Material IQ

About Material IQ

Every episode of the Material IQ podcast explores in detail the materiality of the built environment: innovation, inspiration, and case studies from leading architects, designers, suppliers, and manufacturers with an emphasis on climate-positive outcomes in commercial and residential design.

Publisher

Kenn Busch

Category

business · business · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

24 Sept 2025

Latest episode

16 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

7 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Oct 2026

   Material IQ Episode 006: How the abuse of sustainability terminology impedes climate progress

   About this episode In part two of our Formica series, Christelle Locat-Rainville, Marketing Director for Formica Canada and Commercial Leader for Sustainability at Formica Corporation (https://www.formica.com/en-us), joins host Kenn Busch to dig into the sustainability story hiding inside high-pressure laminate, and why the industry has done such a poor job of telling it. Start with the ingredients: HPL is 60 to 70 percent paper. Kraft paper saturated with phenolic resin sits under a melamine-saturated decorative sheet, a recipe that has barely changed in more than a century. That paper comes from fast-growing pulp trees in managed forests, the wood fiber in it is roughly half captured carbon, and printed, textured wood grains let designers celebrate rare species without cutting them down. From there the conversation moves to life cycle assessments, why the particleboard and MDF beneath the laminate can store more carbon than their production releases, how durability and reuse keep furniture out of the landfill, and why architects and designers, who write the specs, have the most power to change the outcome. Learn more about Formica Corporation’s sustainability commitments: Corporate Commitment | Formica (https://formica.com/en-us/Campaigns/Undated/corporate-commitment) Sustainability documents and certificates | Formica Group (https://www.formicadocs.info/en-us/documents/search?type=sustainability-certificates) Formica Corporation Highlights Strong Sustainability Progress in 2025 Broadview Group Position Paper (https://formica.com/en-us/articles/sustainability/2026/sustainability-position-paper-2025) Read a transcript of this podcast episode The following podcast transcript was generated with Whisper AI and may contain errors. Transcript Kenn Busch in conversation with Christelle Locat-Rainville, Marketing Director, Formica Canada, and Commercial Leader, Sustainability, Formica Corporation. [00:09] Christelle Locat-Rainville: I think the positive side of this is architects and designers who create and who dictate what’s going to be included in the building, inside and outside, they have a way to change the world. [00:24] Kenn Busch: Wow. No pressure, architects and designers. [00:28] Kenn Busch: I’m Kenn Busch. This is the Material IQ podcast. Our topic today is sustainability in surfacing materials, specifically HPL. My partner for this episode is the Formica Corporation, and my guest is… [00:43] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Christelle Locat-Rainville. You could say Christelle, if it’s easier. [00:51] Christelle Locat-Rainville: So I am the Formica Canada marketing manager, and I am the North America sustainability commercial leader. So I have a dual role. [01:03] Christelle Locat-Rainville: The sustainability portion of my role came from a personal interest of always making sure I can do my best to have no footprint, if I can. I know we all have one, but to have the lightest footprint that I can have. So it’s a personal interest first, but then I started learning about sustainability and started taking trainings about it. [01:28] Kenn Busch: That’s incredible. I didn’t know this. So you had this varied background, and sustainability was really a passion of yours before it became a profession, which I think is really super cool. And that’s what this industry needs, honestly. [01:42] Kenn Busch: You mentioned B2C as well as B2B. I think that’s really important, because this industry has probably the best sustainability story of any product category, but we’re doing an awful job of sharing it with the design community, and of course with consumers as well. So your background is kind of just perfect. [02:04] Christelle Locat-Rainville: I’m the typical person who will say to people, why would you buy that? Do you really need it? And can you switch to a hard soap to wash your hair instead of buying the plastic bottles? But I’m doing it for myself, to be as sustainable as I can and to reduce, again, the footprint that I can leave. HPL is mostly paper [02:24] Kenn Busch: So I want to get into the first point of order. HPL is mostly paper. And for some reason, we’ve been keeping that a secret. [02:34] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Okay. So HPL, high-pressure laminate, is made of paper. It has always been made of paper. The total composition of the laminate sheet might have changed over the years, but the majority, between 60 and 70%, is paper: kraft paper and the decorative layer on top. That paper build-up comes to 60 or 70%, and the rest, about 30%, is the resins, different types of resins for different applications, different properties, different features and benefits. But it’s made of paper. [03:12] Kenn Busch: There’s this really interesting tool I’ve seen out there. It is a sheet of HPL that was left half out of the press. So half of it feels like a finished piece of HPL, and the rest of it is all these layers of paper. [03:24] Christelle Locat-Rainville: We call it the feather deck. So we show a little piece of HPL that has not been fully cooked, so you see the different layers, and people realize, oh my gosh, it is paper. I can touch it. I can see the different layers. [03:40] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And I think the beauty of high-pressure laminate being made of paper is that everyone knows what it is, versus other materials where it’s an aggregate of XYZ, and you’re like, okay, but what is that? Paper, everyone knows. You have a visual, you’ve touched it, you’ve seen it. Easy. So I think that’s something that we benefit from. [04:00] Kenn Busch: Did you say it’s a feather deck? Did I hear that right? [04:03] Christelle Locat-Rainville: I mean, that’s the internal lingo for it. It’s probably not the official name. [04:06] Kenn Busch: No, no, but yes, it’s half cooked, right? There’s the high-pressure laminate as we understand it on one half, and the other half is almost like an exploded view of what’s in there, which is several layers of paper. And the kraft paper is like shopping bag paper, right? Am I close? [04:25] Christelle Locat-Rainville: It’s brown. [04:26] Kenn Busch: It’s strong. Kraft is the German word for strength, or strong, I think. But what else should we know about that part of it? [04:35] Christelle Locat-Rainville: I would say it’s strong after it’s been impregnated with resin. But before that, as you say, it’s really similar to a grocery bag. Of course with some differences, but the visual people can put in their mind to see what kraft paper is, is a grocery bag. And then the decorative layer is a really, really thin paper that is either a solid color or a pattern that represents a stone or a wood grain. [05:04] Kenn Busch: And this is the same basic makeup that it’s been for a hundred years or more, right? [05:10] Christelle Locat-Rainville: What’s interesting is we haven’t evolved the build-up of high-pressure laminate since it was created. We’ve seen so much evolution in so many industries and products, but high-pressure laminate was created using paper and a decorative layer with resin, and that hasn’t changed. Everything around it has changed and evolved and improved, but what I call the build-up is exactly the same. Can you imagine how amazing that recipe was, not to change for more than 110 years? Phenolic, melamine and the press [05:46] Kenn Busch: Yeah, you can’t improve on it. When you look at this feather deck, you can see the different ingredients, and each of those layers of paper, whether it’s the kraft or the decorative layer, has already been impregnated with one kind of resin or another, right? Do you want to tell us a little bit about the different resins used in the different layers? [06:11] Christelle Locat-Rainville: So the kraft paper is impregnated with phenolic resins, and the decorative layer is impregnated with melamine. Melamine. That’s where my French comes in. [06:26] Kenn Busch: Yeah. [06:27] Christelle Locat-Rainville: So melamine is for the top layer with the decorative paper. Then we put that all together and press it under high pressure at a really high temperature. And what we call it internally, once it has gone through the presses, is cooked. Fully cured. A better way would be to call it cured, but I like to call it cooked. [06:49] Kenn Busch: Yeah. And it’s delicious. [06:53] Kenn Busch: Well, and there’s a little bit of a difference. You said the kraft paper layers are saturated with a phenolic resin and the decorative layer is saturated with a melamine resin. And the reason for that, I believe, is that the phenolic resin makes the kraft paper flexible and easy to handle. But phenolic resins don’t cure, or cook, clear. They cook brown, right? They change color a little bit. Is that true? [07:24] Christelle Locat-Rainville: It changes color a little bit. And as I said, each resin has its own advantages or features. To be honest, it would be easier to just put all the papers in the same resin and be done. But we have a dual process, where the kraft paper goes through a series of basins and ovens, and the decorative paper goes through another set of basins and resins, and then we put them together. [07:50] Christelle Locat-Rainville: So the phenolic makes it, as you say, more flexible, and easier to fabricate compared to melamine. It’s also why we can do some radius with HPL. [08:05] Kenn Busch: Postforming. [08:06] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Exactly, postforming, the radius, whatever you do. You can wrap a column with HPL. Not everyone knows that, but it’s flexible to the point where you can wrap a column in a commercial setting, for example. [08:18] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And then the melamine resin gives it the impact resistance. It’s really easy to clean laminate, and that’s also due to the resin that we use. It’s going to be scratch resistant as well. A lot of things come from the resin. [08:37] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And then the design, the decorative aspect, is due to the plates that we use when we cook the laminate. We put the sheets between plates, and the plates give the texture to the top layer, the decorative layer of the laminate. So that’s pretty much how it works. [09:02] Kenn Busch: Yeah. And the melamine resin is more brittle when it’s applied to the paper, but it cures, or cooks, perfectly clear, right? So that’s why it’s on the decorative layer, because it doesn’t interfere with the design or the color on the paper. And so the combination of the phenolic-saturated papers and the melamine-saturated decor layer works in perfect harmony to create this very easy to handle, but very durable, very scratch-resistant sheet of decorative surface. [09:39] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And as we were saying, it’s been like that for years and years because it’s a perfect recipe. What’s interesting is we haven’t changed it for the core HPL products, but we’ve taken some portions and evolved the resins and the paper to create new product categories, new features, new benefits. One example would be products that are fingerprint resistant, super matte. Those use acrylic, so it’s a different mix of resin because the properties are different. [10:28] Christelle Locat-Rainville: So when I say it hasn’t evolved, that’s not quite true. What I mean is it hasn’t evolved in terms of the build, but everything around it has evolved a lot. A substitute for mica [10:39] Kenn Busch: And we should back up. You mentioned this was really created in 1913, but it wasn’t a decorative surface back then. It was an electrical insulator. It was created as a more, I was going to say sustainable, but they weren’t talking about that back then, a more practical solution for the material that was commonly used for electrical insulators, which was the stone mica. So this was a substitute for mica. And that’s probably what drove how technically perfect it is, because it had to be an industrial material first. [11:20] Kenn Busch: And the bottom line here, what we really want to leave the audience with, is that high-pressure laminates are 70% paper. Even though people like to use the word plastic with them, they’re actually mostly paper. [11:39] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Since we’re talking in general about high-pressure laminate, I think we have to make sure we say between 60 and 70%, because not all high-pressure laminates have the same bio-based content or the same quantity of paper in the build-up. So to be really fair, let’s say between 60 and 70%. Then I think we’re covering the whole spectrum. Pulp trees, managed forests and rare species [12:04] Kenn Busch: Okay. So we’re here to talk about sustainability, starting with the fact that HPL is roughly 70% paper. And of course this is paper from lower-value trees, right? Pulp and paper trees sourced from managed forests, at a time when we aren’t using as much paper as we used to. Monetizing the harvest and removal of pulp and paper trees actually keeps the overall forest a lot healthier and opens up room for the hardwood trees, the higher-value trees, to grow tall and straight. So in that way, the ingredients that go into HPL actually help the hardwood industry. [12:44] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Yes, exactly. It’s a system. It’s a balance. And we are part of this ecosystem. People are not going to stop using paper. They’re not going to stop building with wood. So we have found a balance. We just have to make sure more people understand the meaning of this balance. [13:05] Kenn Busch: Exactly. [13:06] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And in the balance are also rare species. Knowing that HPL can replace rare wood species or rare stone, or really anything, means it replaces the real thing. So in a way it is a sustainability story just in this aspect. Whether I’m talking about stone or about a tree doesn’t really matter. You want to keep those things where they are, and you don’t want to touch them. So using high-pressure laminate to replace them is a great story. [13:52] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Just like it started, as you say, as a replacement for a rare mineral, mica. That was so brilliant at the time. We didn’t invent anything new since; they invented that idea: if it’s rare and it’s going to become so expensive and we won’t have any more, just find another solution that replaces it. And they did it. It’s the same idea. We just copied the inventors, and we do it with every new design we make available for the design industry, where we provide them with a great copy. [14:35] Christelle Locat-Rainville: I hate to say an imitation, but in a way it is an imitation. It’s an identical reproduction. And with the evolution we’re talking about, in texture and in light reflection, it almost becomes better than the real thing, because you can create a double effect. It’s a super rare species, it’s supposed to have a certain look and sheen, but I’m going to use a texture that makes it super shiny. And then you create something that wouldn’t exist in the real world, but it’s so nice to put those two things together. I think that’s another aspect we don’t really talk about often. [15:21] Kenn Busch: Well, you beat me to the transition, from rare and beautiful trees in the forest to how much high-pressure laminate is actually wood grain, right? Ninety-something percent of what this industry sells is honoring some kind of wood, and there’s a reason for that. We love wood. Wood was our main building material for millennia. We’ve co-evolved with wood. I’ve got entire CEUs that talk about how forests helped shape what human beings are now. We used wood for our first shelter, our first tools, our first transportation, music. Wood is really just part of our evolution. [16:11] Kenn Busch: And we love it so much, but we’ve come close in the past to loving it to death, especially very fragile, very beautiful, very exclusive and rare species. One of the examples I’ve used in the past with Renee Hytry Derrington is zebrawood and sapele, woods that are literally on the same endangered species list as the Bengal tiger or something. It’s that rare. That doesn’t mean we stop loving it. It just means we shouldn’t use that raw material. [16:49] Kenn Busch: We can honor our love of it by creating these beautiful printed versions, with the right textures now, in a high-pressure laminate. So literally we’re getting the rarest of wood beauty with the most common wood fiber build, as you call it. Basic paper. It’s the best of both worlds. We’re saving the actual trees out in the forest, and at the same time we’re protecting their environment by using the pulp and paper trees to build the material. The story just gets better the further we dive into it. [17:30] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And I think it’s also interesting because people easily understand that an animal is in danger and that we should respect it, improve our protection, and make sure we keep every species. I think people don’t see that for trees, but it’s just as important as animals. Trees don’t move, they don’t talk. When you compare an animal to a tree, you’re less emotional about trees. But it’s the exact same idea: if there’s no more of that species, you can’t produce new trees of it. It’s going to disappear. We’re never going to see those trees again. [18:20] Christelle Locat-Rainville: So I think it’s important to bring to light that it’s the same thing as animals, birds, anything in the water. A lot of things are disappearing because we’re not great with nature. Let’s put it out there: we haven’t done well. But now there’s a switch, and people understand that we have to change our mindset and change the way we use nature and reuse material. Trees should be seen at the exact same level as animals in terms of endangered or rare species. Texture, realism and fabrication [19:01] Kenn Busch: Part of the key to doing justice to these rare and fragile woods we’ve been talking about is getting it just right visually, and not just visually, but on the texture side too. People in the past probably thought, oh, high-pressure laminate, I can tell what that is because it all has that same texture. [19:25] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Yeah. [19:26] Kenn Busch: And that is no longer the case. [19:28] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Yeah. It has evolved in an amazing way. And the good thing is we’ve also kept, I don’t want to call them old textures, but textures that have been around for a long, long time and that you can still get. If the wood grain is the hero of the design, then you want a texture that’s as realistic as possible. So it has evolved to where we have wood grains whose textures really follow the design of the decorative layer. It’s an all-in-one, and it really does look like a wood veneer, because it almost is one. [20:12] Christelle Locat-Rainville: But I have to say the fabrication also makes a big difference. We can be as good as we want in terms of realistic textures and the gloss or matte aspect of the texture, but you also want to make sure the way it’s fabricated replicates the wood. If you have a 90-degree angle, you want the HPL sheet to continue the design. Then it looks amazing. I’m thinking about an island with a waterfall edge. If you take the time to join it at the perfect angle, no one’s going to know. [21:03] Kenn Busch: Yeah. So in other words, no matter how great the design on the HPL looks, whether it’s a wood grain or a stone, it’s up to the millworker or the cabinetmaker to lay it out properly and create convincing edges, so it has the most realistic impact as a more sustainable option than the real materials can offer. [21:23] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Realism is far, far away from what it was a hundred years ago. Textures, same thing. And that’s why HPL is still such a mainstream material, used in commercial settings and residential settings. It’s durable. It’s realistic. It’s also affordable. We can’t just pass by that. Why is it affordable? Because we’ve been using the same recipe, because we’ve evolved where we needed to evolve, and also because the material we use is accessible. We’re not using materials that are endangered or rare. [22:12] Kenn Busch: Yeah. You were mentioning textures and the wood grain matching up with the print. Are you talking about synchronized textures, where, with wood grain as an example, every little tick in the texture lines up with a tick in the printed layer? [22:31] Christelle Locat-Rainville: We can name it the cathedrals. The cathedrals of the wood grain are followed by the texture, so you’re going to see cathedral textures. [22:41] Kenn Busch: I’ve seen woodworking professionals go, wow, I have no idea which one is which, until you drop your keys on it. Right? And one is going to scratch and the other one is not. [22:55] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Yes, exactly. [22:59] Kenn Busch: And talking about texture, there’s a visual element to texture that I think a lot of people don’t realize: the way the light hits it from certain angles. You can see a beautiful wood grain, but if the texture is flat, you’ll see it in the glare and say, okay, that’s probably not wood. Well, that’s also not a giveaway, because the way you have to finish real wood is very flat; otherwise it’s very fragile. The textures we’re able to supply in wood grains are so haptic, I guess is the term. There’s such a haptic interaction you have with them. It’s like raw wood, which you could never use in the real world because it would get dirty, with skin oils and all that. So our ability is not just to mimic or replace, but maybe to honor these natural materials and keep them for where they’re truly going to be loved and appreciated. Young forests and captured carbon [24:05] Kenn Busch: The great thing about the forests where we get all the fiber for the ingredients in the recipe that we cook into HPL is that those forests are designed by nature to be regenerated every 40 years or so. And we know from research that these young forests, these healthy, growing trees, are like hungry teenagers, right? They capture more carbon. [24:33] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Painful? Disobedient? Sorry, sorry, that’s not what you meant. [24:38] Kenn Busch: Always asking to borrow the car. Right. They are hungry. They absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than an older or slower-growing tree does. These are fast-growing trees, so they’re very efficient air scrubbers, filtering CO2 out of the atmosphere, which they convert into sugars that become the tools for their growth. They release the oxygen. We all learned about photosynthesis in eighth grade or so, hopefully. [25:16] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Yeah. [25:17] Kenn Busch: They take that captured carbon, and that’s what literally builds the woody mass of the tree, to the degree that when you measure the carbon content of wood, it is 50% captured carbon. That’s amazing. It’s like building your next project out of 50% naturally captured carbon. Same if it’s lumber, same if it’s paper, same if it’s fine hardwoods. Wood is wood, and that’s what wood does. [25:47] Kenn Busch: And carbon is one of the only things we really have to measure the relative impacts of different processes, products and materials. I’m guessing you probably have a life cycle assessment that points to this. Life cycle assessment and the power of the spec [26:06] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Yes. You just mentioned measuring. If you don’t measure, and you don’t know where you start, you’re not going to know if you’ve improved. Life cycle assessment is one of the best tools right now. Maybe there will be new tools in the future, but for right now, it’s the best tool to compare products, or actually anything, because it’s based on the same idea: you look at all the inputs of a product, the manufacturing portion where the product is really created, and then the outputs, and you put that all together. It gives you an analysis, a carbon footprint of a product, from the raw material to the end of life. You calculate the emissions from that cycle, and then at the end you look: is it positive? Is it negative? How negative is it? Because most of the time, besides wood, as we just talked about, it is negative, meaning you create more emissions than you store. [27:09] Christelle Locat-Rainville: We hear a lot about embodied carbon, and the fact that the construction industry is responsible for about 40% of emissions, which is massive. So I think the positive side of this is that architects and designers, who create and who dictate what’s going to be included in a building, inside and outside, have a way to change the world. Listening to them, and providing them with the best tools, will eventually lead to better solutions, because they are the ones who can change the specs, and by changing the specs, you change the overall results. Durability and reuse [27:49] Kenn Busch: Another aspect of HPL’s sustainability story has to be its long-term durability. It’s incredibly durable. [27:58] Christelle Locat-Rainville: If it’s used as an office desk, it’s going to last forever. But maybe the color that was chosen in the 1980s, and we can all picture some of those colors, maybe you don’t like that desk anymore. But is it still good? Yes. Is it still in good condition and durable? Yes. So reusing is the first thing everyone should think about. And I do understand that the brownish colors might not be trending… actually, they might be trending in the next few years, because everything comes back. So stay tuned for that 1980s desk. [28:37] Christelle Locat-Rainville: But there are ways to continue to use those materials and that furniture, instead of saying, you know what, we’re renovating our offices, let’s get rid of everything and buy new because we want our employees to feel like they’re in a nice office and it’s 2026. I think there are ways to change the mindset so those ideas are accepted. [29:02] Kenn Busch: Yes. [29:03] Christelle Locat-Rainville: By the end users first, because the specifier can propose any type of idea, but if the end user doesn’t accept it, it’s going to go nowhere. So it starts by changing the mindset of the end users, and then I think we’re going to evolve and get somewhere with second-hand or used furniture. We can apply this to many things. [29:32] Kenn Busch: I’ve done some stories on the reuse of commercial office furniture, especially on the West Coast, where there are all these tech startups that get a bunch of money and go out of business in two years, and all this brand-new furniture is suddenly, what do we do with this? So HPL helps keep this furniture fully functioning and very durable. Maybe trendy, maybe kitsch; it goes through different descriptors over its life. [30:06] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Yes, exactly. Because it is so well made. The substrate: particleboard and MDF [30:09] Kenn Busch: One of the things I always think about when I’m trying to add up the downstream positives of something like HPL is the substrate used under it. It’s mostly particleboard, right? Again, one of the most sustainable building materials we have. Particleboard makes use of all the parts of a tree we can’t use for anything else: flooring, siding, construction lumber. After you harvest a tree and take those products out of it, you’ve still got about half of that wood fiber lying there. Particleboard comes along, and now we can use over 99% of that harvested tree, which comes back to the story of trying to honor the resources we use. [30:58] Kenn Busch: And it’s also storing this captured carbon. Because of the density of the fiber in a product like particleboard, or even more so MDF, a cubic meter of particleboard stores about 1,100 kilograms of naturally captured CO2. Because of the density, that’s actually more than solid wood. The solid wood people hate this fact, but that volume of material is storing more captured carbon than its solid wood counterpart. MDF stores about 1,700 kilograms of naturally captured carbon, because it’s a little denser than particleboard. [31:53] Kenn Busch: And in the LCAs done for those products, that is so much stored carbon that it more than offsets all of the other inputs that convert that wood fiber from the forest into, let’s say, a kitchen cabinet. After all of those processing steps, that kitchen cabinet is still storing more carbon. I like to use the phrase climate positive. It’s a climate positive material because it is literally keeping more carbon out of the atmosphere than was released in all the steps it took to turn a tree into a finished product. Following the data upstream and downstream [32:34] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And we only know that because it’s been measured through the life cycle assessment. That’s why data is so important. We probably guessed it was good, but we didn’t really know until it was measured. You just made the comparison yourself: MDF and particleboard are really similar products, used for the exact same reasons and fulfilling the same function, but they have different data in their life cycle assessments. That’s why it’s important to know about life cycle assessments. [33:22] Christelle Locat-Rainville: It’s also important for the specifier to ask for those assessments, so they can look at them, compare, and choose the right product, or the right mix of products, to get the result they want. Just follow the data, calculate it, and you’ll end up with a result that’s comparable. [33:48] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And that’s also why we need more companies to do it. To be honest, I think we’re getting there, because we’re being asked more and more to provide that information. And because we need to provide it, we need to get the data from our suppliers, and they in turn will have to ask their suppliers. So at some point we’ll touch everything, as you were saying, upstream, which is scope 3 upstream, and downstream, which is also scope 3. Looking downstream and upstream gives you the whole picture. [34:33] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And for high-pressure laminate, of course you have to look at the laminate itself, but you also have to look at where it’s going to be used and what it’s going to be applied to. Not just the substrate. You also have to look at the glue, what type of glue is going to be used, and things like that. So there are a lot of pieces that have to be put together. [34:51] Kenn Busch: The one common denominator, I like to say the carbon denominator, that we have to compare these different materials and processes is the carbon footprint. The embodied carbon, the overall carbon footprint. And I like to say, anytime the conversation is carbon, wood wins. And by wood, I’m talking about any kind of wood fiber: paper, solid wood, composite wood, et cetera. The conversation is always carbon, so wood-based products are always going to win. Sustainability from the start, not as a trade-off [35:23] Christelle Locat-Rainville: I hate it when people treat sustainability as a trade-off, because it shouldn’t be seen like that. The idea is to think about it at the beginning of a project and see what the options are. Okay, if I want my design to have a sustainability story at the end, what am I going to look at? And then look at the different materials. And now, hopefully, people know that HPL is a great response to that. We’ve said it: it’s made of paper. Paper comes from the wood industry, which absorbs CO2, and it’s not released once it’s captured. That’s the great news. [36:08] Christelle Locat-Rainville: And HPL needs a substrate that is also great in terms of its sustainability story. And once you design something with it, it’s going to stay, unfortunately for some people, fortunately for others, forever, meaning it’s going to be good for at least the next 25 years. As we said, are you going to like your office desk in 25 years? I don’t know. It depends what you choose. So think about that when choosing the design you’re going to use with the HPL. How is it going to look five or ten years from now? [36:46] Christelle Locat-Rainville: Because if people have sustainability in mind, we know they won’t need to change it. Whether we’re talking about furniture, cabinets or countertops, no matter where you use HPL, changing it is not going to be a necessity. It’s going to be a choice of design or preference. So choose brown if you like it, or choose something else if you don’t. But no matter what, we know it’s going to be good for a long time. [37:25] Kenn Busch: Thank you so much for joining us. We hope we’ve improved your Material IQ by a point or two. This has been a production of Material Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved. Christelle Locat-Rainville, Marketing Director, Formica Canada, and Commercial Leader, Sustainability, Formica Corporation Kenn Busch, Host and Publisher, Material Intelligence and Climate Positive Now

