says you are 7 times more likely to fall on hard floors than on carpeted ones and 7 times less likely to hurt yourself if you do fall on carpet. As I lay there, sprawled on the eponymous hard-as-rock floor, experiencing the only moment of my life I will ever be happy to have a behind equipped with ample natural padding, it came to me that somehow I would work this episode into a blog post. The sixth annual Bathroom Blogfest seems like my chance.

Mohawk Home's NYC Showroom

I represent the carpet industry, so each year for the Bathroom Blogfest I write about bathroom rugs. For my previous posts, I have sought inspiration from David Record, who works for Mohawk Home, America’s #1 bath mat manufacturer and importer. Again this year, David proved himself to be a gracious and generous font of information.

When I asked him to discuss the trends in bathroom rugs, David said (much like the man who said “plastics” to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate), that the word this year was: memory foam.

Memory foam rugs, he said, cut into various shapes and covered with different materials, have been the hot new trend in bath mats for several seasons at the New York Home Textiles Market and were showing no signs of slowing.

Also big, David said, are bath mats made with micro-denier polyester. Denier is a measurement of the thickness of a yarn. Since most carpet fibers are 15-20dpf (denier per filament) and the yarns from your standard-issue nylon bath mat average around 3-8 dpf, you can image how soft and downy rugs made from 1dpf polyester must feel. Fine as frog’s hairs, as we say in Georgia.

But there’s a flipside to the hot and new story. Both of these increasingly-popular bathmat styles (according to David, memory foam has gone from 0 to 10 percent of the market in just two years; micro-denier polyester has captured close to 7 percent share seemingly overnight) are imported, mostly from China.

What’s still made in the U.S.? Good news: nylon bathmats, those tireless (and predominately solid-color) workhorses of the home textile world are still made here. According to David, foreign manufacturers, for all their flair for the new and unique, cannot match the quality or price of good old Mr. Solid American Nylon. He may not be sexy, but next time I find myself in Kohl’s or Target, JC Penney or WalMart, and I feel the need for something new to liven up my Loo,  I know whom I’ll choose. Because, from my outpost here in Dalton, Georgia, the stoic, but hard-pressed carpet manufacturing capital of the world, “climbing out” begins, emphatically, at home.

~ Bethany 

The "climbing out" participants of the 2011 Bathroom Blogfest include:              

Name	Blog Name	Blog URL
Susan Abbott	Customer Experience Crossroads	Customer Experience Crossroads
Paul Anater	Kitchen and Residential Design	http://www.kitchenandresidentialdesign.com
Shannon Bilby	From the Floors Up	http://fromthefloorsup.com/
Toby Bloomberg	Diva Marketing	Diva Marketing Blog
Laurence Borel	Blog Till You Drop	http://www.laurenceborel.com/
Bill Buyok	Avente Tile Talk	http://tiletalk.blogspot.com
Jeanne Byington	The Importance of Earnest Service	http://blog.jmbyington.com/
Becky Carroll	Customers Rock!	http://customersrock.net
Katie Clark	Practical Katie	http://practicalkatie.blogspot.com/
Nora DePalma	O'Reilly DePalma: The Blog	http://www.oreilly-depalma.com/blog/
Paul Friederichsen	The BrandBiz Blog	http://brandbizblog.com/
Tish Grier	The Constant Observer	http://spap-oop.blogspot.com/
Elizabeth Hise	Flooring The Consumer	http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com
Emily Hooper	Floor Covering News Blog	http://www.fcnews.net/category/blog/
Diane Kazan	Urban Design Renovation	http://blog.urbandesignrenovation.com
Joseph Michelli	Dr. Joseph Michelli’s Blog	http://www.josephmichelli.com/blog
Veronika Miller	Modenus Blog	http://www.modenus.com/blog
Arpi Nalbandian	Tile Magazine Editors' Blog	Tile Editor Magazine Blog
David Polinchock	Polinchock's Ponderings	http://blog.polinchock.com/
Professor Toilet	American Standard's Professor Toilet	http://www.professortoilet.com
David Reich	my 2 cents	http://reichcomm.typepad.com
Victoria Redshaw & Shelley Pond	Scarlet Opus Trends Blog	http://www.trendsblog.co.uk
Sandy Renshaw	Purple Wren	http://www.PurpleWren.com
Bethany Richmond	Carpet and Rug Institute Blog	Carpet and Rug Institute Blog
Bruce D. Sanders	RIMtailing	http://www.rimtailing.blogspot.com
Paige Smith	Neuse Tile Service blog	http://neusetile.wordpress.com/
Stephanie Weaver	Experienceology	http://experienceology.blogspot.com/
Christine B. Whittemore	Content Talks Business Blog	Content Talks Business Blog
Christine B. Whittemore	Smoke Rise & Kinnelon Blog	http://smokerise-nj.blogspot.com/
Christine B. Whittemore	Simple Marketing Blog	http://www.simplemarketingblog.com/
Ted Whittemore	Working Computers	http://www.kinneloncomputers.com/
Chris Woelfel	Artcraft Granite, Marble & Tile Co.	http://www.artcraftgmt.com
Patty Woodland	Broken Teepee	http://www.brokenteepee.com/
Denise Lee Yohn	brand as business bites	http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/