10 QUESTIONS WITH…
Each month, we ask a flooring industry professional 10 Questions. This month, we chatted to Lauren Levy, Product Design Manager, Amtico International.
Q1 Q2
Q3 Q4
What was your first job? I trained in woven textile design and started as a
designer in the interiors/textiles industry before progressing into flooring design after a career break travelling.
How did you get into the industry? Manufacturing has always been fascinating
to me, and the opportunity to work with an innovative and progressive company who still had manufacturing capabilities onsite in the UK was an extremely exciting one. The link between interior design and flooring is also closer than it seems, as both require an understanding of surface pattern design, an ability to understand and challenge manufacturing processes, and a drive to analyse and fulfil customer requirements.
What do you think are the positives and negatives of the flooring trade?
The positives are definitely the people – both the amazing and inspirational team we have here at Amtico, and all our customers, who we always love visiting and talking to for their honest and design-led feedback.
I can’t think of any major negatives! Rather than a negative, I’d say a challenge we have is balancing the way we as manufacturers consume resources to create products: producing good design with less impact on the environment.
If you could hire any one person to be part of your
team, who would it be and why? Pablo Picasso because I’ve always loved the following quote from him: “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” I think Pablo would appreciate how we like to develop product here at Amtico.
Q5 Q6
What’s the best advice you could give to someone new coming into the industry?
Ask all the questions, and listen to the answers. Listen to what your customer and the market really wants and put your assumptions to one side.
If you could invent any product what would it be and why?
Post it notes – they literally cover my desk, I often wish I’d invented them!
Q7
If you could have a dinner party with any three people, dead or
alive, who would they be and why? I’m an avid music fan, so it would be same as my dream festival headliners: David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Nick Cave.
56 | 10 QUESTIONS
Q8 Q9
What do you think the future holds for flooring design?
Innovation — in terms of aesthetics and also in terms of the benefits a product can offer a customer technically, and how little impact it can have on the world environmentally
What would you like to see in a future issue of Tomorrow’s Contract Floors?
I’d love to see the prototypes and innovative ideas above talked about in a group conversation between us flooring makers.
Q10
David Moodie, Specification Manager, INTRAsystems asked:
Do you see the traditional carpet tile market maintaining its growth along with the
introduction of materials such as woven vinyl? Yes, I do. There might be a slight shift in terms of where products are used in projects but on the whole, customers are clear in that both hard and soft surfaces have a place and a purpose. Woven vinyl has very different performance capabilities compared to carpet tiles, and that’s always going to be a critical specfication factor.
www.amtico.com
Check out next month’s issue to see what Lauren asked our next industry professional…
www.tomorrowscontractfloors.com
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