2. 

   30 Jul 2026

   Material IQ Episode 005: “Specifying Fire Retardant Veneer Core Plywood for Interior Use (CFP 2026-1)”

   (https://www.columbiaforestproducts.com/) This AIA-certified nano CEU is made possible by Columbia Forest Products (https://www.columbiaforestproducts.com/). It focuses on how fire retardant veneer core plywood actually works — from the pressure-treatment process to the self-extinguishing char-layer reaction — and why third-party certification, not a single passed test report, is what separates products that perform on paper from products that perform in a fire. AIA’s Three Learning Objectives Distinguish between structural fire retardant treated wood (governed by IBC Section 2303.2) and decorative fire retardant treated wood products (governed by IBC Section 803), including the differing test durations and applications of each. Explain the difference between developmental testing and third-party certification for fire retardant wood products, and describe why third-party certification (including ongoing mill audits and annual retesting) provides architects and designers greater assurance of consistent life-safety performance. Identify the correct specification language for a Class A certified, third-party monitored fire retardant veneer core plywood product, and describe the flame spread index and smoke development index thresholds it must meet. Take the assessment below (#takeassessment) Course Details Course Number: CFP 2026-1 Course Provider: Columbia Forest Products with Material Intelligence AIA Learning Units: 0.5 LU|HSW Designation: Health, Safety, & Welfare Course Type/Session Type: Nano CEU – Distance Learning / On Demand About this episode In this episode of Material IQ, host Kenn Busch sits down with Alicia Powell of Columbia Forest Products (https://www.columbiaforestproducts.com/) to unpack the first domestically manufactured, third-party certified Class A fire retardant veneer core plywood. Powell, whose career spans both the structural and decorative sides of fire retardant wood, maps the two very different corners of the building code these products live in: IBC Section 2303.2, which governs structural framing members and demands pressure impregnation plus an ASTM E2768 burn test, and IBC Section 803, which governs decorative interior finishes like cabinets, millwork, and wall panels and requires the ASTM E84. Both share the same pass thresholds and the difference is time under flame, a distinction that still trips up specs written for the retired “E84 Extended.” The heart of the conversation is the gap between developmental testing (one production run, one lab report, maybe an engineering opinion) and genuine third-party certification: 18 passed tests, an ICC-ES listing, mill-floor monitoring, signed samples, annual retesting, and unannounced audits that can pull the listing. Powell also covers how individual poplar veneers are pressure treated before layup with Columbia’s soy-based, no-added-formaldehyde resin, why the finished panel reverts to Class C once a 1/42″ decorative face is applied while the core stays Class A, the roughly 15% weight penalty versus untreated poplar, the need to test your own adhesives and finishes on a small scale first, and the exact spec language architects should use so the product doesn’t get value-engineered out. For more information and samples, email Alicia at alicia.powell@cfpwood.com (mailto:alicia.powell@cfpwood.com). Alicia Powell Kenn Busch Close-up view of the fire rated poplar veneer cores. Take the assessment for 0.5 CEUs You do not have a time limit on these questions. You must score 100% to earn .5 units. Material Intelligence will report directly to the AIA for credit. A certificate of completion will be emailed to participants allied with other associations. CEUs for Material IQ Episode 005: Specifying Fire Retardant Veneer Core Plywood for Interior Use (CFP 2026-1) Facebook This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Name(Required) First Last Full name as it appears in AIA / IDCEC / ASID / IIDA membership records. Association(Required) AIA IDCEC ASID IIDA USGBC Other Other Association Association Member Number(Required) Email(Required) For certificate delivery and confirmation. Subscribe to Material Intelligence Your information will not be sold to third parties. You can unsubscribe anytime. Subscription is not required to earn CEUs. We share upcoming events and CEU opportunities via this list. Yes, subscribe me What is the main advantage of third-party certification over developmental testing alone? It eliminates the need for any building code compliance It verifies ongoing, consistent performance through mill audits and annual retesting, rather than relying on a single test result It only applies to imported products It is faster and less expensive for manufacturers Why does a fire retardant treated panel “self-extinguish” when exposed to flame? It is coated with a fire-resistant paint It contains a built-in water reservoir The wood species is naturally fireproof A chemical reaction creates a char layer that stops the flame from advancing once the fuel source is removed How long must an interior (decorative) fire retardant product withstand flame exposure to pass the applicable surface burning test (ASTM E 84)? 30 minutes 20 minutes 5 minutes 10 minutes Δ

