Carpet tile firm interface set to branch into Laos, Myanmar after Vietnam

The expansion is set to cover the whole Indochina region, where Thailand will be the base for manufacturing as well as sales and marketing. Interface has had a foothold in Vietnam for almost 10 years, with two major local agents now in charge for sales and marketing in the north and southern parts of the country. The company also appointed a distributor in Cambodia last year.

The company is looking for local businesspeople who are in the same carpet-tile industry to be its distributors in Myanmar and Laos.

Luckana Ngamapichon, regional business manager for Thailand and Indochina, said the Asean Economic Community (AEC), which will be fully effective in 2015, would create tremendous business opportunities as the trade liberalisation scheme would encourage many international companies to invest and set up businesses in the region. The opening of Myanmar also attracts many international firms to expand into that country.

"We saw business opportunities in Asia 16 years ago, since our chairman at that time, [the late] Ray Anderson, mentioned Asia as the world’s most booming market for investment. That’s why the company decided to set up one of the biggest manufacturing facilities for carpet tiles in Thailand," Luckana said.

She said the AEC would allow the company to export its carpet tiles at less cost, thanks to a free flow of products and skilled labour within the region.

"We are now able to export our carpet tiles from Thailand to Vietnam with the payment of only 5-per-cent import duty. It’s quite cheap compared with the 60-per-cent duty paid by the company when exporting our carpet tiles to Vietnam five years ago," she said.

Interface also yesterday announced the official opening of its istudio-NEST. The design studio, within Interface’s manufacturing facility in Chon Buri province, is the company’s first integrated full-service design studio in the Asia-Pacific region. It was built for the primary purpose of supporting Interface’s regional customers with a

comprehensive custom design service and to enhance the company’s design leadership and brand position in modular carpet solutions within the region.

Spanning about 200 square metres, the new facility, worth more than Bt60 million, is an integral link that supports Interface’s regional design infrastructure. This network comprises more than 20 design associates led by Asia design director Daniel Blois, strategically located in Singapore, Greater China, Japan and Thailand. Through these local associates, customers are provided with a full suite of custom design services ranging from simple colourisation to personalised constructions and designs.

This value-added offering from Interface follows a customer through a full design process from conceptualisation to finalisation, providing them with not just digital tile and three-dimensional-perspective samples but actual tile samples as well. Located below the studio are two mini-tufting machines that specifically produce these samples. They work exactly like their full-sized counterparts but at a greater efficiency for the smaller sample quantities they are required to produce.

Interface claims this holistic design process provides customers a more personalised service, which in turn creates a more efficient creative process. With a turnaround of only five days for a basic pre-production sample, the new studio also has the ability to fulfil orders as low as 250sqm according to customer specifications.

Robin Hales, vice president for marketing and product, said Interface had evolved from a pure product manufacturer into an integrated provider of premium design solutions and service.

To exploit growth opportunities worldwide, Interface undertook a comprehensive strategic overview of its global business activities and realigned them into three sales regions. It says the new design facility in Thailand is an essential part of the company’s new business strategy to meet customers’ increasing demand for design and colour flexibility. This is expected to enhance its global competitiveness, especially within the Asia-Pacific region.