Floor Trends & Installation recently spoke with Tom Wright, VP of product management and innovation at Mohawk Industries, about his new role as president of the North American Laminate Flooring Association (NALFA) and the organization's goals for 2025.

Floor Trends & Installation: NALFA recently held its spring meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina. Tell us about the meeting. 

Tom Wright: Leading up to the meeting itself, we had a strategic planning meeting that involved the board directors, which, since I've been involved with NALFA, it was a first for us, to put together kind of a long-term vision of where we want to take the association, and to set some lofty goals, but also set some more realistic, short-term goals.

That strategic planning meeting was super important. That was shared with the broader membership during the two days. The meetings are generally broken up by different committees, technical marketing, underlayment, and molding. Those are the four main committees working on different initiatives for the association. We also had time for the group to collaborate and network, and start to understand what that strategic plan is and put the wheels in motion to make it a reality.

Floor Trends & Installation: What are some of the initiatives? 

Wright: The big thing for NALFA, in terms of kind of where it started, is around standards, and building the standards to make sure that we're putting a product out there that meets consumers expectations, retailers expectations and embracing the certification program that we have—where members can get their products certified, to reassure the retail and the consumer.

The big thing for us is LF-01 [Laminate Flooring Testing Standard], which is the main standard for laminate flooring, is up for renewal. The team is working hard to update that standard, bring it up to date, make it more relevant for the innovations in the products that have been brought to market by various manufacturing companies. From a technical standpoint, that was probably the biggest focus.

The other thing that we are focused on is creating a standard for moldings. We have one for underlayment, but we've been talking about establishing one for moldings as well, and that's coming close to completion. And it goes through a process to get approved, ultimately. It's good to see the big players in the molding business who support the laminate industry come together and agree on a set of standards that become the basis for this new standard that will be released sometime later this year, maybe early 2026.

Floor Trends & Installation: What technological advancements in laminate are you most excited about?

Wright: There are more and more brands getting into the laminate category. There's a lot of momentum behind the category. I think the core features of laminate in terms of its total value to a retail and ultimately to a consumer, from the performance standpoint, the price standpoint, the sustainability, there's a real strong value there.

Now what we're seeing is consistent innovation from all the suppliers of the product in terms of the realism, the textures, the bevels on the products, some of the technologies around printing. And so it's making it hard to distinguish a laminate floor from a premium hardwood visual. It's a really good copy of the original hardwood.

There's that focus on the visual, and then there's the water performance, which has continuously improved. There's more innovation coming in the category, whether it's locking systems or things like sound and underlayment. The category is going to continue to evolve and develop.

The opportunity here that we all see is this category really can start to take more share in terms of the hard surface category, and that's really what our ultimate goal for NALFA is, is to enable members and everybody associated with the industry to help seize that opportunity, and to make everyone in the value chain realize how great a product laminate is and to lean into that category. And that's what NALFA's goal is, is to help make that a reality.

Floor Trends & Installation: What strategies is NALFA implementing to better educate retailers and consumers about the benefits?

Wright: We had a long conversation about that during the strategic planning meeting, and we had to figure out where to focus. We quickly came to the realization that NALFA is not going to have much success going directly to consumer. There are a lot of bigger retailers out there with bigger budgets that have the ability to talk to consumers in a more direct way, so our focus is really on those who influence the buying decision. It's the retailers, the RSAs, it's installers, it's contractors. It's those who are engaging with the product and who need to be able to clearly articulate the benefits of that to those that they're influencing. And that's what we want to do: help them learn about the category and understand how to tell the great story of laminate to anyone making a purchase decision.

Floor Trends & Installation: What about sustainability? 

Wright: A big part of our marketing message going forward is about the sustainability of the product. I think that often gets overlooked. From a product standpoint, there's lots of different things we can talk about. There's the core board of the product, which is typically made from post-industrial waste, typically from sawmills. That's usually what goes into high-density fiberboard. Or if it's using trees that are coming from quickly renewable controlled forests that are close to the manufacturing plants. Being a wood-based product and using a natural resource that might otherwise go to waste or be quickly renewable is a great story in there.

The other part is the carbon capture story. We call it carbon negative in the sense that more carbon is captured in the product than it took actually to manufacture the product. There's a carbon capture store there, too, that as an industry, we need to get a little bit stronger talking about, and that's where NALFA comes in to be able to share that message on behalf of all the members.

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

Wright: It's very hard to predict with the situation that's going on from a macroeconomic standpoint. We will continue to see the category take share from other hard surface categories, because that's our expectation, and honestly, that's our goal as an association – to help make that happen.

What we don't know is if the total market is going to shrink somewhat because of all that's going on, but regardless of what happens with the total market, we still think there's an opportunity for laminate to take share. So we're excited about that opportunity.