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   20 Jul 2026

   Material IQ Episode 004: A History of Decorative Laminate

   About this episode Formica Corporation’s brand historian Renee Hytry Derrington joins the Material IQ Podcast for a rare deep dive into the company’s century-long design legacy — from its 1913 origins as an electrical insulator to the birth of mid-century modern icons like the “Skylark” boomerang pattern designed by Brooks Stevens and Raymond Loewy’s postwar pastels. Along the way: the real story behind matte finishes, ColorCore, and how paper (not plastic) built an industry — plus an unexpected sustainability angle tying Formica Corporation’s history to forest health and carbon storage. A must-listen for anyone who wants the inside track on how one material shaped the American middle-class home. Read a transcript of this podcast episode The following podcast transcript was generated with Whisper AI and may contain errors. Transcript Kenn Busch in conversation with Renee Hytry Derrington, brand historian, Formica Corporation. [00:00] Renee Hytry Derrington: It’s wild to walk into a space and then see something that your team worked on. It just is wild. And you can name the year and remember all the work that went into it. I would say that we were very lucky to have a design legacy throughout the years that led to the teams that we have today. [00:28] Kenn Busch: A design legacy like no other. The Formica Corporation basically defined an entire category of materials: high-pressure laminates. Hi, my name is Kenn Busch. I’m the host of the Material IQ podcast. And that was Renee Hytry Derrington, who has been playing a role with the Formica Corporation since the 1980s — in one way or another, leading design, defining design, discussing design. And she has been a great influence on the way I approach my materials coverage in this industry. [01:02] Kenn Busch: So this episode is very cool because it digs into the long legacy and history of materials and their role in defining the middle class and creating entirely new ways to think about design. And I’m super excited about this. But first, who is Renee? [01:24] Renee Hytry Derrington: I’m the brand historian for Formica Corporation. But before that role, I’d spent more than four decades doing product design at some of the best manufacturers in the world with a historic background — Kohler Company and then Formica. At Formica, I worked for 36 years, ultimately leading the global design teams across five continents. [01:49] Renee Hytry Derrington: During this process, I became deeply engaged in our history, just because design and history make sense. And we had a lot of wonderful designers and architects that were curious about our history. So now at this point, after rolling off my design roles, I’m focusing on documenting and archiving our company history. [02:10] Renee Hytry Derrington: One of my most recent projects, which was a blast — I documented every single HPL design ever produced by the U.S. division of Formica Corporation, for a major donation of both samples and photography to the National Building Museum. So that’s kind of what I’m doing right now. [02:32] Renee Hytry Derrington: But how did I get here? I started out with a degree in architecture from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. And I did go back and get my master’s in industrial design at The Ohio State University. I really do believe in education, which is great being a historian, because you can teach things. So with that, I serve on advisory boards at Ohio State as well as the University of Minnesota. Technical origins: a substitute for mica [02:57] Kenn Busch: Formica has some sort of technical origins, right? So where do we start talking about the beginnings — the beginnings of the high-pressure world, and Formica’s leadership in making it what it is today? [03:11] Renee Hytry Derrington: Well, ironically, the first order coming out of a rented Formica plant in 1913 was parts for the automotive industry. So go figure. I presented a paper at Ford last year for the International Business Archivists. And for me it was a great symbolic event, that here I was in the automotive industry, which was really the first customer of Formica. [03:38] Renee Hytry Derrington: It was an interesting company because it was started by two engineers that worked for Westinghouse. They had developed some technology. What they did is they were looking to create a laminated insulating material that was to be a substitute for the mineral mica. So it was actually a sort of stone-like product that was used for insulation. [04:04] Renee Hytry Derrington: Now, during that decade, there was a huge explosion of need for electronic equipment. So the demand for mica was more than the supply of that mineral. And it wasn’t consistent, and it was hard to get, and there were supply issues and all that kind of stuff. So our founders really had the opportunity to create kind of a wonder technical material that could be used in a lot of electrical-type appliances, as well as the automotive industry — timing gears, even shuttlecocks for making textiles. So it was a different kind of material to what we think about today. It really had a very interesting start on its way to becoming synonymous with modern durable surfacing. [04:57] Kenn Busch: This original electrical insulator — it was kraft paper saturated with phenolic resin? Or was there a version of this before that combination became the basis for HPL? [05:11] Renee Hytry Derrington: Fabric too. So it wasn’t always paper — it was also fabric. And we made shaped products also, so it wasn’t always flat. There was kind of a combination of things. [05:22] Renee Hytry Derrington: The earliest presses that did make flat material were very small. I think they were like two by three, versus now the big presses out in the world are four, five, six foot by eight, ten, twelve foot long. We can actually produce a larger sheet than that. It’s just that it’s harder to handle. But early days, the presses were small. We have photographs of these small presses that the guys were working on. And even the founders worked in the plant — that’s what’s so cool about the early days. The founders were actually working on all of that. Radios and the turn toward decorative [05:58] Renee Hytry Derrington: Besides the automotive industry, we also were part of the early innovation of radios — telecommunications. I don’t know if you remember those old standup radios, those big standup radios where people sat around and turned the dial and they were able to connect with the world for the first time. That was one of our other first customers. And that’s where the product became flat, because we were used as the insulating board in the back. And then the fronts were wood. [06:35] Kenn Busch: Oh, okay. [06:38] Renee Hytry Derrington: The expansion of the radios is kind of where we led into our decorative side, because that same radio manufacturer started to want to use our materials on the front. And they were asking us if we would have the ability to make that black or brown sheet look more like a wood, because walnut and wood was the material of choice back in the 1910s and ’20s. So it was the radio industry that sort of helped us get into decorative. [07:10] Kenn Busch: I don’t want to skip past the terminology here, or the company name. I think we kind of alluded to it, but literally the company name is because the material you were making was a substitute for… [07:22] Renee Hytry Derrington: For the mineral mica. [07:24] Kenn Busch: For mica, right. And so is that the honest version of where the brand name comes from? Because I actually got into a discussion with somebody a couple of months ago. They had a different take on it. I’m like, no, I’m pretty sure it’s because it was a substitute for mica. [07:43] Renee Hytry Derrington: It is absolutely that. [07:45] Kenn Busch: And it’s also become the quintessential reference point for high-pressure laminate, right? [07:51] Renee Hytry Derrington: It is. What HPL actually is [07:53] Kenn Busch: I headed you off a little bit ago. You were about to tell us why the printed design became an integral part of what we understand as Formica, as the radio industry was asking you for something to replace wood. [08:08] Renee Hytry Derrington: Yeah, exactly. Well, actually, I should probably step back and talk about the basic makeup of HPL — high-pressure laminate. Sometimes we do industry slang for it, right? HPL. But the laminate comes from the original process, where there were layers of either fabric or paper that were saturated in thermosetting resins and then pressed under heat and pressure. And with this, you have a very durable, flexible, wipe-clean surface. It’s a very strong surface. First, it was ideal for insulation materials. And then later, of course, we turned it into decorative. Radio City Music Hall and the cigarette-proof laminate [08:48] Kenn Busch: I want to ask you a little bit about the Radio City Music Hall thing. As you were saying that, it occurred to me: well, if you can make it in New York, you can make it everywhere. And you’re talking about Formica basically going global. But what was the material used? You said it was like a black lacquer. Where were they using it? And how did Formica execute it at that time? [09:10] Renee Hytry Derrington: Well, we sold the sheets and it was used for furniture. [09:12] Kenn Busch: For furniture, yeah. [09:13] Renee Hytry Derrington: Black lacquer furniture, and then for wall paneling. And it’s interesting because Radio City Hall was not only one of the earliest installations of that material, the insulating material — it also was the first time in a major installation where, again, a product developed by Jack Cochrane… [09:40] Kenn Busch: So a quick editorial note here. Jack Cochrane was Formica’s director of research in the 1920s and ’30s. He developed lighter-colored laminates in 1927. He introduced urea-based resins in the 1930s, which helped shift the company from electrical insulation into decorative surfacing. And as Renee is going to tell us, he was involved in some other very critical technical leaps forward for the company. [10:09] Renee Hytry Derrington: Again, a product developed by Jack Cochrane was a no-scorch construction laminate. Or back in those days, you would call them cigarette-proof. In 1931, he created a laminate that included a thin layer of metal foil in between those papers. And this created the surface that was effectively cigarette-proof. [10:34] Renee Hytry Derrington: And as you know, back in those days, smoking was very bold, right? Everybody smoked. There was a lot of smoking happening. And that was something that was always a category even wood and other materials had to deal with. So Radio City Hall was also one of the first installations of that cigarette-proof or no-scorch construction laminate. [10:56] Renee Hytry Derrington: And when you think about it, everybody thinks of Formica for mid-century modern kitchen countertops. Actually, our earliest forays were more into the commercial segment — either transportation design, like big ships, trains, early airplanes, as well as some significant architectural installations that kind of affiliated with it, like bus stations and transportation halls, that sort of thing. [11:28] Kenn Busch: Because of the durability? Because of the consistency? [11:32] Renee Hytry Derrington: Yes and yes. Durability. [11:35] Kenn Busch: And the value, I suppose, too, right? [11:37] Renee Hytry Derrington: Yeah. And also in those days, because of our printing innovations, we were able to offer a substitute for what was considered very expensive and potentially rare materials. Like with the wood grains. [11:52] Renee Hytry Derrington: Back to Jack in 1927 — he created a technique that he was able to patent to do light wood grains. Because imagine, if you’re using phenolic resins, the earlier ones were darker, like walnuts. But there was a trend for lighter wood grains in the latter part of the 1920s. So he also patented a technique for creating blonde wood grains, basically, that were very popular. So here the palette was opening up, that we could do both light to dark wood grains, substituting the very expensive sapeles and all of the different kinds of exotics out there, which was fantastic. So it was something that architects and designers were looking to use if they didn’t have access to those more expensive materials. Printing on paper [12:39] Kenn Busch: So the printing part — as that was introduced, you couldn’t print right on the brown or dark-colored kraft paper. You had to add a lighter-colored layer of paper to print on to carry some of these designs? How did this combination of materials evolve? [12:59] Renee Hytry Derrington: Well, the original wood grains for the radio industry were on the dark kraft paper. And so therefore the images were more muted and not as crisp like they are today. Because today we have the ability to print photorealistically, which is fantastic. Depending on the texture, it looks like a real veneer. But in those days it was more of a challenge. And this innovation to do it on a lighter opaque surface actually helped lighten and brighten the print and allow us the wider range. Why matte finishes exist [13:34] Kenn Busch: And the evolution of the textures of laminates. I think one of the great things I learned from you was that stipple finish that was introduced maybe in the ’50s or something like that. That wasn’t necessarily an aesthetic decision — it was a durability decision. Am I recalling this right, Renee? [13:55] Renee Hytry Derrington: I would say that in the early days, the laminate finish was more of a glossy finish. And in fact, when I joined the business, we used to have a buffing machine. So you’d press it in a matte finish and then you’d buff it. It was kind of an interesting technique. And you probably see that finish out there today. But it was more geared towards more glossy finishes. [14:18] Renee Hytry Derrington: But then the matte — we call it matte, not super matte — the matte finish with that slight little subtle texture to it, that was meant to be a more forgiving texture in general. And matte texture came about, I would say, in the late ’40s, after World War II ended. So that was an innovation. [14:43] Kenn Busch: And sometimes I speak in front of groups of students and I’m talking about that innovation. And I’m pretty sure I learned this from you, right? The idea that these little micro-pebbles, this little tiny stipple finish, was really to minimize the surface contact as people engaged with the material. And minimize — let’s say if you were going to scratch it, you only scratched just the very tops of those little stipples, instead of digging into what would be maybe a lacquer finish or a smooth, shiny finish. Am I remembering that right? [15:21] Renee Hytry Derrington: Yeah. And it hides it, too. Most matte laminates are, I don’t know, 15 to 18 degree gloss. And that’s kind of the average gloss level of what your average scratch or scuff that somebody would do, overusing the material. So when you have a high gloss, which is at 90, if you take a deep scratch through it, it’s going to go down to that 18 degree gloss and you’re going to see it — versus with a nice subtle matte finish. Melamine and the arrival of color [15:52] Renee Hytry Derrington: And there’s lots of technologies out there today. So I need to say that this is the melamine technology, which was really key to the laminate industry in total. Today there’s so many more technologies out there that are anti-scratch and anti-fingerprint that are fantastic, like our Fenix product. So I’m talking back in the day where melamine was used. [16:19] Renee Hytry Derrington: And actually, melamine wasn’t the original surface — not until about 1938. When melamine was available, that allowed us to create the brighter colors that you wanted to see. Before, it was more of a muddy resin in general. So really, the introduction of melamine gave us the color clarity, the heat resistance that was needed, and the durability. And that allowed us to do the wonderful light and dark patterns and much more brilliant colors than we had even before. [16:56] Renee Hytry Derrington: And that’s why, when you think about mid-century modern — besides the war happening right until ’45 — all the stuff that came after that, there was a lot of light aquas and pinks and all those lovely colors being used at the time. [17:09] Kenn Busch: So just to make sure we’re tracking on the terminology here: when you say melamine, you’re talking about melamine-saturated decor papers, right? Because the resin used in the core, the kraft papers, is a phenolic resin, which cures darker. But it’s more cost-effective. [17:28] Renee Hytry Derrington: Well, it has some benefits that melamine doesn’t. [17:31] Kenn Busch: Ooh, do tell. [17:31] Renee Hytry Derrington: I mean, the reason we have that core is that the phenolic resin is very flexible. So the sheets won’t break. Melamine has a tendency to be less flexible. [17:42] Kenn Busch: Brittle. [17:43] Renee Hytry Derrington: So by marrying the two different kinds of resins, we get the best of both worlds. We get a durable, clear topcoat that’s hard and scratch-resistant, but then you have a nice flexible sheet so that the fabricators and the millwork houses can easily work with them. We can roll them up in a hat box and ship them to your house directly, for instance. So all the resins have a specific purpose. Postwar design and the American middle class [18:08] Kenn Busch: So on this design journey — let me know if I’m kind of skipping over — I really want to get into talking about the colors and the designs that made the whole mid-century design movement pop. And Formica’s role in that, and really shaping what people thought of as the emergence of the American middle class, which was something brand new in the world. [18:33] Renee Hytry Derrington: Even though we were starting on that journey towards decorative laminates in the early ’30s, our main focus was more the commercial segment. Like I said, transportation and commercial buildings and that sort of thing. Our plant was utilized for the war effort, and we actually went back to our origins by creating gears and propellers for airplanes, and equipment for radios. So our plant totally shifted for World War II efforts. [19:05] Kenn Busch: So cool. But after the war? [19:08] Renee Hytry Derrington: We were able to step back into being decorative again. And one of the first things that we did was we worked with — he’s not as well known, unfortunately, but he was one of the early modernists — his name was Morris B. Sanders. We worked with him. He lived in New York City. He put up one of the first modern brownstones in the city. He created a design with us called Moonglow, that is patented. Moonglow, G-L-O. This was done in 1948. [19:38] Renee Hytry Derrington: So this is kind of the first partnership we had with an outside designer, to help us understand what the new aesthetics of the coming age were. He was the first one that we started working with. Then we had two very famous industrial designers that were using our material. Brooks Stevens, Luxwood, and Skylark [19:56] Renee Hytry Derrington: First, we worked with an industrial designer named Brooks Stevens. And me coming from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, growing up in Wisconsin, I’m so proud to say that Brooks Stevens from Milwaukee was a customer. He was working with our laminates to design trains — commuter trains. So he was working on the Hiawatha train that went between Chicago, Milwaukee, to Minneapolis, and then out west. And with that, he was specifying our materials. [20:34] Renee Hytry Derrington: Because he understood our materials, we then asked him — because he had opinions. You know designers. They have opinions about things. Since he gave us his opinions, we said, can we hire you? And so he was our second designer that was basically helping the internal R&D folks create appropriate ranges for the time. [20:58] Renee Hytry Derrington: And a designer on Brooks Stevens’ staff was the one that first penned the boomerang, which in those days was called Skylark. That became one of the most iconic laminate designs, if not iconic imagery of the era in general. [21:18] Kenn Busch: And Brooks Stevens was pivotal in turning Formica into the company we know today. How is that? [21:25] Renee Hytry Derrington: He was the one that said, well, why don’t you go back to your photographic images of wood grains? And he came out with a line called Luxwood, which really kind of went crazy all over. I’ve seen it all over. It was a straight-grain sapele, but then they colored it in many different colors. And that Luxwood really went into the marketplace, kind of going back to our roots of printing the actual wood grain design. [21:54] Renee Hytry Derrington: And then, of course, he did this lovely Skylark design, which became one of the most emblematic design-language pieces of the era. And that was in 1951. So now we’re kind of heading after the ’40s and really getting into that mid-century modern period. [22:14] Kenn Busch: And that was the Skylark, or the boomerangs, right? It was the little boomerang shapes that were kind of overlapping. It kind of looked like a field of these, not even oriented in a specific direction. It was just fun, chaotic. How do you link that kind of abstract design coming out of nowhere and relate it to the energy of the post-war period and the new American middle class? And, hey, we’re something new here, right? Have people thought about the cultural connections between Formica’s position in the world and suddenly mass-marketing these brand new design ideas? To me, there’s so much energy in that moment in time. [23:05] Renee Hytry Derrington: You have to call it the atomic age, too. The atomic age. [23:08] Kenn Busch: Bingo. Right, yeah. [23:10] Renee Hytry Derrington: There you go. I mean, all the technology that was developed during World War II — microwave, the atom bomb — there’s all these new technologies that happened because of the war effort that then started to make its way into the consumer world. [23:24] Renee Hytry Derrington: Noguchi designed a very famous table, with their kind of boomerang-shaped base. It’s a Herman Miller piece. It’s beautiful. It’s lovely. I have one myself. But there was a lot of design during those days kind of taking on that very playful role, a very optimistic role. And the colors that we did, it was amazing. Raymond Loewy and the pastel explosion [23:51] Renee Hytry Derrington: When I think about it, the Brooks Stevens colors were quite nice. There was a white and a gray and a pumpkin, but they were more muted. It wasn’t until our next interaction with a famous industrial designer named Raymond Loewy that we really went all into the pastel colors. Pastel yellow, light aqua, medium aqua, light blue. We got into those very playful colors with the same design. [24:24] Renee Hytry Derrington: And that’s why people think, oh, Raymond Loewy designed your boomerang. No, he recolored it. He joined our organization in 1954. And he was very famous for a lot of automotive design and some of the biggest brand logos out there. TWA. He designed the Lucky Strike pack. The Coca-Cola bottle he designed. So he was very influential too. And design was kind of exuberant at that point. [24:55] Kenn Busch: I love that term, exuberant. There’s nothing we can’t do. There was a time, I think, where people said, come over and see my Formica kitchen. [25:06] Renee Hytry Derrington: You’re not going to believe how gorgeous it is. We were advertising quite heavily in the ’50s. Our range, which before World War II was more limited, after World War II expanded immensely. And you saw all of these color options — clear colors, bright colors, optimistic colors. [25:27] Renee Hytry Derrington: White became an important thing. Actually, our white that we have in our range today, 949 White, which is an industry standard — that was a Raymond Loewy-inspired design in 1954. It was very hard to make white pre-’50s. It wasn’t until there was a stable titanium dioxide element that could create good whites, and therefore good lights, and therefore good pastels. It was so interesting. There was this technology of materials that led to better designs that then could reflect the optimistic era that came after World War II. [26:07] Kenn Busch: Well, that’s such a great point, because titanium dioxide is what gives paper its whiteness, right? That’s how you get blindingly white shades of paper. And then now you can print on that to create laminates. And it opens up, like you say, a whole palette of vibrant designs. [27:27] Renee Hytry Derrington: When I look back at our history and I look at color trends — I recently was kind of tracking this. I know the historians at Ford Motor Company, Kohler Company. I know their historians very well. I’ve been in their archives too. And comparing what Formica was introducing through the decades against Kohler, against the automotive industry, my friends at Whirlpool even — we all kind of were paralleling the same thing, as the technology allowed us to create whiter, brighter designs, especially in that mid-’50s time period. [26:59] Renee Hytry Derrington: And it’s so great because it just really allowed the consumer to have this beautiful space that represented modernity and optimism and the future. It was just a really brilliant time for design. And I think that’s why people love looking back at mid-century modern design now, because it represented all that positivity. [27:19] Kenn Busch: Right. It was the explosion of the American century. The leadership of our companies, the post-war generation with cash to spend, and wanting to create beautiful environments for themselves. And the easiest way to do that was to work with materials from companies like Formica. And effective marketing made it like, okay, those are the Joneses, got to keep up with them, they’ve got Formica. And it snowballed and became something that now is an era that everybody looks back on with fondness, and maybe even envy now. The House of the Future and the whole-house ’60s [28:10] Kenn Busch: So where are we going from there? We’ve got these abstract designs that are introduced. You’re able to help people use gorgeous wood grains in areas where… [28:21] Renee Hytry Derrington: Marbles. [28:22] Kenn Busch: And stones, right? So let’s just keep going with the evolution of these material and design innovations. [28:31] Renee Hytry Derrington: Well, the relationship with Raymond Loewy went up until 1964, which is when Formica had the House of the Future at the World’s Fair in New York. And so that was a great representation that included materials that were even on the exterior. So our materials were on the exterior, to the interior furniture. And it had new sorts of layouts for the kitchen and the children’s room, and new kinds of rooms in general. [29:01] Renee Hytry Derrington: And that really went to the forefront and propelled Formica from the ’50s into the ’60s, which was more of the whole house. The ’50s was more about the kitchen, and then the ’60s went to the full house. There you saw Formica laminate being used for paneling. People remember the ’60s, wood paneling — that was our material then. And we had shower system kits as well as the paneling. So we were expanding the types of laminate that could be used in different applications, both horizontally and vertically at that point. Durability, and Color Core [29:41] Kenn Busch: You mentioned being able to be used for showers and whatnot. The durability of the material is something we haven’t really touched on. I mean, the phenolic-resin-based core of kraft paper and the melamine-resin-based decorative layer — it’s waterproof, it’s cigarette-proof. It’s really something that the materials world hadn’t seen up until then. [30:08] Renee Hytry Derrington: And again, along with the impact resistance. Practically indestructible. [30:14] Kenn Busch: How do we talk about the explosion of application possibilities? I mean, it started out in commercial spaces, like you said, which I did not realize, and then in transportation. And the fact that a lot of that stuff is still out there. [30:30] Renee Hytry Derrington: We did try residential before World War II. There are some indications where we were doing the whole dinette table and matching chairs. We were trying to get furniture manufacturers to use our product and they were hesitant, because they were used to wood tables. So we actually created kits where we had the finished top and sent the legs along with it. So we were starting to go into the residential segment before World War II. [30:57] Kenn Busch: What were the main design leaps since the ’40s, the ’50s? [31:04] Renee Hytry Derrington: We also created an innovation called Color Core. And this was for the solid colors, not the prints. We haven’t talked about solid colors — the blues, purples, oranges, which is a huge part of our sales. But in 1983, we introduced Color Core, and that eliminated that brown line to create a color-through construction, which was fantastic. And that really came about through the engagement of designers again — designers and architects. It’s mostly paper [31:36] Kenn Busch: Every time I think about the movie The Graduate — he says, plastics. [31:46] Renee Hytry Derrington: It’s interesting, because the majority of our product is actually paper. [31:50] Kenn Busch: Well, and that’s a great thing to clarify, right? Because sometimes it’s called plastic laminate, or P-Lam, and some of these other terms that really are not accurate. It’s mostly paper fiber, right? [32:01] Renee Hytry Derrington: Absolutely. [32:03] Kenn Busch: So what is kind of the approximate ratio there? [32:07] Renee Hytry Derrington: For the construction of a sheet of laminate — we look at the thickness of it, or somebody might say the brown line with the decor sheet on it. We have the kraft paper and the decor sheet, and then we have a melamine layer that is carried by a sheet of paper too. If it’s a print, it’s approximately 70 percent paper and about 30 percent the resins — the clear resins, the melamine on top, and then the phenolic that makes it strong and durable and flexible and impact-resistant. [32:40] Renee Hytry Derrington: So you can see that really our product is more paper, and paper is a great renewable resource. For years, the industry has been very supportive of sustainable forestry. And even recycled content — we’re able to use recycled content in various elements of various papers. So paper is key for the construction of plastic laminate. Like they used to say — plastic laminate. Paper, forests, and the sustainability story [33:08] Kenn Busch: Well, you know, it’s these marketing terms, because plastic was a wonderful jet-age material at one point. So it was something we all wanted to brag about. But the fact that the fiber that goes into paper — I’ve been spending a lot of time in the forest with foresters over the last few years. And I was in a gorgeous stand of tall, straight sugar maples that had been managed a few years before for the pulpwood. They took all the pulp trees out of it. And that was the only reason these maple trees were allowed to grow so tall and straight, because they cleared the canopy, opened up the space. [33:44] Kenn Busch: And I was a little bit blown away, because the guy is standing there telling me: look, next time you’re in a bathroom in an airport and you’ve got the air dryer and you’ve got the paper towel machine, use the paper towel machine. Because if we don’t monetize the use of the paper, the pulp trees, we aren’t going to be able to care for these hardwood forests. So the use of paper helps our forests be healthier. The fact that we are a paper-based industry is an absolute plus for the environment and a great sustainability story. [34:17] Renee Hytry Derrington: Yeah, no, absolutely. [34:20] Kenn Busch: And this might be a great way to transition into what I always thought was the untold sustainability story of Formica. Beginning with the replacement of mineral materials as electrical insulators — now we’re doing it with phenolic-resin-saturated papers because it’s a better product. It’s more consistent. At that time it was probably more cost-effective, but I don’t think anybody was thinking in terms of, well, this is a more sustainable alternative for mica. It’s just that it was a more consistent and accessible version of the material. [35:01] Kenn Busch: And there’s so many different ways to talk about sustainability when we’re talking about Formica, because we’re also talking about the replacement of rare and fragile wood grains, right? I remember doing some stories with you in the nineties, Renee, where we were talking about zebrawood, and species that you could not… [35:22] Renee Hytry Derrington: Rosewood. Rosewood, yeah. [35:23] Kenn Busch: All of them. You could not legally get your hands on those woods or veneers to make furniture out of. But your design suppliers, you worked with those guys to get gorgeous scans and then reproductions of these absolutely gorgeous woods that people desire, but aren’t allowed to use anymore. Now it can be part of their design vision, because we can replicate them and turn them into something that is actually safe to use, more practical to use, budget-friendly and legal to use. [35:59] Kenn Busch: Because I think I remember a presentation once where somebody was showing a bunch of these different wood species and saying, these trees are on the same endangered species list as the white snow leopard or whatever. [36:15] Renee Hytry Derrington: Yeah. The red list. The bad red list. [36:17] Kenn Busch: The red list. And so this was a way to save a very rare and fragile resource by imitating it. People desire these things. So we were able to use them without actually threatening the original material. So we’re using paper to create the high-pressure laminate. We’re imitating rare and fragile wood species. And then… [36:41] Renee Hytry Derrington: And stones. That’s another thing. [36:43] Kenn Busch: And stones. I never think about stones. [36:46] Renee Hytry Derrington: Yeah. It’s really interesting, because granites or real stones became popular in the nineties. But they came from far away. They were mountains in Brazil, and you’re shipping these big blocks all over the place. And we were very lucky to kind of capitalize on that trend. Scanning technology got better in the 2000s, and we were able to scan a full slab and then reproduce that. So it was like real granite. It was like real marble. [37:17] Renee Hytry Derrington: So no longer were you in some foreign country, chunking out a block, shipping it, cutting it up, and then creating your countertop. It’s another wonderful way for us to create a rare visual that makes you feel like you have a luxury granite, without the negativity of cutting a hole in the side of a mountain. [37:41] Kenn Busch: Exactly right. The sustainability story is not cut and dried in our industry. We can come at it from so many different angles: the materials we are replacing, the materials we build with, and then in the case of a high-pressure laminate, the materials that support it out in the real world. If it’s particleboard or MDF or some other composite wood material — those are the only building materials we have that are truly what they say, carbon negative or climate positive. Bottom line is they actually store more carbon than is released in the production of those materials. [38:18] Kenn Busch: So the finished countertop with the Formica surface on it is a climate-positive material, or carbon negative, even after all of the processing steps that convert these raw materials into a cabinet, a countertop, a worktop, a wall panel. We are still storing more carbon in that finished product than is released in getting it from the forest to the furniture. What’s next [38:44] Kenn Busch: But let’s bring it back to design. We’ve been through some of the major social trends over the century, and we’ve talked about some of the top industrial designers who’ve been involved. What’s next? [38:56] Renee Hytry Derrington: It’s interesting to look at style trends, even since I’ve been in the industry in the ’80s. When I first joined the category, the most popular looks were solid colors and, I’m going to say, organic patterns. Wood grains, not so much. The commercial segment was still going with veneer and real wood at that point. [39:21] Renee Hytry Derrington: But it’s been a total flip now. Wood grains are the hottest visuals in the architectural community, because of some of the benefits that you’re talking about — the biophilic aspect, the sustainability offering, instead of going after raw veneer, which is difficult to work with. And you don’t know if it’s a good thing to be cutting down those kinds of trees. [39:49] Kenn Busch: And the VOCs in the finishing process. And the inconsistencies there, right? [39:53] Renee Hytry Derrington: Exactly. Or inconsistencies if you’re designing a restaurant chain — are you going to be able to get consistency throughout, to support your corporate image? Would you get consistency from Seattle to Chicago to Charlotte? Will you get the same look across with veneer? It’s very difficult. So the wood grain category for Formica laminates has been a boom. [40:23] Kenn Busch: We love wood. [40:24] Renee Hytry Derrington: And that’s how we started. That’s the funny thing about it. That’s exactly how we started. Our first visual imagery was wood grains. [40:31] Kenn Busch: Thank you so much for joining us. We hope we’ve improved your Material IQ by a point or two. This has been a production of Material Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved. Renee Hytry Derrington, Brand Historian/Design, Formica Group North America Kenn Busch, Host and Publisher, Material Intelligence and Climate Positive Now Check out these vintage Formica ads Images provided by Formica Corporation. These images were obtained from the Smithsonian Institution. The images or its contents may be protected by international copyright laws. All images sourced from The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Permission for use of this image can be obtained by contacting archivescenter@si.edu (mailto:archivescenter@si.edu). NMAH Archives Center.The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution NMAH Archives Center.The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution NMAH Archives Center. The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution NMAH AC0565.The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution NMAH AC0565. The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution NMAH Archives Center. The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution NMAH AC0565. The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Images provided by Formica Corporation, obtained from the Smithsonian Institution. The images or its contents may be protected by international copyright laws. Citation: The Formica Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Permission for use of this image can be obtained by contacting archivescenter@si.edu (mailto:archivescenter@si.edu).

