-By Katie Weeks

The team behind The New Patcraft & Designweave is happy to have users walk all over the brand and its offerings. In fact, it's encouraged. Officially launched in January 2008, the new brand under the Shaw Industries umbrella (alongside Shaw Hospitality Group and Shaw Contract Group) seeks to capitalize on the heritage Designweave and Patcraft built as separate entities—including a strong West Coast base with design-oriented offerings for the former and an East Coast presence with a high reputation for service for the latter—to offer a distinctive, strong, unified player in the mid-market price range.

"Designweave had spent a lot of time creating products and packages very tailored to the A&D community, whereas Patcraft really worked on building its business and market position through its service package, [called] PDQ," notes Eric Wroldsen, vice president of marketing for The New Patcraft & Designweave. "When you put those two things together, they complement each other in a bigger, more robust line." Brenda Knowles, vice president of commercial marketing for Shaw Industries, agrees. "In our minds, there are a lot of players in the middle market, but it's very fragmented and in our research there wasn't a clear leader in terms of design and value," she says. "We believed we could offer an array of solutions by bringing these two brands together and really focusing on building excellent design at a great value."

New York branding firm The Moderns distilled and united the strengths of each brand. A smooth evolution would be essential to transition loyal customers to the new brand. "One of the resounding things people in the market said was don't confuse us with what you're trying to do and who you are. Don't mess with our relationships in the marketplace," says Melissa Hill, director of marketing for The New Patcraft & Designweave. An easy internal transition also was essential. "One of the biggest challenges would be combining things—combining the product books out in the field and the sales forces and training them on the new product lines. We needed to have an internal paradigm shift," she says.

To flesh out the brand's identity, The Moderns engaged in its signature Corporate Alchemy™ process, says Janine James, principal of The Moderns. Speaking to people at all levels within Patcraft and Designweave, The Moderns gleaned the essence of the brand and further developed it into a company culture. The result: Instead of focusing on individual offerings, pile heights, fiber combinations, or skus, The New Patcraft & Designweave is driven in all aspects—design, marketing, branding and practices—by experiences, putting the spotlight on end users and their connection with carpet. "What's the humanity of carpet? We relate to it through our feet. Standing on our feet on those surfaces, we have experiences that lead to conversations about those experiences. It's about people talking to people," says James. Hence, the single quotation mark incorporated in the new logo and the tagline "measured by the foot," which can be interpreted a multitude of ways. She adds, "We told the sales staff that you're not selling carpet. You're selling surfaces that life lives on."

Within its market, The New Patcraft & Designweave is driven by choice without compromise. It's similar, James notes, to Isaac Mizrahi designing for Target. Rather than simply create cheaper versions of his haute couture styles, Mizrahi reinterpreted what it meant to have high design at a certain (albeit lower) price point. As part of Shaw, the brand also is capitalizing on corporate initiatives like Shaw's Green Edge platform and Evergreen nylon recycling facility.

The New Patcraft & Designweave kicked off with two collections, Dolce and Touch, which will be followed by an ambitious array debuting at NeoCon® (Space No. 8-3094). Circle No. 200