At the Shaw Flooring Network Convention in Orlando, Florida, we sat down with Benjamin Liebert, executive vice president of Shaw's residential business, to reflect on his first year at Shaw Industries.

Between the energy of the show floor and the enthusiasm of visiting retailers, Liebert opened up about the challenges facing the flooring market today—from overwhelmed consumers facing too many choices to the delicate balance of serving diverse regional markets. Fresh from manufacturing investments in South Carolina and Alabama and with new momentum building in the market, Liebert shared his vision for simplifying the customer journey while keeping Shaw nimble enough to meet local needs.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety: Shaw's Benjamin Liebert on Simplifying the Flooring Journey and Building Brand Clarity. 

Floor Trends & Installation: What are your first impressions of SFN Convention 2025?

Ben Liebert: It's hard to put into words.  I've been here a little over a year now, so I completed my first lap of the track. Throughout the last year you hear all the things about the Shaw Flooring Network Convention. You hear it's family-oriented. The venues are big and bold. The messages are big and bold. You hear that it's not about Shaw; it's about our customers. And then you see it, and for some reason, those words that you heard the previous year are just nowhere near as big as in real life and in person. It has been very exciting and humbling for me, especially as I reflect on the opportunity to be here at Shaw and be in this industry and work with our customers. I feel so humbled because I'm excited about what's ahead with them.

Floor Trends & Installation:  What's been most energizing or meaningful to you in your first year at Shaw?

Liebert: The relationships. I think it starts there, right? You can't run a business just on relationships, but it's a great foundation. I believe that regardless of how big organizations are, people still buy from people. And that component, there's a human relationship which turns into a trust factor. But then what we want to layer on top of that is deeper partnerships through planning, co-development of business plans, and then connect those to our brands and our products.

Floor Trends & Installation: Can you elaborate on the key industry challenges you mentioned in your message to SFN dealers—flooring losing share of wallet, six-month purchase journeys, and 40% of consumers opting out?

Liebert: We've done a lot of research over the last 18, 24 months on the industry in general, the trends. And we've looked at a lot of other parallel industries, too. We looked at is other interior decor, finished goods, and we also looked at building construction goods. It was eyeopening.

I believe, in my opinion, that we are offering too many choices. There's a concept here called the paradox of choice, and it's the manufacturer meaning so many options, color, shades, thicknesses, styles, collections that really aren't differentiated. When you look at other competitive manufacturers or distributors, it is the same. So you add ours and others, and then you go to the showroom floor to go to a retailer's floor, and they've assorted all of these.

I think when you walk in and you start this, it's so overwhelming to start this purchase journey. At its core, I think the consumer is afraid they will make a wrong choice. There's a real fear and anxiety about the money you're about to spend and it feels very permanent.

Floor Trends & Installation:  How do you balance the need for fewer product choices with local market needs?

Liebert:  I think that the biggest example to bring this to life is California, because the trends, from what I've seen, typically hop from Europe to California first and then work your way west. The styles designs, even the materials are different. Hardwood's a great example. A lot of clean oaks, no knots, light colors, that's very different than what [retailers want in Chicago and New Jersey]. 

We're competing against really good distributors in some of those markets. And those distributors are agile and fast and make their assortments tailored to the market trends. We have a great design organization, We have a really strong product development sourcing operation where that's applicable. We have new assets for manufacturing, so why wouldn't we want to make sure that the products that we are sorting, distributing, and inventorying in California, as in this example, are the right styles?

Floor Trends & Installation: Can you elaborate on the significance of Shaw's manufacturing investments?

Liebert: The role of carpet is much different than it was historically, so we have to acknowledge that trend, but it is still really important to the overall category. And it's even more important to specialty retail. And I think to specialty retail, our independent retailers, this category is something they have leadership in.  We have to continue to invest in these categories that they feel are important.

Floor Trends & Installation: What's your outlook for 2025?

Liebert: More positive than '24. And I think there's some momentum building. There is some pent-up demand. There are consumers who have been on the sidelines because of interest rates and inflation, and there is a massive shortage in housing that's not going away anytime soon. So those two factors, I think, still tell us that we're operating in an industry that has sustainability and resilience...I think we're all anxiously awaiting to see what happens with a new president that happened today. What we know is there likely will be tariffs. Luckily, we've been through this before as an industry. 

Those two factors still tell us that we're operating in an industry that has sustainability and resilience... we're going to start coming up into the right, barring any black swan events that I can't predict.