4. 

   12 Feb 2026

   Material IQ Episode 003: “Engineering a Better Panel with Climate-Positive Plywood”

   About this episode In this episode of Material IQ, host Ken Busch sits down with Chris Tutuska of Funder (Genesis Products) (https://funderamerica.com/) and Meghan Bell of Garnica (https://www.garnica.one/en-us/) to explore a breakthrough in decorative panel technology: thermally fused laminate (TFL) pressed on a sustainably engineered poplar plywood core. The conversation dives into how Garnica’s meticulously cultivated, plantation-grown plywood—virtually void-free and carbon-neutral—solves historic challenges in using plywood in TFL applications while delivering superior strength, lighter weight, greater thickness accuracy, and improved tool life. Beyond performance, the three discuss the environmental and health benefits of responsible forestry, carbon sequestration, and alignment with initiatives such as the AIA Materials Pledge and LEED. Take the assessment below for CEUs (#assessment) EverPly+ plywood-based TFL with Funder’s Maple Linen design. Read a transcript of this podcast episode The following podcast transcript was generated with Whisper AI and may contain errors. Meghan Bell • 00:09 Architects and designers are so wonderfully placed to be able to instill change in the market. When you feel so good about something you’re more motivated to get up and go to work, you’re more motivated to get up and do the next thing, and I really do feel like we’re making a difference. Kenn Busch • 00:26 Hi, I’m Ken Bush. This is the Material IQ podcast. And if your goals include making a difference by using the most sustainable materials you can find without compromising design, durability, or breaking the budget, then I think you’re really going to enjoy this conversation. We’re here today to talk about a material that we all know, TFL, thermally fused laminate decorative panels and another material that we all know, plywood, coming together to create something new for the North American market. The company Funder, part of Genesis products, has launched a new TFL material with a plywood core instead of the typical particle board or sometimes MDF, a plywood core that is sustainably grown and sustainably produced by a company called Garnica. The you heard at the top of the podcast is Meghan Bell. She’s from Garnica and she talked a little bit about why it feels good to specify a material like this, why it helps make a difference. And we’re going to dig deep into that, but first of all, who is Meghan? Meghan Bell • 01:35 So I am the product specialist as well as I look after architect and design development for North America. I’ve dove into the trees and really the process of how the plywood’s made, doing research on the standards of our North American standards, as well as other standards, to understand why Kenn Busch • 01:57 Garnica is so superior. And from Genesis Funder, we have Chris Tytuska. Chris, tell us a little bit about you and a little bit about Genesis, if you would. Yeah, so Chris Tytuska, product director Chris Tutuska • 02:09 of the three Funder facilities here. The three Funder facilities are part of the larger 14 plants. The business that I’m particularly involved with is the kitchen and closet industry, and we call that the industrial side of our business. Within that space, we have a lot of capabilities, servicing the whole kind of cabinet and closet industries. From the lamination side, we have all surfaces covered. Roll lamination, we do low-faces, weight papers, 2D foil lamination, HPL lamination, and what I’m involved with TFL lamination. Kenn Busch • 02:48 And Genesis has a very elaborate door program as well. Laminated doors made out of 3DL or five piece wrapped doors made out of other types of lighter weight surfaces. Slab doors. Drawer boxes made with wrapped components or plywood. Even powder coated wood components. And an acoustic line, acoustic treatments made out of a sustainable material called Quel. and that’s Q-W-E-L. But all the laminate materials are available as coordinated matching or complimentary surfaces. So you can get your matches made by Genesis rather than as a designer or a manufacturer trying to hunt around and find all these different materials that will somehow look just right when they’re all used together. Chris Tutuska • 03:36 Right, so in our surface synergy collection, we do have, you know, we start out with the TFL patterns cores, solids and wood grains. And we match those. We feel that our surface synergy program is the most accurate in the industry for matching across the different surfaces that any manufacturer, cabinet, closet producer might want to use because we know that it’s a challenge and pain point for people that have had scar tissue using kind of generic industry cross reference sheets. And so we stand behind the accuracy of these matches across TFL, across the edge banding, across HPL, across 3D and 2D vinyls. And so, you know, if you, you know, are selecting something out of our program, you can kind of have a little bit of ease of mind that this is going to match. I don’t have to go through all of the development work to and frankly, it’s usually a hard push to get all of that and it takes time, time that a lot of people don’t have. And so that’s what we’re trying to address is taking some of that upfront work out. Kenn Busch • 04:50 And that’s a huge, that’s been a huge bugaboo the whole time I’ve been in the industry is how do I value engineer this, this project or this interior, you know, space without compromising my design integrity, you know, without, you know, you’ve got to versus over engineering or trying to use the same material on every possible surface, right? So you guys are that consultant, right? You’re the, you’re the, that, that source, that resource for, let’s say a curated matching program across so many different materials. And I’m trying to remember what your motto is. Is it, is it, there’s nothing we can’t do or is it Chris Tutuska • 05:26 resistance is futile? Maybe a little bit of both. So all of these components and materials we’ve been Kenn Busch • 05:34 been talking about, you know, these are laminates and overlays and substrates that are available out in the market that Genesis uses to create value added components for commercial and residential interior design. But the TFL, the funder TFL panels are actually produced in-house. Is that right, Chris? Chris Tutuska • 05:51 Yeah. And we produce TFL on any number of core substrates. That could be particle board. That could be MDF. That could be plywood. of those even delve into some odd board sizes and then some also some some makeups, whether that’s a moisture resistant, fire resistant, FSC certified, ULEF, you name it. You know, there’s a there’s a whole host of cores that we use to meet certain product and project specifications. Kenn Busch • 06:23 You said plywood under TFL? Yes. What? Yep. Tell us why you’re doing that. Chris Tutuska • 06:31 So plywood, especially in the cabinet industry, a lot of the manufacturers use it as a lever to have an upcharge that is basically just by switching out the core, they can demand a higher price. The consumer in America knows that that is probably a higher quality product that has better resistance to moisture. definitely stronger than when it comes to MOE and MOR as far as being able to hold more weight. And even with doing that, it’s a lighter weight product. So overall, it’s a step up in quality and I think it’s been communicated that’s a step up in craftsmanship. So it allows them to charge Kenn Busch • 07:19 a higher price for it. So plywood is an unusual material for TFL, at least in my experience? Is this new to the market overall? Chris Tutuska • 07:31 Yeah, I’ll address why it’s been kind of a challenge in previous versions. And so previous iterations of plywood used in the TFL application. For one reason or the other, there’s been some voids and some whether it splices, whether it’s actually voids from you know, knots in the actual slicing veneers that make up the plywood platform. Those are a problem if you don’t have consistency within the plywood platform, because if you can think about having a core that is experiencing a lot of pressure in a short amount of time, if there’s nothing pushing back and there’s a void in the core, that plate cannot touch and cure the melamine treated paper to the substrate. Kenn Busch • 08:20 What do these voids mean in the finished panel? Chris Tutuska • 08:23 People that buy our products, they don’t want to see a big kind of milky white spot anywhere from three inches to four inches wide. What we’ve developed with Guernica, because of their consistency of their plywood platform and they’re basically virtually void free core. We have a very low scrap rate. We have a material thickness accuracy, probably nothing that I’ve ever seen in plywood. And so, yeah, it’s just, and we can get into more of the details on what that means to the end user, the manufacturer. But yeah, that’s exactly why this product addresses some of those previous problems with plywood previous attempts to launch it in the market. Kenn Busch • 09:14 Meghan, you’ve got some expertise in this plywood that we’re talking about, right? – I do. – I’ve been really amazed to hear how much has gone into engineering this perfect substrate that Funder is now using in their TFL. Please give us some history of Garnica and how this perfect plywood core came to be. Meghan Bell • 09:36 Garnica is a Spanish company out of La Crona La Rioja. It all starts really at the nursery in the mother tree. So each clone is taken from the mother tree by a clipping, it’s planted in the earth by the mother tree. It grows for one to two years. And then they do a secondary clipping where they basically take down the tree. They put it into an irrigation trench essentially where it can re-root and then it’s moved over into the plantation. Now in the plantation, it grows for 12 to 15 years and every one to two years, they go through an aggressive pruning where they trim the branches up as far as is healthy for the tree. Now this helps the tree grow very straight, very tall and very fast. It also allows for those growth rings to grow around the scars of the initial trimmings. And then that gives clear veneers up incredible lengths of that tree. So when you’re doing the rotary cutting process, you’re starting at the outside, gets turned into a cylinder, and then it’s like an unraveling kind of like paper towel. So when that unraveling starts, you have clear veneers until you see those scars. Now those scars are quite small because we’re just trimming limbs, little limbs, and it’s every one to two years, they don’t have enough time to grow that large. When it comes to a lot of plywood manufacturers, many of them source third trees from the wild. So what happens there is there’s no control, right? There’s no control over the way that tree grows and so it can grow in all different directions as well as having large limbs and those would contribute to voids within the core. Kenn Busch • 11:19 So I understand Garinika started cloning poplar trees right around World War II. Tell us more about these clones. Meghan Bell • 11:28 We have about 230 clones available. around 10 clones are the most commonly used. In 2025, we used wood from 32 different popular clones. Kenn Busch • 11:40 When you say clone, this is, is it the same as the mother tree you mentioned earlier? So tell us a little bit about the family tree of your trees. Meghan Bell • 11:52 Well, the trees actually, when you go to Benios 1 and you go to the plantation and you see the nursery, the mother tree is actually like growing in all different directions. And that’s ’cause we’ve taken lots of clippings and she’s grown and she’s grown. And there’s multiple different mother trees in the line. And then down the line are each of her clones. So the mother tree, there’s probably many different mother trees. And then the clones are clipped off of those and put in the ground next to them. And that’s how they’re able to root. Kenn Busch • 12:24 Oh, it’s so nice you keep the families together. Are there certain traits that are passed along from these different mother trees to the generations that follow? Meghan Bell • 12:40 They try to keep the same genes in the way that they grow straight, they grow tall, they grow fast, but what’s different is they change them for droughts, they change them for pests, and they change them for like growing well in an area. So they’re color coded after they’re taken from the nursery and then those color coding’s determine which plantation they go to. Kenn Busch • 13:09 And then at what age are they harvested and what is the process for creating this famous plywood that funder is so in love with? Meghan Bell • 13:19 Mm-hmm, so the trees are brought from the plantation to the log yard. there, they’re go through like a metal detector because any sort of small nail or anything can ruin the lathe knife. So they go through the metal detector, then they’re debarked and then they go into the rotary lathe. So one knife strips the tree into a perfect cylinder. The second knife is much sharper and gives the veneers. The veneers that come off are pristine. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. It’s, it is gorgeous to look at. You wouldn’t believe that. There were any limbs in the first place. Then they go through. Now we can peel at the four by eight, as well as the eight by four, the five by 10 as well as the 10 by five, because we have our own trees and we’re able to cut them into certain lengths. And that allows for no splicing within the core. So it’s whole piece of near then all the way through, which then talks to what Chris was talking about, about those splicings causing issues when you are pressing a TFL. Kenn Busch • 14:25 So how thick are these slices? I mean, walk us through just sort of a 101 of how plywood is made from the veneer slices. Meghan Bell • 14:33 The veneer slices, it’s kind of like an unraveling of paper towels. So essentially it goes through the lathe and the knife draws it out and it’s like unraveling that paper towel. So they’re quite thin. And then those veneers are then stacked at right angles to each other. So the long grain is called long grain, and then there’s a cross grain. Now we have the best veneers on the cross grain, which is right underneath the surface. And that allows us to be able to give exceptional screw holding capabilities, um, as well as a pristine surface for that TFL or any sort of laminate or wood veneer on top. Kenn Busch • 15:21 So the plywood that the funder is using is your pop poplar core. And are these the same poplar trees we think of here in North America? Or is this a different European poplar is a different animal, so to speak? Meghan Bell • 15:37 It is a different animal because we have very stringent rules on how they grow and how they’re taken care of. So the trimming of the tree, all the different things, those contribute to the way that that tree grows and gives you the pristine veneers that we’re able to offer. Those aren’t going to be able to be offered from any of the popular trees in North America because we source Kenn Busch • 16:01 from the wild. How long does it take for these popular trees to mature? So anywhere from 12 to Meghan Bell • 16:10 to 15 years, we generally harvest at 20 centimeters in diameter. Kenn Busch • 16:18 So you let it get big enough, you don’t like, you don’t, you don’t come forward on its 15th birthday or something like that? Meghan Bell • 16:25 No, and we do have very stringent rules for the environment as well. So we use, because poplar is a species that does not need a canopy and we are consistently replanting. We have a clear cutting process, but there are certain times of the year that you can’t clear cut in certain areas. For example, the European mink is an endangered species. So when they’re going through their reproduction stage, we have very stringent rules on what times of the year we can pull and what time of the year we can’t insert in areas. Kenn Busch • 17:00 So the title we were playing with for this conversation is TFL on engineered plywood AI that the AI a materials pledge in action. Meghan Bell • 17:12 So the ESG is. Kenn Busch • 17:14 Mm hmm. Yes. Meghan Bell • 17:15 Yes. When it comes to Gernika, Gernika has the trees. Also the plywood panels themselves sequester carbon. There’s 22 tons of carbon sequestered for every hectare every year. popular plywood panel sequesters 700 meters cubed over the course of its life of CO2. We are a carbon net positive product. We are carbon net positive as a company and so that addresses any social governance when it comes to Kenn Busch • 17:46 environment. And that’s amazing. But just to take a quick glossary break here, carbon negative and climate positive basically mean any product or process that stores more carbon than is released in its production and use. And carbon net positive is the same thing, I guess, right? We’ve got to be careful about this terminology. Make sure we get everything just right. Meghan Bell • 18:10 Correct. So we do that by using as much of the tree as humanly possible and ideally all of the tree. So any sort of limbs or leaf foliage that falls off the tree is then in the earth and it gives kind of like a fertilizer for the trees to grow. Then we also have the trimmings and the barking that can go towards energy in the plant or like turned into a material that can be used for MDF or HDF. And then actually the very center of the log that’s in the rotary cutting process, like when you unravel your paper towel, you have that tube at the end. That is used as fence posts all over Spain and France. Kenn Busch • 18:56 So you make use of every fiber almost? Meghan Bell • 19:01 As much as we possibly can, yes, and that helps to negate the carbon footprint. Kenn Busch • 19:07 And the great thing about trees and carbon capture is the captured carbon stays captured, stays sequestered, until that would rot or burns, right? So theoretically decades, maybe hundreds of years. Meghan Bell • 19:23 Exactly. So by using it in buildings and things like that, you’re able to lower the buildings carbon footprint. Kenn Busch • 19:32 Chris, was that a goal when you guys were looking for this new substrate for your Everply Plus? Chris Tutuska • 19:40 It was an enhancement that is definitely something that we can sell on. I think it’s important to some customers in certain spaces, whether that’s an architect that’s seeking a certain certification or a green level for their building or their project or someone that needs points to achieve that. Kenn Busch • 20:03 In addition to all of the other benefits that this allows you guys to offer your customers, right? Lighter weight, better performance. Take through these one more time for me if you would, just because I think it’s a really powerful story. Right. I think so some of the challenges that Chris Tutuska • 20:22 have been addressed and we talked about them at a high level earlier, but one of the main things is thickness accuracy. In years past, with previous iterations of plywood, when you think about manufacturers that have, whether it’s a CNC machines, whether it’s boring operations, whether it’s operations that create different thicknesses and channels. When you have a material that was more variable than I talked about in previous versions of plywood, it throws havoc into widths, depths, and everything like that. So some manufacturers were hesitant to use these because a lot of times they would have to change programs and do all of that. With this material, But we’re claiming a thickness accuracy of plus or minus five thousands, which is almost close to particle board and MDF as far as a composite panel. So in essence, you’re telling the manufacturer that you don’t have to change programs, that you don’t have to measure before it gets on the machine, kind of breaking down that