It seems Shaw Contract has said it best—“together we are whole, individually we are unique”. It is this thinking that has guided the vision and design behind the manufacturer's Collective collection—on display at NeoCon—and a sentiment that has been shared in so many words and ways by the design community, as it connected for the show at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart this week.

“We are really celebrating the fact that we can come together again; celebrating the fact that each individual counts, but together as a whole, we are even more impactful,” said Daniel Collins, director of marketing for workplace and retail solutions, Shaw Contract. “The impact that we can have on both the design community and the world is limitless together.”

Celebrating coming together and connecting with one another, supporting each other and reflecting on what we have learned and what we have missed, the five products in Collective provide a mix of foundational and unique styles, each individually unique, but able to work together with the others to meet the demands of various spaces.

Similarly, on display this week at the show has been visual representation of how a reconnected design community can, and is, coming together to impact design, the built environment and the world.

Celebrating the opening of a showroom at the Mart, HMTX is just one of many NeoCon exhibitors that has expressed excitement to once again be in-person and in front of its customers, creating a permanent space that will allow for year-round collaboration and connection.

“We decided to move into a permanent showroom from the seventh floor just so we can have a space year-round to bring in commercial clients and host meetings.” Said Tiffany Davis, director of corporate communications.

As the pandemic continues, this showroom provides an intimate setting to have design-driven conversations and collaborations, to bring together HMTX’s commercial brands' Teknoflor and Aspect products in one space, and to highlight the sustainable charge HMTX is leading with its commercial products.

“One thing that we have done for our Teknoflor products, as well as our Aspecta products, is we have determined the carbon of each of these products, and we were really the first in the industry to print our embodied carbon on a Declare Label,” said Rochelle Routman, chief of sustainability and quality officer, HMTX Industries. “Once we determined that, we were then able to go the next step and we were able to secure carbon offsets for this product, Teknoflor Naturescapes.”

Working with an organization called Everland, which brings together forest communities and corporations in common cause to protect the world’s important and vulnerable forests, HMTX has secured carbon offsets for a community in Southeast Kenya. “Through our efforts, we are helping to preserve this land as well as working with the community and creating a better quality of life for them.”

Designed to showcase its commitment to leaving a positive handprint on local waterways, Mohawk Group’s showroom at NeoCon is a display of its work to make our world a healthier, safer and better place, be it in the workplaces we are returning to, or in the essential bodies of water our planet is reliant on.

On display, the recently launched Data Tide collection tells the important story of sequestering carbon dioxide in order to protect valuable estuaries from things like sea level rise, erosion, storm surge and coastal development, which, without these bodies of water, our planet is at risk of higher harmful greenhouse emissions.

“We see this as an essential discussion and our product is helping to share that educational knowledge so that people understand what carbon neutrality is all about,” said Royce Epstein, A&D design director, Mohawk Group.