SI Flooring Systems

SI Flooring Systems’ PatternLok carpet backing product adds tremendous value to patterned carpet by providing structural stability, improved performance, and excellent pattern registration characteristics. It is literally the foundation of an excellent carpet product and installation. The challenge is that end users don’t see it, the designers who specify carpet don’t think about it, and no one but the installer directly realizes the benefits.

SI Flooring Systems (SI) had traditionally used quantitative market research to learn about its audiences for PatternLok. But it had never learned in its market research how the product really fits into the carpet specification process and where the value opportunities lay. SI simply wanted to know if it was spending it’s marketing and advertising dollars on the right people, in the right places, in the right ways. It also wanted to understand whether its intended go-to-market strategy was aligned to people’s perceptions and expectations. It needed Matter.

To find out what was really going on with PatternLok, Matter conducted a series of immersive interviews with the various constituents of the carpet specification process. We went to the offices where mill representatives work; we went to the libraries where architects and designers make purchase decisions; and we went to the warehouses and sites where dealer-installers operate. As we probed and documented the routines and behaviors of the people involved, the overall process, relationships, and opportunities became increasingly clear. And it also became clear that SI could benefit from some changes.

With the insights gained through contextual research, the Matter team produced a detailed model of the carpet specification process, a relationship map of the actors involved, and illustrations of numerous newly discovered opportunities – all knowledge SI would later say it never had before and that they speculated was unique in the entire carpet industry.

But Matter delivered more than just the insight. Using the SI mission and strategy statements as a starting place, we used our new findings to define specific strategies and tactical communication actions SI could take to best take advantage of the newly defined perspective of the market. Matter delivered to SI not only opportunities for PatternLok, but a profound new view of the carpet world and a map of the most advantageous course.

From its initial reliance on quantitative market research, SI demonstrated its shift in perspective to a new way of thinking by changing budget allocations and setting new strategic directions based on the insightful strategies and actions Matter prescribed.

Matter validated SI’s initial feeling that marketing communications dollars were not being spent optimally. We showed where communications could be refocused and best utilized to target SI’s real audience and where certain expenditures were unnecessary.

Kemp Harr, SI Flooring Systems’ VP of Marketing, said it best, “This research did an excellent job of helping us understand the varying levels of value our products bring to each constituent in the value chain. In fact, we discovered an inverse relationship between those people who benefit the most from the use of our product and those people who have the most influence in choosing our product. This data has helped us properly allocate our advertising dollars and our industry affiliations.”