barrier. From the lightweight aspect, I mean, that’s always a positive when speaking anything plywood. We find that compared to particle board, about 15% lighter and compared to MDF, about 30% lighter and stronger. That’s always a great benefit. With our product in particular, we’re able to offer this on any one of our TFL textures, any one of our decors at pretty low minimum. We’re not talking containers or truckloads, we’re talking units. So that is also something that’s different than a lot of other solutions out there that have a TFL laminated plywood. Kenn Busch • 22:13 And that’s always a challenge because the TFL is a decorative panel as it comes out of the Thunder factory, right? It has the faces on it, it’s got the decor, all you need to do is size it and edge it, unless you have other more sophisticated designs coming. But you’re shipping a whole panel, right? And I’ve been having discussions with distributors like, God, we’d love to take X company’s whole new design launch, but there’s no way we can stock that many different 4 by 8 or 5 by 10 sheets of material. So your solution for them is to say, you can order just as many as you need. There aren’t minimum orders or the minimum orders Chris Tutuska • 22:54 aren’t that minimum? usually one unit or two unit depending on what it is. But, you know, another aspect that I even forgot to mention that in this, this comes with people using Garnika’s products over time. We’ve heard from multiple manufacturers that it even increases their their tool bit life. So you’re thinking about CNC bits and saw blades. Some are saying 40 to 50% longer because the, you know, the cores that they use are less abrasive on those tools. So I mean, when thinking about this product, it’s all of the good things that we talked about. But then there’s even further enhanced benefits that you don’t really realize until you become a Guarnica or an Everply Plus Acolyte. And so that’s something, another side benefit that the users experience. Kenn Busch • 23:49 And so yeah, that leads me directly to, Who is most interested in this product? Where is it an ideal fit for your customers? Who is excited about it? Where is it going? Chris Tutuska • 24:06 So we find that obviously a lot of frameless manufacturers really like the aspect and the performance, not only from a strength aspect, from a thickness accuracy aspect, but also the clean, consistent cores. I mean, it was a product made, almost tailor made, for frameless cabinets. Other manufacturers that are finding this are closet manufacturers. They’re also see the need for plywood. Plow it is also regional leaf where there’s high moisture environments the further south you go, places like Florida, it’s really, sometimes it’s a requirement for certain builders. We also see that it’s a value engineered solution for commercial projects that use sometimes two-sided HPL and a vertical application, which is totally overbuilding something that doesn’t need to have that HPL surface on both sides. This will allow you to get to a much better performing product, probably at a better price as well. Kenn Busch • 25:17 Yeah, HPL, that’s way over engineered. If you’re using HPL on a vertical two-sided panel, that’s crazy. And yeah, like you say, expensive. Chris Tutuska • 25:28 A lot of architects, it’s maybe just an education process to show them that they can have variety on a finished composite panel. They don’t have to run to a laminate chain to get that variety. They can still have beautiful textures, beautiful decors, even to the point of having one decor on one side and another decor on another side. There’s flexibility there that’s maybe sometimes people just don’t understand. Kenn Busch • 25:57 I have a conversation just about every week about people copying and pasting specifications that were probably originally written in the in the 50s. And it’s the one example everybody likes to use is, you know, high pressure laminate on marine grade plywood for a kitchen cabinet, right? Chris is laughing. Chris Tutuska • 26:18 Right. Do you see that, Chris, still? Yeah, I mean, people go with what they know. They hit the easy button. And sometimes I think it’s up to us as stewards in this industry to educate and tell them the performance requirement needed on a vertical surface. And, you know, if you’re overbuilding something that the people that are paying for it are at the end of the day they are your clients. And so if you can offer them a suitable product that meets the requirements for certain surfaces, you’re doing the best job to give them the best price, I guess, in some sense. Kenn Busch • 26:56 And in a weird way, this is like a back to the future type material, right? It’s a TFL panel, not HPL, but now we’re back to plywood instead of MDF or particle board. So it’s It’s almost like we’ve learned this lesson and that lesson and now we’ve got a whole new solution for those kinds of specifications. Any other thoughts on this combination of materials? I think we should really kind of drive home the fact that this is special and new. Chris Tutuska • 27:25 I think from my standpoint, learning more about Garnica, visiting their facilities, seeing the level of precision and the type of equipment that they use to control and and create this product. And it starts even as Meghan mentioned, at the seedling level and seeing how it’s, what I would call agricultural engineering on a scale that I’ve never seen. It’s truly remarkable. It left me inspired and it takes advantage of a lot of these initiatives to try and create products that are responsible. So to me, it checks a lot of boxes. And in some sense, while checking those boxes, you know, it’s similarly priced to what’s out there today. So it’s not like there’s a huge acquisition cost to use a product that is responsible. So I mean, I think that’s really just another aspect of how not only from a performance aspect the innovation around the total material. Kenn Busch • 28:27 Yeah, it’s not just the material itself that’s been engineered. It’s the whole process. And so I’m a little bit curious. I don’t know how much further we can go Meghan into that, but the way that you guys have systematized the regeneration of these trees, the harvest, the utilization, perfecting it generation after generation, I’m very, I wanna go, right? Can we all go? Would you invite us all to Spain? Meghan Bell • 28:57 I would love to. No, the process is really cool for sure. I mean, the way that the trees grow, it’s all taking care of and it’s all been thought through with much deliberation. But the coolest parts that I find, the reason I get out of bed in the morning is the environmental aspect. I mean, we all want something, a good world for our kids to grow up in, right? So the fact that they take so much time and put into the environment and the way that they go about harvesting the trees. I mean, when I was in Spain, there was this one tree that hadn’t been cut down and I asked Enrique, why is that tree not cut down? And he said, well, an animal has made that his home. So we don’t cut that tree down. That’s cool. It’s really, that gives me a good feeling when I go to work, right? I mean, there’s also the health benefits. So we had a client or a mill worker, rather in Greenville, South Carolina. And she said that they don’t purchase any other products now that they’ve moved on to Garnica. And that’s because their respiratory health has been better. They have less sick days and their production is up. So all of those things contribute to cost. And yes, it may be a little bit more, but I mean, when you factor in all of those benefits, you’re actually exceeding the original cost of, say, something of less value. Kenn Busch • 30:29 Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s the, you know, and I do a lot of writing and educating about managed forestry here in North America and the ripple effects of an operation, I’m sure like you guys have in Spain, you know, the jobs, the clean air, the sequestered carbon, you know, it’s, and I read an article a couple of years ago and I talk about it every time I’m giving a CEU, The happiest people, the happiest jobs in North America are loggers, right? So people who get to be in the woods every day, apparently that’s– – Yeah, it’s a good feeling. – Yeah, it’s not just a good job to have, but it makes people happy and you’re taking care of the place where you have to live, where your kids play, where your kids are gonna grow up, where– Meghan Bell • 31:18 Exactly, and architects and designers are so perfectly placed to be able to cause this change in the market. Kenn Busch • 31:27 Different species of trees have been engineered by nature to renew even in nature. And I think poplar is one of those species that benefits most from a natural clear-cut type devastation, fires, wind damage, that sort of thing. Meghan Bell • 31:48 They’re a pioneer species, so they don’t want a canopy. They need a lot of sunlight to grow. So we plant my every five meters or six meters and then that allows for no tree to fight for sunshine. Kenn Busch • 32:02 We started this whole conversation from the, you know, Chris, I think you brought up the AIA materials pledge and I wasn’t really familiar with that and I’m embarrassed to say, can you tell me just a little bit about that and how, you know, the Everply Plus product with the Garnica substrate is the perfect solution if you are trying to satisfy the AIA materials pledge. Chris Tutuska • 32:31 Right. I think with the Garnica core that we use in our Everply Plus product, it is actually a carbon positive product. And I think the AIA materials pledge is an assemblage of some very prominent architectural firms that have made the commitment to only use responsibly eco-friendly products. And some have gone even as far to only have these types of products in their part libraries, their product libraries that in every architect office you walk into. So I mean, it’s a really big commitment on their part, but it also really narrows the field of what companies and what materials can truly be qualified in this sense. And so to have a material that would qualify in this space is intriguing and it probably makes you on a shorter list of possible products to be used to design the next project, the next space. Kenn Busch • 33:41 So have you had the chance to tell this story to people who are trying to adhere to this the AI materials pledge? Chris Tutuska • 33:51 Yeah, and some of our distributor customers in that channel, I would say that their customers, I mean, each one of them have A&D spec reps that are very in tune with this type of a pledging commitment. And they know probably some architect firms that would be more apt to adopt something like that. And so it is important to some and, you know, some projects, it’s a requirement. So I mean, I think it says a lot about the those firms that are making that commitment. Kenn Busch • 34:25 Have you run into this outside of your work with Funder, Meghan, the materials pledge or other other sort of sustainability commitments that the architect and interior design world are trying to pioneer to reuse that word? Meghan Bell • 34:41 So lead is always a great one to look for when you’re looking for materials for building lead materials and lead buildings are not only higher performing because of the materials used, but I mean the air quality that those buildings are giving off, I guess, those places where those buildings are, the air quality is better. There’s reports of additional production and less sick days and all the things when you we are using LEED certified products. Now we are LEED certified, we’re Bream certified. We’re in the top 3% for wood manufactured materials for EcoVadis, we just received a gold this year. I am consistently going into architects and designers and educating on environmental and health and why Garnica is the right choice. We have a CEU that is HSW that also touches based on sustainable forest management as well as the environment and why we do what we do. Kenn Busch • 35:49 Any lessons from those conversations, Meghan, from questions that you get or what you see the A&D community responding to when you’re in front of them telling them about Garnika? Meghan Bell • 36:00 Well, when I tell them about that tree story with the animal, they definitely are ears up, ready to listen and totally engaged. Everything having to do with Garnika, it is such a beautiful story. and it is such a beautiful product, even despite the environmental impact, you know, I mean, you’re not giving up quality to gain the environmental impact, right? So that part is very attractive to the architect and designer, especially those who have looked at a project that they’ve had and like Chris said, has a milky white spot on it. They’re like, oh, well, that’s not meant to be there, you know? So once I’ve given a presentation, There’s basically a 99% specification rate thus far. Kenn Busch • 36:44 Did you hear that, Chris? – Yeah, I need to tag along on those meetings. – You know, maybe you’re joking, but I think that’s a fantastic idea. Because, you know, when you’re talking about EverPlay Plus, you’re not just selling funder, you’re selling Garnica. – Correct. Meghan Bell • 37:02 I mean, when someone uses our product, they don’t wanna stop using the product. So we do see that once you get onto it, it’s very hard to move back. Kenn Busch • 37:10 the enthusiasm builds, they help you sell more, you know, and it moves the needle, right? Which is what we’re actually trying to do. Meghan Bell • 37:18 It does, it also causes motivation, right? I mean, when you feel so good about something, you’re more motivated to get up and go to work. You’re more motivated to get up and do the next thing. And I really do feel like we’re making a difference. Kenn Busch • 37:32 Speaking of, you know, being in front of specifiers and whatnot, Chris, what is the process for actually getting this spec in a project? What do people have to understand to, you know, and those, I’ve done previous podcasts on the nightmares of material specifications being switched out long after the design team has sort of, all right, you know, here you go, let’s go. People switching out materials at the end because the spec wasn’t written in a bulletproof way, if that makes sense. So how do we make sure they get Everply Plus when they’re supposed to, Chris? Chris Tutuska • 38:08 Right, and I think part of that is, I’m gonna talk a little bit about the multiple thicknesses and sizes that I think are also a differentiator for Everply Plus and this Garnica core. So it is offered in four by eight and five by 10, but it is oversized as well. And those are offered in nine millimeter thickness, 12 millimeter thickness, 16 millimeter, 18 millimeter and 19 millimeter. Thinking about project specifications, it’s good to have architects maybe reach out if they have questions about strength and what thickness is the right thickness? ‘Cause what you don’t wanna do is you don’t wanna overbuilt or over-engineer something if you don’t have to. A lot of frameless cabinet manufacturers as commercial or residential using a product like this, Yeah, maybe they default to the 19 millimeter, which is close to a true three quarter, but in reality, they may only need the 16 millimeter because of the enhanced strength property. So to your point, Ken, I think it’s thinking about those having thoughtful discussions in the beginning before the final spec is written. Kenn Busch • 39:24 Yeah, and this is what I hear from other conversations too is the design team needs to be in those initial meetings to make sure that they’re setting the right expectations and letting everybody in between design and installation understand that it’s very important that we stick to these choices. Any thoughts on that from your side, Meghan? So in this specification, Meghan Bell • 39:47 there’s some lines called accepted manufacturers. I would say just kind of specifying that the core is popular. Definitely the accepted manufacturers section is one where you can who makes it. Kenn Busch • 40:02 Are there LCA’s or EPD’s attached to the Garnica cores or the finished Everply Plus? Meghan Bell • 40:09 For efficiency, we do have our EPD, yes. Kenn Busch • 40:12 Super. What an absolutely cool conversation. TFL panels on Apply Wood Core, the Funder Everply Plus decorative panels from Genesis Products. Thanks so much to Chris Tytoska from Funder and Meghan Bell from Garnica. Thank you so much for joining us. We hopefully have improved your material IQ by a point or two. This has been a production of Material Intelligence LLC. All rights reserved. Meghan Bell • 40:55 Architects and designers are so wonderfully placed to be able to instill change in the market. And when you feel so good about something, you’re more motivated to get up and go to work, you’re more motivated to get up and do the next thing. I really do feel like we’re making a difference. Meghan Bell, Product Specification Specialist, Garnica North America Chris Tutuska, Operations & Product Director, Genesis Products Kenn Busch, Host and Publisher, Material Intelligence and Climate Positive Now Earn CEUs by listening to this episode This AIA-certified nano CEU is made possible by Genesis Products. It focuses on the sustainability and performance benefits of a unique new core option for one of the most commonly used materials in furniture, casework, cabinetry, FF&E and interior millwork: TFL decorative panels. AIA’s Three Learning Objectives Explain how managed-forestry plywood production practices contribute to carbon sequestration, reduced embodied carbon in building materials, and alignment with sustainable design commitments such as the AIA Materials Pledge. Identify the performance advantages of precision-engineered plywood cores over traditional composite panel substrates, and describe how those advantages inform appropriate material selection for commercial and residential interior applications. Describe how sustainably managed plantation forestry, material transparency, and performance-based specification practices support healthier indoor environments, responsible resource stewardship, and the health, safety, and welfare goals of the built environment. Course Details Course Number: Funder 001 Session Number: Funder 001 Nano CEU Course Provider: Genesis Products / Funder, with Material Intelligence AIA Learning Units: 0.5 LU|HSW Designation: HSW – Health Safety Welfare Course Type/Session Type: Nano CEU – Distance Learning / On Demand Presenters Chris Tutuska, Operations & Product Director, Genesis Products Meghan Bell, Product Specification Specialist, Garnica North America Kenn Busch, Publisher, Material Intelligence LLC / Climate Positive NOW You do not have a time limit on these questions. You must score 100% to earn .5 units. Material Intelligence will report directly to the AIA for credit. A certificate of completion will be emailed to participants allied with other associations. CEUs for Material IQ Episode 003: TFL on Engineered Plywood: Sustainable Specification in Practice Facebook This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Name(Required) First Last Full name as it appears in AIA / IDCEC / ASID / IIDA membership records. Association(Required) AIA IDCEC ASID IIDA USGBC Other Other Association Association Member Number(Required) Email(Required) For certificate delivery and confirmation. Subscribe to Material Intelligence Your information will not be sold to third parties. You can unsubscribe anytime. Subscription is not required to earn CEUs. We share upcoming events and CEU opportunities via this list. Yes, subscribe me What country is Garnica headquartered in? France Italy Spain Portugal Garnica’s managed tree farms cycle through harvest and replanting approximately every how many years? 12-15 Years 25-30 Years 6-8 Years 3-5 Years What tree species does Garnica use as the primary raw material for its plywood core? Poplar Eucalyptus Birch Pine Δ

5. 

   26 Jan 2026

   Material IQ Episode 002: “Design: Resilient Flooring in North America”

   Featuring special guests Peter Garlington, Interprint, Inc., and Darius Helm, Floor Focus Magazine In this episode of the Material IQ Podcast, host Kenn Busch talks with Floor Focus (https://www.floordaily.net/floorfocus) editor Darius Helm and Peter Garlington, Design Director at Interprint Inc. (https://interprint.com), for a deep dive into the art and science of flooring design in North America. Peter reveals the meticulous process behind creating realistic wood and material designs for resilient flooring, from hand-selecting lumber boards to experimenting with concrete pours and terrazzo compositions. The conversation explores why North American-sourced designs matter in a market dominated by overseas production, touching on everything from regional aesthetic preferences and the technical challenges of print quality to the storytelling that makes designs resonate with consumers. Peter challenges conventional trend-following, advocating instead for quality materials and authentic design development that respects both the craft and the diverse tastes across the continent. Whether you’re curious about why oak dominates the flooring market or how designers create wood chip terrazzo, this episode offers a fascinating look at the intersection of artistry, manufacturing, and market dynamics in the flooring industry. Read a transcript of this podcast episode The following podcast transcript was generated with Whisper AI and may contain errors. Darius • 00:08 I never have enough of a chance to speak about design. I write about it a lot, I try and cover all the trends and everything, but to speak to folks who are right in the middle of it, who know a whole lot, who can educate me, who can orient me, that’s valuable. And so I really appreciate the opportunity to learn more about the design process and all the technical elements involved. Kenn • 00:29 Darius, my friend, you’ve come to the right place. This is the Material IQ podcast. I’m Ken Busch, and today we’re going to be talking about design, flooring design, in North America, specifically resilient flooring design, and why it’s so important for North American producers to source their designs from North American producers. Darius is the editor of one of the top magazines in the flooring market, floor focus, and he and I are indeed friends. But I’ll let him take it from here. Darius • 01:04 Well, I got into the flooring industry at Floor Focus in 1999. And from the beginning, I came from doing travel writing. From the beginning, I was interested. It’s rich, it’s multifaceted, and that appeals to me. And there’s so many elements. There’s design, there’s technology, there’s innovation. There’s sustainability. It’s international. So as a reporter on the industry, there’s always something to keep me engaged. And if you’re any kind of reporter, you tend to be curious by nature. And that’s my feeling. You wanna ask questions, get answers, and that’s certainly true of me. Kenn • 01:41 And here to satisfy Darius’s curiosities is Peter Garlington from Interprint Inc. Interprint Inc. is the North American division of a global supplier of designs for decorative surfaces, whether it’s flooring or furniture materials, architectural millwork. Interprint is one of the leaders on the planet of creating and marketing these designs to flooring producers and of course, other types of materials producers. Peter has been traversing the planet for decades now, hunting the cool stuff, figuring out why it’s cool, bringing these concepts back to his secret laboratory. I guess it’s not that secret. And turning them into marketable, sellable designs for these different categories of materials. Peter, tell us a little bit about yourself. Peter • 02:37 Sure. I guess I’ve been the design director here for North America the past 15 years. I’ve been with Interprint for 20. My background before that was design-build furniture studio. I came up in the ’80s and ’90s in the contemporary American craft movement. But what I brought to Interprint was my studio. So we do all of our own development in-house from raw board or raw material through to finished. So the studio is materials and process heavy, where we like to explore. We, my team mostly comes from a fine arts background. So we have that kind of mentality and approach when it comes to design and material processes. Kenn • 03:36 And I’ve been to your studio, it’s been a few years, but there’s a big focus for Interprint and for this industry as a whole on wood designs. Is that correct still, Peter? Peter • 03:47 Wood is what feeds the machine, sure. We have a deeper interest in other material sensibilities. I think as an industry and as a whole for what we supply the visuals for, we range from the panel to the high pressure to the flooring side. So we have a very holistic approach to our materials and material selection. What traditionally was the realm of the HPL, the high pressure laminate with abstracts and graphic images, kind of opens up for flooring when we moved from residential to commercial, providing images for the thermal plastic side. Residential laminate flooring, the paper product that we print, was traditionally held to the residential market, which was much more focused on wood plank, flooring looks, the occasional tile, ceramic or stone look for, but that was the minority of the design development. Most of it was wood, wood plank, wood visual. Like I said, with moving into commercial flooring with LVT and Resilient, it gives us the opportunity to look at abstract ideas in flooring, whether those are concretes or oxidized metals or terrazos, things like that. So it’s been a little bit of a shift in the past several years as we get into the thermoplastics, which is nice. Kenn • 05:31 And so in your studio, what I observed you guys doing is kind of prepping these real world material samples for scanning so that they can become printed decorers for furniture or laminate surfaces. There’s an incredible amount of attention to detail there. And Peter, I also know you as a foodie, which also kind of has the same sort of level of discernment and refinement when it comes to just the tiny nuances that other people might not, never pick up on. Peter • 06:02 Yeah, I would say I’m quite a process junkie. You know, it’s the thing that interests me about food is usually the process used in making. the technique or uniqueness of it, things like that. So process, process, process. Kenn • 06:22 I was afraid you’re gonna say processed food. What do you say that? That’s the antithesis of what we’re here to talk about. So what we are here to talk about though is really flooring designs for the American market developed here in America, which is what InterPrint is really heavily involved in. Why is this an important topic right now? Peter • 06:48 Well, I mean, I guess generally speaking, it’s always been an interest of ours. We’ve always used both kind of emerging artists as well as kind of American heritage brands as inspiration for some of the work that we do. We focus a lot on North America here at Interprint because we think it’s a big space. You know, it’s a big territory on the map. We, you know, if you have this conversation with our European colleagues, you know, and ask them what the trend is for Europe, you’ll get an argument that will say, you know, like, oh, we can’t answer a question like that. You know, there’s differences between the North and South of Germany. What Italy wants isn’t what Spain wants. and the Nordic countries are doing something completely different as well. So there is no single trend for the European market. And then I think to them and say, “Now take the American map and overlay that.” And you’ll realize we have the same thing, that there isn’t a single trend for the North American market. But you have regionalities that do things for particular reasons or have a vested history in a material or a species or a look or feel. You know, tile is popular in Florida because it’s cool. You know, hardwood is popular in the Northeast because it’s warm. You know, you don’t wanna come home from a day at the beach and drag your sandy feet across a hardwood floor and you don’t wanna come home in the middle of winter from skiing and lay down on a cool tile floor. So, you know, there’s a little bit of regionality and things like that, but you know, I think it’s a bigger, bigger story about the diversity of culture in North America and applying any single design aesthetic that’s universal doesn’t really make sense. Kenn • 08:54 So there’s no such thing as the global oak flooring design that everybody’s going to love no matter what part of the world they’re in or what part of the continent they’re in. Peter • 09:04 I think there are some universals out there You know our elements within a design that that can work globally, you know but You know, I know I don’t think that there’s any singular design that Unless you’re a Panto Kenn • 09:24 Darius from your perspective, you know, have you noticed over the years? any sort of whatever a need for more focus on localized designs attention to localized trends when we’re talking about North America? Darius • 09:42 Yeah, we see that a lot. I mean, one of the interesting things is hard work, for instance, has really been a little better at get supplying regional designs like Texas. They like their rustics, you know, North East is somewhat traditional, and then, you know, out West more, or maybe a clean minimal coastal. So we’ve seen that a lot in woods, but I wonder about that in terms of other types of hard surface flooring. I wonder if Peter thinks that we’ve been using too broad a brush and is there a lot more room to serve people’s regional aesthetic needs than is currently in the market now? And I guess that’s mostly a regional, Peter • 10:30 residential discussion, I’m not sure. Yeah, you know, I think that we run into a couple different things. There’s kind of the commodity side of things where everybody wants to get some real estate in the big box stores so that waters down the the regionality a little bit. You know, I think you’ll get certainly specifications. You know, the coastals are for sure a little bit more sophisticated than the middles. I think certain species have taken dominance. Oak is just, it’s easy. It’s high tanning content. It takes a lot of finishes. There’s a range of raw material from rustic to elegant. It has a nice open pore structure that allows more realistic interpretations of visuals to be prominent. But the problem there is people get lazy about wanting another oak and another oak and another oak. And it’s like, every so often you gotta do something else. And they may not be as easy with plates or the visual, but in the end, the end user really wants a variety, a choice out there. Kenn • 11:50 Peter, what role does standing and finishing play as you are prepping these wood species to be scanned and turned into designs for flooring. Peter • 12:01 You know, we shy away from using a store-bought stain, right, to us, min wax is a pigment in solution used to homogenize the visual look. And what we want in a flooring set is some board-to-board variation. So by using a reactive stain that’s chemistry reacting with the tannin and the oak, the tannin of any individual tree is going to be different. So the boards are gonna color slightly differently from each other. So they’ll be of the same look, but have board to board variation, where if we took the same set of boards and just coated them with minwax, they’d all look exactly, they’d have the same tonal range. It would be a very flat floor. So I think that you definitely have chemistry going on in trees and from tree to tree that’s different so depending on the finishing that you’re using you can get variation and finish. You know a tree grown by itself on a windy uphill will have lean or could potentially have grain character that was unique to that tree. of those effects that you see in maple, like a curly maple or a bird’s eye maple, is effective conditions of growing. That curl in the maple is compression on one side where the tree’s constantly being leaned into and the grain on that one side is stacking up and creating curl. So, yeah, any of that crossfire or curl in a board. It could be environmental conditions, but how do you know so much? Kenn • 13:52 So this dear listener is one of the joys and challenges of inviting a fellow journalist to participate in these podcasts. So I’m going to relinquish control at least partially because I’m learning a lot by just letting these two guys riff. So where were we? Oh, right. Darius • 14:12 How do you know so much? I mean, this detail, talking about wood, it’s blowing my mind. I mean, I could listen to this forever, but how do you know this much? And also, part two of that, now I’m really interested to see how you develop a design from these woods, you know, what the process is, but you know, what’s your background in terms of all this wood knowledge? Peter • 14:34 This is, you know, 40 years of hand selecting lumber, knowing your material, working with it, understanding tension within a board, you know, more times than I care. I’ve spent good money on on a board that looks great. And as I start to mill it, it starts to warp or bow or twist because there’s an internal tension that’s been baked in in the kiln or, or, you know, reactive from it’s it’s growing conditions. So yeah, we’re geeky. Like I said, we’re very process driven here. So we’re some wood geeks. You have to be right. You have to be. Sure. I mean, it keeps things entertaining. I mean, and we we tend to buy, you know, from lumberyards we know. And we’ve like my years of building for clients and individuals, I’ve gone all over the country sourcing materials. When the rustic stuff was the hot thing, we were down sourcing reclaimed barn material or reclaimed housing material. We’re interested in architecture, so we’re interested in adaptive reuse of materials or systems. So we’re kind of constantly deep diving. We’re happy when we’re learning, I guess. So like that’s, you know, if we get a new project that brings in a new material or a new medium, we dive right in and get our hands dirty. Kenn • 16:16 There was a New Yorker cartoon a few years back that basically showed barns for as far as you could see into the horizon and the line was something like, demand for barn board has led to an explosion in the building of barns. Peter • 16:33 Yeah, yeah, no, I was pretty sure at the height of that that there were fields in Pennsylvania where they just had wall sides that they were nailing boards on one week and then peeling them off the next and then just renailing and then peeling like, it was just like, you know. If everybody that wants a NASCAR themed man cave in their basement is buying real reclaimed barn wood. Like the shakers just didn’t build enough barns. (laughs) Kenn • 17:01 So, and this is why we’ve developed all these different materials to honor the look of wood, but don’t have to actually be wood, which brings us to, really, we’re gonna be focusing on resilient flooring here. And, you know, it’s a growing market. There are so many different varieties of what we can call resilient flooring areas. Can you just give us a snapshot What is resilient flooring and why is it hot? Darius • 17:28 Right, so coming into about 2013, it was sheet goods, some VCT and flexible LVT, residential and commercially. 2013, Pete Dorsche with US Floors is in China and he sees a decking product and he sees how this can be a flooring. And he creates the rigid core concept which was originally WPC. And then, I mean, I have a couple of stats. It’s really staggering how much that has transformed the market entirely. The two things that drove it mostly were the click system. Now, Flexible LBT already had a click system and I’ve installed the floor here using it. I thought it was great, but apparently, the rigid click system is an easier install and then the marketing message of the waterproof flooring. And that just combined with also fantastic pricing and it just transformed the market. In 2012, resilient flooring was $1.7 billion, 10% of flooring market share. 2024, it’s $7.5 billion with a 21% market share. It’s pretty much bigger than carpet now and forever carpet was the biggest flooring category. So in 2014, LBT, just LBT was about 850 million. Now it’s about 6.3 billion. And 3.8 of that is rigid flooring. And rigid flooring is almost entirely a residential product. In fact, I’d be interested to hear if it’s getting much traction commercially at all. But I think performance issues or performance weariness and the stakes are higher in the commercial market, you know. So people, you know, contractor, specifiers are going to be more careful about using something like that the same way they don’t use real wood that much. So we haven’t seen a gain much traction there, but it is stunning. And so there’s WPC and SPC and then some other formulations they tried out like using magnesium oxide in the core and stuff like that. We don’t see that much of that anymore, but SPC was the cheaper stripped down version kind of and it took over the market. It still accounts for the bulk of rigid LBT, but there were some problems with quality coming out of China thinner boards, poor materials, poor fillers and that caused a little wave of failures and that has actually been good for this category because it’s boosted WPC It’s also boosted laminate and it sort of pushed the market up just a little bit. And so in the long run, that might do something in terms of the commoditization of SPC. And of course, the vast majority of this is from Asia. And in Asia, still the vast majority is from China. But that’s changing a little bit. And then we have some U.S. production that’s over the last 10 years. A lot of folks, some American firms, some Asian firms have invested in built factories here. And but it only accounts for maybe 15% of U.S. consumption. And I’m talking really on the LVT or rigid LVT side here. With all of the investment in the US, it’s still a very small portion of what’s consumed here. Peter • 21:02 Yeah, we see that for sure. Kenn • 21:05 So let’s take a quick glossary break here. I’m getting a little bit behind on the terminology. WPC is wood plastic composite flooring. SPC is stone plastic composite flooring. LVT is, of course, a luxury vinyl tile. Um, Darius, bring us up to speed on this terminology if you would. Darius • 21:28 Um, okay. The problem is that the acronyms have changed their, their meanings a little bit. Right. I think WPC has, yeah, I don’t know how much WPC really uses the wood dust as opposed to just a foamed core as opposed to that solid vinyl core. Um, but yeah, the original, um, WPC was, was wood dust. And I don’t know if Shaw still makes it like that. Shaw bought US floors not long after they came out with this great invention. But now they are often called WPC waterproof. Using the W for waterproof. But it’s the higher end thicker, beefier product. And SBC Center, there are some other varieties out there. people were experimenting a lot that’s quieted down a little bit. And then we also have some PVC-free options that are being developed in that sort of laminate to LVT arena in general, you know, some very cool hybrids. And some are less successful, but people have been innovating. Kenn • 22:43 But the basic properties and LVT of course is luxury vinyl tile, but it’s but it’s planks mostly. Anyway, just a skinny tile, skinny, skinny long tiles, right? But the, but the, what, what, what are the universal properties that, that make the, all these belong under the resilient flooring umbrella? Darius • 23:06 Right. It’s, it’s polymer base. It’s got a polymer core, you know, generally speaking, a PVC core. And it also will have a PVC cap on it with the film on top of that. So I mean, I think it’s the fact that it’s a polymer product one way or another. There have been some other things that have come along the way. Shaw has, I think they still have, a polymer with a real wood veneer on top, which actually the NWFA calls a composite engineered wood. sort of found a way to like make that any any veneer real wood at all on top of this is straight is is is going to be called the wood of some sort by end of Peter • 23:50 that thing yeah and we’ve seen some other hybrids where you know traditionally the laminate was a hardboard core with a treated paper phase like our other panels and HPL. For the resilient for LVT, we’re printing on a thermal plastic film. So the sandwich that makes it up is all thermal plastics. So you’ve got a non-wood core with a print layer that is on a vinyl or a thermal plastic film, and then a wear layer or a cap sheet that is also in a thermal plastic. So, you know, I mean, historically, laminate flooring was a little noisy, you know, and had a particular tone or note to it when you walked on it or tread, you know, then, and, you know, they put corkbacker on it and different pads helped that, but the vinyls really kind of took that out of the equation, became very nice kind of quiet floors. with a different feel, you know, and that became a popular selling point as well against laminate. I also love the, you know, multi-billion dollar pet industry that promotes the vinyl flooring, you know, as your most pet friendly floor, you know, your pets will destroy the hardwood, they make so much noise and slide around on the laminate, but, you know, the LVTs and the resilience are great for your pets. Darius • 25:34 It’s hard to see an ad like a flooring advertisement, hard surface flooring advertisement without seeing a dog in the frame. – Yep. – So they have done a wonderful job of dogging it up and waterproofing it up. I mean, it’s been, that’s been one of the big stories of this category is how they capitalized on that. Kenn • 25:52 Yep. – Yeah, but just out of the frame is that puddle of pee, right? Peter • 25:56 But water resistant, water holdout. It’s all good. Kenn • 26:01 Darius, you mentioned that resilient flooring coming from overseas can sometimes have quality variations or quality issues. Can you elaborate just a little bit on, you know, sort of where some of these products are falling short and why we maybe should be looking more to North American producers? Darius • 26:19 Well, the click system has been failing largely just because of the production of the product itself. Again, the poor fillers are a big part of this. And also, though, they were going really thin with these SBCs, like 3mm, you know, and now the SBCs that are trending are a little thicker. So they were just going as cheap as they possibly could and using cheap materials and getting it out to, you know, the stores here. I don’t know if there was any particular country that was, you know, more responsible for the poor qualities. But let me say this, though. The very best of the rigid core products, the very best of them, also come from Asia. So we got the commodity side and then we got the value added bells and whistles. They control both of those markets. And here in the US, what’s being built is largely the bread and butter middle of the market. And that’s where the whole discussion gets interesting. What’s the future of the US market and what’s it capable of? Because we have, it’s a whole lot easier in China in terms of labor, utilities, subsidies. very, very hard for American firms to compete with all that. And especially with those grout lines and bevels and other sort of fancy finishing effects that are labor-intensive. So that’s not happening here. Well, maybe down the road. Kenn • 28:08 And that’s product makeup, right? The quality of the product, product makeup, the combinations of materials. What about designs coming from overseas suppliers? Is there something to be desired there where the North American producers can gain an advantage? Darius • 28:24 In my opinion, a lot of folks, a lot of American firms, you know, have really well-established partnerships in Asia. And these Asian partners, they aren’t just churning out where they think the U.S. market wants. They’re taking the design direction from their U.S. partners. So to me, I’m wondering, what does that really mean in terms of the advantage of designing in the US? I mean, aren’t these Asian partners getting the same info? Aren’t they producing the same sorts of designs that an American producer would do if they’re for the American market? I’m interested to hear what you would have to say on that, Peter. Peter • 29:12 I think it’s interesting. When I started in the industry, there were only really kind of a handful of designers that were providing design into that industry, whether that was for panel for laminate flooring or resilient. And what we would see is even the printers. The printers, at the time, there were three or four big European printers, a couple Japanese printers, the Asian print houses were more production facilities than art houses. So you’d have these few designers go around and if they thought oxidized metal was going to be a trend, they would generate six or eight and then they’d show up at the first customer and be like, “This is a trend. You’ve got to get one and they’d buy one.” And then they go to the next printer and say, “This is a trend. So-and-so just bought. So you’ve got to get on this.” of sudden all the printers are showing up at the flooring guys and each one of them has an oxidized metal and they’re like this is a trend. So each of those then customers picks an oxidized metal. You know it’s the same thing with the oak or gray flooring or white porphylla or sheroosant. You know it’s because there’s such a limited number of of designers at the front end supplying a big vast industry and then when those designers decided that they could go to the flooring customers directly and sell to them, you know, they set up shop in Asia, you know, they’re, those designs are, you know, easy to get your hands on. You know, I think what happens is if those designers are sitting in Europe, they’re going to pick a lot of European oaks, some Elms, you know, things that are easily available. There aren’t a lot of those designers that sit in the North American space. So when you get into those kind of regionalities of nice hickory or ash or oak or oak alternatives that aren’t overly European, I think that’s where a domestic designer does a better job. Whether that domestic designer then sells those designs into the Asian market or keeps them in the North American space is a difference. Darius • 31:31 Could you elaborate on that in terms of the residential versus commercial design? Peter • 31:36 Sure. You know, I think a lot of the experience that I’ll talk about is based on residential because the bigger commercial companies, again, are splitting their portfolios between abstracts, materials, non-wood, concrete, stones, you know, and those tend to be a little bit more materials based. You know, on the residential side, you know, I think the other interesting thing is traditional print format. You know, on the Asian side, a lot of the import material, especially on the commodity side, is getting run at a meter, you know, width. So, you know, in a four foot wide layout, if you’ve got eight inch wide planks, you’ve only got seven possible boards. You know, if we’re running at seven foot wide, eight foot wide, you know, our visuals are twice the number of boards. So, you know, I think that that is, you know, one of the other distinctions between, you know, some of the Asian printers and not that the Asian printers are restricted to one meter wide, but a lot of their machinery is in that kind of meter-wide space. So unless you’re doing multiple cylinder sets to get a bigger plank variety, you know, what happens is you end up trying to create a more homogenized layout because you have fewer planks within the install. So if you’re doing a good size room, you know, to avoid tracking, you know, or a visual hiccup of seeing the same plank over and over again, or, you know, my favorite installing the same plank next to each other because your installer isn’t really paying attention or they just don’t have the variety of planks in the pack to pick from. So running at a wider width means that instead of having six to seven boards in an individual layout, we can get 14 boards in a layout. So can I ask you then, are you saying that the Darius • 33:50 trend toward wide planks is as much driven by the sort of manufacturing priorities as it is for the clients on aesthetic demands? Oh, for sure. Peter • 34:03 You know, I would say that half the innovation in our industry is not driven by the end user. You know, I get completely frustrated by that very thing. know, where you have a machine manufacturer that adds some bells and whistles to their machine, you know, this was EIR, right, the embossed and registered. Kenn • 34:28 So for those of you playing at home, a glossary note here, EIR or embossed and registered is the technology whereby the texture that is applied by steel plates onto the finished flooring product is perfectly aligned with every little wood grain detail in the floor itself. So if there’s a little knot or a little wood grain tick, you’re not only going to see it, you’re going to be able to feel it in the texture of the finished product. Darius • 34:58 Does that apply to, let’s say, the white oak trend, which, you know, as you know, it’s like, you know, it’s been everywhere for many years. Is that another example of folks aligning Peter • 35:12 in this way? Yeah, it’s easy. You know what I mean? Like, my favorite was a flooring customer of ours that, you know, was like, well, I need more, I need more oak visuals. I was like, okay, but like everything you’ve been adding in the past X number of years has been oak. Well, Oak accounts for 90% of our sales. I was like, well, that’s a problem because it’s 98% of your portfolio. Yes, I get it, it’s safe for you to make those decisions. The idea is that the interface between the end user and the design creator is like a game of telephone because there’s three to four stops in between that. It’s the distributor talking to the flooring company who says something to their flooring designer, who then sends a request to us. But now that’s four interpretations of what the end user really asked for and how the other people interpreted that based on what they had available and who they could work with. Kenn • 36:21 So Peter, how much of your design is driven by what clients are asking for and how much of it is just developed by Interprint in-house to show to clients and hope they’ll bite? Peter • 36:34 I would say 50% of our design development is what I would consider open development. It’s material that we source, that we find interesting, and we process in a way that we think is going to be easy to place. Then 50 percent of our development time is spent working with customers based on a brief being given a direction and asked to create something in the studio to a brief. Those are two different ways that we tend to work. We can show about a customer with a stack of Princess stuff we’ve created and we can show up with a range of ideas that are based on a design brief that they’ve submitted of ideas that they’re working on for their future launches, how they see trend go. Kenn • 37:21 Are there differences in design tastes, scale, color, lightness, darkness between different commercial markets like senior living, healthcare, hospitality, multi-family is really a commercial market in most specifiers minds now. Are there distinct differences in the kinds of flooring designs that they are attracted to that they are buying? Darius • 37:47 Well, I would say, first of all, there’s some sort of practical needs. You know, like let’s say, you know, senior living has specific needs, not only in terms of the performance of the flooring, but in terms of the design. So there’s no weird depth perception issues or whatever. So you’ll have a certain sort of design aesthetic specifically for senior living that is calming and doesn’t mess people up. Beyond that, I mean, I think that when we look to progressive design the commercial market, we’re usually looking at the workplace, the corporate sector where we see, for us, we see a lot of architects and designers being able to really fulfill their visions. So like for instance when we run photography, we’re oftentimes looking at the corporate market for where the important trends are. Now hospitality is its own dramatic animal and in hospitality we’ve seen in rooms have been changing and hospitality moving over to hard surface sometimes with an area rug to soften it up. And those hard surfaces that I’ve seen tend to be wood looks and stone looks. But what I would say is that commercial design in general has so much variety. It is, Peter, you must have felt this when you stopped focusing as much on residential and had a chance to immerse yourself in commercial. It’s so rich that once you start talking about design, it’s hard to move out of the commercial market because this is where all the important trends are happening. On the residential side, there are trends. They move much more slowly. And now, thanks to Peter’s insights, I’m wondering a lot more about how they’re moving and what is guiding them. But the commercial market is where we really see a turnover of trends and developments. Peter • 39:41 Yeah. I mean, I would add that, I think that there’s a kind of a generational thing too. I see younger designers in the field that, you know, are just don’t care about species as much. You know, if it’s the right scale, the right movement, if it’s colored properly, you know, it doesn’t matter to them so much that it’s oak or walnut or ash, you know, even on the Barnwood stuff. You know, once you got a weathered patina, we did several board sets that were mixed variety. You know, you could put an oak board and a bircher beach board and a pine board. You know, they were all grayed out and weathered in a similar way. You know, it didn’t scream oak floor or pine floor. As a printer, when things get interesting for us when we’re combining materials, right, that I can scan a concrete slab that we’ve poured and then combine that with a graphic or a secondary texture. The problem with laminate, with resilient is it’s always been sold as a durable imitation of a real thing. And when we create something on the commercial side, that’s maybe abstract based, that has a material sensibility because we’ve included a layer in that design that is a concrete or a wood or a stone. But we’ve combined that with a cloud movement for variety or for texture or a painted or drawn abstract. Then the laminate floor, the printed thing comes the real thing that it’s, you know, what we would say laminate for laminate sake back in the day. But, you know, when the architect or the spec rep comes down to it and says, oh, well, we got plenty of money in the budget, why don’t we just use the real thing, you know, as opposed to this imitation of the thing because that’s a cost saver. Well, if you’ve created a visual that’s only achievable through the printing process, because it’s a combination of things or because it’s a sensitive material that wouldn’t hold up. You know, like on the barn stuff, if you had peeling or flaking paint on a reclaimed board, that works great in laminate, wouldn’t work at all in real material. You just have lead paint chips flaking all over the place post install. So, you know, when we get excited is when we can get away from that, this is an imitation of something or this material is less than because it’s a copy. So for us, creating visuals that maybe play with scale, that we can take an exotic that in the veneer sets are big and don’t work, we drop that scale by 200% and it becomes a nice looking wood visual. That becomes unique to our process. So we’re always chasing ideas that we can do in our process that make it unique and move us away from that idea of only ever being an imitation. – That is fascinating. Darius • 43:15 And one other little thing, let me just add to one other little thing is, obviously you can do species that would never survive, you know, like pine. – Yep. – You know, you can get beautiful looks. That pine is beautiful. You can never put down a pine floor unless you’ve been storing it for 100 years. So we can only find it in these sorts of products. Kenn • 43:36 Peter, if you would, I mean, this is a perfect segue into talking about how you do develop designs for flooring, right? So the idea that you’re interpreting nature, I don’t know, perfecting nature is not the right way to put it, but you’re bringing the best out of the species, out of the samples that you’re gathering for inspiration. But you mentioned scale, contrast, glare, I think all of these things are part of the creative interpretation. Tell us, especially if you have like a specific example of a flooring development that you can share, that’s not top secret. How does this work? There’s a few different paths. Peter • 44:18 It’s either kind of our own geeky research of getting out there and shopping, right? We’ll go to the local lumber yard, you know, depending on what they’ve been sourcing lately. know, it’s going to be oak, it’s going to be hickory maple, soft maple, hard maple, cherry, ash. And we’ll have them pull out a bunk, you know, a big, you know, 1000 square foot pile of wood and we’ll put a couple skids down next to it and we will flip that entire pile, board by board. When we find a board we like, we put it aside and then our job is to find 14 brothers, sisters for that board. And as we go through that pile, we find another board we like that isn’t like that first board. So we put that aside, then we find sisters, cousins for that board, you know, until we get, you know, five or 10 board sets that we like. And then we take that raw material back to the studio and start processing. And like I said, there’s a range there. On the other material side, we’re happy to get our hands dirty. We’ll pour concrete, we’ll pour terrazzo, we’ll wet polish it back to expose the aggregates. We’re working on an interesting project now that’s a collaboration with a customer who wanted a terrazzo look, but wants the chip to be a wood look. So, you know, our first thing was like, okay, well, now we’ve got to get wood chips that, you know, are not, you know, we can’t just take a square stick and cut it on the bandsaw because all of our chips will now be square, you know, we can’t just take a dowel and do the same thing, they’ll just be round. You know, so what we ended up doing was taking some big four by four oak, thin slicing it and then snapping it into, you know, and filling up a bucket, you know, and of shapes and then laying it out in a nice pattern. That seemed a little blah. You know, we combine that with some branch sections, some natural materials until we got a good mix and feel. And then, you know, we did samples, then scale that up, pour bigger slabs, and then multiple slabs to get enough original copy to get across the web and get the look. So there’s all different approaches to how we do the design development. And again, that’s a combination of our research of where we see things going, or a process that we want to tackle, or a new material that we’ve come across that we want to explore and then manipulate. So there’s always a long list that we have of projects we’d like to work on. Of course, by the time we source that material, we play with the material enough that we feel comfortable and have an understanding of it and then kind of push that to where that’s going to fail so we find its limits. We don’t get to make everything we want because you know most of our days are spent milling oak you know and processing oak. Darius • 47:37 Could I ask you a little bit about the films and the papers themselves like I’m just kind of wondering what’s you know how you create the design and the you know how the resolution of it and if that’s something that has that has evolved in recent years could you tell me just a little bit about that looking at when we’re looking at one of your papers or your films? Sure. When I had started Peter • 48:05 years and years ago, the industry was paper focused, right? The laminate flooring and the industry had pretty much self-calibrated. You know, the paper is a particular paper that can be saturated with resin, so it’s absorbent, which isn’t great for printing ink because your ink wants to flow into that paper. So the engraving specification for the cylinders, the grind of the pigments, the coarseness of the pigments, and the flow out in the paper had kind of self-calibrated. To get the best print quality we could with the paper that we had to deal with, that could still get resin penetration so you didn’t get blocking or rejection from the customer. If you put so much ink onto the paper over four print units that you seal the paper, then you have issues with resin penetration. So you have to be aware of what your ink load per each unit is, how you’re affecting the resin penetration. Kenn • 49:14 So that’s printing on paper for laminate flooring and furniture panels. What happened when you started printing for resilient flooring? – When we started printing on thermoplastics, Peter • 49:25 that was an advantage because all of a sudden you had a surface that the ink just wanted to sit on. There was no absorption into the paper, so you could put down a different cell shape and a different resolution and that ink would sit there and not bleed into the substrate. So you could get a little bit crisper, a little bit nicer visual with the thermal plastics. And we had to use a different ink system because we’re a water-based printer and getting water-based inks to stick to oil-based materials was the first learning curve for us. And we weren’t going to go to solvent printing. So through cross-linkers and things like that, we were able to get our inks to stick. But at that point, we created a new ink system so we could get a slightly finer grind to the ink. So the finer grind to the ink with the finer resolution and the lack of absorption meant that you could get a much better visual on a film than you could on a paper. Kenn • 50:27 It’s such a cool collision of art and science and then just backing up sort of just the philosophy of flooring design, somebody had to explain to me once, you know, Interprint, you guys print, yes, flooring designs, but you also print designs for furniture panels, furniture surfaces, and somebody is saying, Well, we can use the same, you know, let’s say we’re shooting for the same sort of species for these two different materials. Maybe they’ll never be in the same room together, but we still have a different scale approach to the floor versus a furniture surface. Just if you could, Peter, just explain that for us. Peter • 51:02 No, no, no. If we’re working on an abstract design for an HPL company, a high pressure laminate company, a Wilson order from Micah, who’s going into the office furniture environment. you know, those task desks or the presentation room desk where you’ve got 30 of them lined up in the space with seating, you know, you’re sitting, your eyes are 16 to 18 inches away from that pattern. So that pattern can be smaller, you know, you wanna maintain some interest, you know, but it has to be, you know, what’s the phrase that all the HPLs like an optical solid, you know, they want a pattern, but they want it to read like a color from a distance, but you know, have something when you’re sitting up close to it. Same thing with flooring, you know, you’re not doing a space that’s only 18 inches away from your face. For me, it’s about five, eight away from me at the closest. And, you know, if I’m looking out across a 30 foot room, the visual has to read from 20, 30 feet away. And again, that comes down to managing your knots and the strength of your knots, ’cause you don’t want this one black dot to just show up, you know, in this big field installation and stop your eye. On the flooring, you want two layers, right? You want it to be balanced over a large install, but it also has to have enough realism when you’re up close to it, I guess, installing or cleaning, you know, that it’s not just a kind of absence of detail when you’re up close. So, you know, elements that make up a good design are just that. It’s scale, movement, color play. You know, these are kind of the universal design elements that you wanna make sure are balanced out in any layout. Kenn • 52:51 So Peter, how do you feel when somebody comes up to you and says, “I just need the trends.” What are the trends in flooring? I need to check those boxes. Peter • 52:59 I gotta say, I’m no longer a believer in trend. like trend is just too difficult these days. It’s marketing, you know, like it’s, and if you’re quoting a buzzword in trend, whatever that is, biophilic, scandy, you’re buying into somebody else’s marketing. It’s Pantone’s color of the year. You know, like Pantone releases color of the year because they wanna sell chips. They don’t give a shit what people think about their color of the year, but it’s a marketing scam to sell more chipsets. You gotta be careful as to, is it a trend? Is it marketing? Is it the buzzword of the day? For me, because we deal with materials that go to create interiors, exteriors, I like a bigger umbrella. Like I like the idea of sense of place, of place making is what we’re doing. The internet has gotten too savvy and too quick, and what we used to call fads are now called trends. And in an industry that takes 18 months for a launch cycle, you can’t possibly be looking at trends that don’t last more than three to six weeks, or three to six months as your inspiration for your collection that isn’t gonna come out for another 12 months. So you gotta take a step back and have a bigger understanding of what it is that you’re doing. Good material is good material, a good design is a good design. How the marketing people wanna market that, if they wanna say that it’s scandy, if they wanna say that it’s biofilic, they have at it. But that’s not where we get hung up on material selection or design creation here. Those are categories that we can apply the structures to post. But the idea is you find good material, you do interesting things to it, and it’s gonna be good. Darius • 55:10 One of the most fascinating things in this whole discussion is talking about trends with you. And it is fascinating. And I wanna know, somewhere in there, there are legitimate, maybe they’re just overarching trends and therefore they don’t really change things at the ground level, But are there some important trends, like let’s say away from lux or toward earthy or towards minimalist or away from, I mean, are there any broad trends that you can hang stuff from? Peter • 55:48 Yes, all of them. And again, this comes down to the scale of the market. Some of those things would be perfectly acceptable on the coasts, right? New York, the big cities, New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Dubai, London, it doesn’t matter. If you’re in a certain, let’s talk capital D design versus little D design. If you’re capital de-design, you’re at a top end social economic, you’re probably not shopping for us, you know, for laminate or for LVT or whatever. But if you’re spending a million dollars on your kitchen reno, you know, it doesn’t matter if you live in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, New York, you know, Pittsfield. If you’ve got that money, there’s three or four manufacturers that you’re looking at for your kitchen, you know, by the time you get to us, your little de-design, your regionalities are showing, and it’s a broader market. You’ve got to be able to cover some rustic, you’ve got to be able to cover some elegant, you’ve got to feed the masses. I think that, again, for me, I can go shopping and find a really beautiful board set of some rustic oak. I’m not going to leave it behind because I don’t think rustic is trending right now if it’s good. If the knots are nice and tight, if they’re the right size and scale, we can make it look good. Darius • 57:21 So are you more guided by then regional aesthetics? Is that a more important sort of design direction than these trends? Peter • 57:32 It is. And like I said, a lot of it is dictated from the material. Like, we spread out and shop in a variety of places. And, you know, we like to see what each place has to offer. Some, you know, like some mills special specialized in different things, you know, and when we’re shopping that mill, you know, we want to see what they have to offer that’s that special or nice, you know, like I said, we don’t want to leave good material behind for the sake of it answers a a trend or it doesn’t. So we probably hold more at the studio as a kind of bank of materials so that we have something to do on a daily basis, but also when we get that request from a customer, this is the balance between open design development of what we’re going to choose to do on a certain day because we can do anything we want and we have a cache of nice material and a customer-driven direction where they say, we’ve got a launch coming up for 20, 27, there’s gonna be six ad drops to the line. We know three of those at least are gonna be oak just because they have to be. What else should we be looking at? So then that’s on us to be like, oh, well, we have these oak alternatives are open-poured, can take a plate treatment or a finish similar to Oak. So you’ll get an Oak visual without having to call it Oak. Or here’s another species that’s completely off your radar. We’ll look at what our customers have done on the past five or six launches. Like, well, you’ve added walnut, you’ve got two good ones in your line, You’ve certainly added oak. You’ve done some other domestics in the past, but man, you haven’t touched exotic since, Jitoba went away. Like 10 years ago, everybody had to have Jitoba, constantly, constantly, constantly. We had to source as much Jitoba as we did oak. We haven’t picked up an exotic board in a decade. So what happened? Like there’s a spot that people can refresh. And in that ensuing decade, you know, stuff moved from European and African sort of exotics like Mahogany or Alessander to a whole bunch of South American exotics opened up, Palsawa and Mboya, you know, things that weren’t typical five years ago. Australian blackwood, I can get those veneers in and make an interesting layout. So maybe it’s time you look at an exotic again. The easy default to that is teak, and we can get people to put teak in line because it’s familiar. You can tell them the story of mid-century modern and how popular that is, and that was the predominant wood in the Scandinavian mid-century modern stuff. So it’s partially storytelling, But our storytelling all comes off of the material we find. Like I said, we’re kind of quality material first, and then fit the story second. Kenn • 01:01:02 And storytelling is so important in this world. It helps the design community kind of envision where they might use something. It adds value. And in the case of a conversation like this, it adds a lot of credibility. and I think respect for how much work goes into sourcing the inspiration and actually executing a design that will work in the flooring market. I just really think this is something that our industry needs to maybe do a better job of. Peter • 01:01:33 Yeah. You know, I think for sure in the past several years that kind of storytelling aspect, you know, again, fine line between design and marketing. But it’s always interesting for us. I mean, we’ve worked with reclaimed water tanks out of Manhattan or distillery beams out of burnt down Jack Daniels distillery that we get the building material out of. It’s always interesting to have a story. I think the ones that are mattering most now to our clients are the ones that we built with them. Kenn • 01:02:17 So I think this is a perfect place to kind of pat ourselves on the back for bringing this whole thing full circle. Because maybe the most American thing, North American thing about North American produced flooring are the stories we can tell about where the designs come from and really make it relatable and in some cases directly relatable to the customers own manufacturing us. We’ve kind of hit our time limit here guys. Darius, thank you so much for co-hosting. I had time to get a haircut and a pedicure. No, I appreciate it. I really love the energy between you guys. Any final thoughts before we sign off and go to print? Darius • 01:02:59 I just want to say, damn, you, I feel like you’ve educated me. I love it when I speak to somebody and I come out knowing more, understanding more, changing the way I was looking at something. And I got all of that from your conversation about design development and everything like that. So to me, I’m going to chase you down because I got to learn more from you at some point. But I mean, there was just a lot, you noticed it was a rich conversation thanks to you. And I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity. Peter • 01:03:36 Well, I appreciate that. Same. And love to have you up, you know, if you’re not far away. So anytime you want to make some time to come up, see what we do, see the studio, see the manufacturing facilities, it’s great. It’s a nice place to be. It’s a nice place to visit. So love to have you guys come up and spend some time. I’ll be there. Kenn • 01:04:09 Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you can prove your material like you by a point or two. This has been a production of Material Intelligence LLC. All rights reserved. Darius • 01:04:25 I never have enough of a chance to speak about design. I write about it a lot, I try and cover all the trends and everything, but to speak to folks who are right in the middle of it, who know a whole lot, that’s valuable. And so I really appreciate the opportunity to learn more about the design process and all the technical elements involved.

6. 

   10 Nov 2025

   Material IQ Episode 001: “The Squeeze”

   This episode of the Material IQ Podcast, host Kenn Busch dives into “The Squeeze” — that critical stage in every project when interior budgets get tight and material choices are under pressure. Joined by Jessica Calabrese of Parksite Atlantic Plywood and Greg O’Connell of SSI North America, the discussion explores how 2D and 3D laminates (2DL and 3DL) can help designers and specifiers balance aesthetics, performance, and cost when other materials fall short. From project bidding challenges and specification “doom loops” to the importance of early collaboration between designers, millworkers, and suppliers, this conversation offers practical insights into avoiding costly material substitutions and achieving cohesive, high-performing interiors. Every episode of the Material IQ podcast explores in detail the materiality of the built environment: innovation, inspiration, and case studies from leading architects, designers, suppliers, and manufacturers with an emphasis on climate-positive outcomes in commercial and residential design. Read a transcript of this podcast episode The following podcast transcript was generated with Whisper AI and may contain errors. Jessica 00:09 – 00:26 I, you know, I call it the squeeze. You know, interiors is always the thing that gets cut at the very end when, you know, concrete has gone over budget and there’s no more room for change orders or, you know, I do. I call it the squeeze. Kenn 00:27 – 00:49 The squeeze. I love this. point in every project where the gaze turns to the interior. We find out that the budgets aren’t what we would hope they’d be for all the finishing touches. Maybe we found out some of the vendors we chose aren’t capable of executing the vision of the design team. So it’s the squeeze. And it’s also. Jessica 00:49 – 00:53 It is a number one frustration for interior designers. Kenn 00:54 – 02:40 So let’s see if we can’t do something about that. I’m Ken Busch, your host for this episode of the Material IQ Podcast. And today we’re going to talk about a couple of materials, 2DL and 3DL, that sit right in the middle of the squeeze. The squeeze being material substitutions that happen because of budget design or performance reasons or sometimes the capabilities of your mill workers or cabinet chops. 2DL and 3DL, they can be squeezed in when other materials don’t meet budget requirements. requirements or they can be squeezed out if your suppliers don’t know how to work with these specialized materials. Let’s do a little bit of housekeeping on the terminology that you’re going to hear today. 2DL is two-dimensional laminates, 3DL is three-dimensional laminates. You can hear about PVC and a PVC alternative called PET and that’s polyethylene terephthalate. You can hear TFL, which means thermally fused laminate, known in the past as melamine boards or TFM panels. You can hear the term haptics, which is another way to describe our response to touch and texture. You can hear the term film, which really covers a broad category of decorative laminates and overlays. And you can hear FF and E, which means furniture fixtures in equipment. I’ve heard that term used in the hospitality specifications world, but it does apply to other project categories. And by the way, you can find out a lot more about all of these terms on materialintelligence.com in the material guides area. So it’s time to introduce our expert guests. First up, you’ve already heard from my old friend Jessica Calabrese. Sorry, am I pronouncing this wrong for decades? Jessica 02:41 – 02:42 How did you say it? Kenn 02:43 – 02:43 Calabrese. Jessica 02:44 – 02:48 That’s the Italian pronunciation. So it’s technically correct. Kenn 02:48 – 02:48 Okay. Jessica 02:49 – 03:04 Jessica Calabrese, I’m with Parkside Atlantic Plywood and I manage the Commercial Specifications Division primarily focused on interiors for our Kenn 03:04 – 03:13 Surfaces Business Unit. And just briefly, what are the challenges that you are hoping to address with a conversation like we’re having today? I think it’s Jessica 03:13 – 03:29 great to open up the dialogue to just talk about how do we bring more awareness into specification efforts and material functionality and application use. I think that’s an important aspect of educating our A&D folks out there. Kenn 03:30 – 03:36 Super. Now, Greg, your turn. Who the heck is Greg O’Connell? If I’m am I pronouncing that right, O’Connell? Greg 03:37 – 04:24 Yeah, you nailed it. It’s actually George. Greg O’Connell, sales manager for SSI North America. We are a decorative services supplier to North America with different types of materials, 2D and 3D films. And then we also offer edge treatments through MKT North America. The education is key. The more that people know, the more confident they are. Because I don’t want to know that there are people in the market that don’t know what to do with our stuff. So it gets branded in a certain way or things get isolated because of the fear of being unknown. Kenn 04:25 – 05:46 Well, and what I think is going on here is that, you know, you hear things in the field. I mean, you know so much about your mix of materials and your competitive materials. And then you see how people are actually using them. And that inspires you as well. I think that’s really what kicked off this whole idea. Greg had shared an example with me of a customer that had been doing an incredible job with the 2D materials and the conversation Greg had, the answers he was able to give the customer and the observations the customer shared with Greg were something that should not have been just a one-on-one conversation. They should have been something that we could broadcast to the entire industry. And then I talked to Jessica after that And she’s like, you know, my teams and a frig, you know, correct me if I’m wrong, Jessica, but you know, both your OEM sales teams and your spec teams are like, you know, we’re not really sure how to talk about some of this or how to recommend where it’s used. And then you brought up Jessica, the millwork, you know, the importance of connecting with the millwork houses. And that just brought me right back to Greg’s. And so there’s this beautiful sort of self feeding loop here where I think there’s a A conversation between you two guys that could be very, very helpful to the industry. So Greg, give us the 30,000 foot view of the materials that SSI offers. Greg 05:47 – 06:43 We have really a few primary brains. We lead with our primary brand from Klockner, Pentaplast called PentaDecor. Penta decor comes in two primary fashions from SSI in North America. 3D laminates is the primary for the penta decor, really classically known in North America for the super mats. Another important brand from SSI is Recover, which is a, that is also a 3D laminate that is made from recycled water bottles. of PET on 90% post-consumer, which is a very high level of post-consumer recycle content. It’s pretty exciting. It’s not post-industrial, post-consumer, which has its challenges as well, but it’s definitely an interesting product. Kenn 06:43 – 07:12 A quick note here about the PVC used in the materials that SSI distributes. They are plasticizer and Thalate free. These are rigid PVC films that don’t contain the plasticizers like you might find in shower curtains, shampoo bottles, and LVT resilient flooring. So Greg, how would you say your product mix is evolving at SSI? I would say over the last two to three years we’ve really Greg 07:13 – 07:51 robustly increased our 2D program with PentaDecor. So this is now for profile wrapping and flat lamination typically found in like five-piece doors or those classic style shaker looks. We also represent a brand called Radiance and Radiance is a very high-end 2D PET film, pentadacore being PVC and both 2D and 3D. And then Radiance again is PET, comes in high-gloss and supermat, very high end robust surface protection and those things that would be expected out of a 2D film. Kenn 07:53 – 08:46 And so just in the spirit of clarification, a 3D laminate is a flexible overlay, a laminate, that can be adhered to five of six sides of a panel, a contoured or shaped panel, all in one processing step, right? So let’s say it’s a cabinet door, you can surface the face, the tops and bottoms, and the edges, but not the back, all in one processing step. So that’s why we say 3DL, also known as RTF, vinyls, thermofoils, right, a million other terms. And then 2DL is really an application where it’s the material, the overlay, the laminate is wrapped around three of the five sides, the face and opposing, opposing edges. Am I, am I tracking? Am I explaining that properly, Greg? Greg 08:47 – 09:32 Yeah, roughly. Yeah. When you, when you think about 2D, 2D can come in so many different fashions. So the, the proper description, unlike 3D, 3D is pretty straightforward. 2D, if you think of a molding, if you can think of a, of a five piece door or a molding, a crown molding, you can really effectively cover the visual side of the piece with a thinner, yet still engineered to perform in its resting place properly. So if that’s a crown molding, if that’s a five piece door, if that’s a decorative frame for a picture, you know, what have you, it 2D comes, it could be a flat panel. Kenn 09:34 – 09:40 So from a surface finished perspective, a few years ago, everybody was wild about high gloss. Is that still the case? Greg 09:41 – 09:46 You know, from a trend perspective now, it’s very little high gloss. It’s monochromatic at best. Kenn 09:48 – 09:54 Interesting. And you mentioned super matte, which is, is that the same as the anti fingerprint stuff that is so popular? Greg 09:55 – 10:36 Super matte can come in variations depending on the coating system and the, you know, the level that you buy, meaning from the menu, if you will. But yes, Superman typically comes with a variety of performance characteristics and anti fingerprint. As much oil as we leave behind just people, we still refuse to believe it and we don’t want to see it. And so that’s where these new top coding applications are really, they’re leading the way and allowing specification on mass scales to be okay because those specifications demand it. Kenn 10:37 – 10:41 When you say leaving oils behind, we’re talking about fingerprints, right? We’re talking about skin oil and– Greg 10:41 – 10:52 Yeah, I mean, anytime you touch something, you’re leaving a fingerprint, but we refuse to want to see that. So we demand that our surfaces really do not show that. Kenn 10:52 – 11:02 And then 3D laminates really, you mentioned solid colors, but they’re in wood grains. They’re in metallics. Do you want to give us an idea of the kind of the design scope of a 3D laminate? Greg 11:03 – 11:42 So from a texture standpoint, we can provide a textured emboss that would feel like an oak tree or modern wood pour where it’s, you know, striated drops with a very velvety soft texture from a haptic standpoint or from a shopping standpoint. I think at least in North America, we shop with our hands. We very much reach out and touch before we make a comment on how we think something looks. We can’t wait to touch that Superman and really feel the haptic part of it and decide if we really like the color or not. It’s very interesting. Kenn 11:43 – 12:08 Let’s talk just a little bit about what 3D laminate replaces, I guess, in the real world, right? Because you can get wood looks, you can get the solid colors, you can get the different finishes from high gloss to super matte. What is the advantage of using 3D laminate over some of the, let’s say, legacy choices or traditional choices for those finishes? And what are those other materials and finishes that you’re you’re replacing with 3DL? Greg 12:10 – 14:35 Yeah, well, 3DL provides, as you described earlier, five of the six sides. So if we think about from a store fixture perspective, if we have high wear, high impact, below the waste applications that typically would, you know, really take a beating, traditionally we’ve designed with things that have been very rigid and very supported and have tendencies to fracture and chip over time. 3D laminates, because of its composition and its structure underneath it, MDF, typically don’t fracture. The sharp instruments are bad news for 3D laminates, but in an impact situation or a wear situation, transactionally on a counter or below the waist, people rubbing up against it constantly, They really outperform a lot of the materials that are typically specified or at least in the price category. So again, sharp instruments and high heat are no good for 3D. That’s our fail points. Those are not good. Where other decorative surfaces definitely will perform 3D. But when we’re talking about impact and wear resistance on longevity, even in comparison to something like paint, it can be achieved at a much less cost to paint a door over time. But if you have to replace or the idea is to add on and maintain 3D laminates, definitely give a leg up to that type of decorative surface when we’re competing. So it’s a wide category of competition. I in a lot of ways, my partners are also my competition. So our responsibility is to make sure that we partner with Penta to Core Films or any brand of films that we offer in edge banding to people in the industry like the TFL suppliers. So it’s really important for us to have those cooperations, but in the same breath, we’re both fighting for the same. In some cases, we’re both challenged for the same project to our work competing against each other. So it’s the right material in the right application for the right expectations, I think. Kenn 14:36 – 18:06 So, and because, okay, you mentioned sharp instruments, right? 3DL is a thermal plastic, and so if you drop a scissors point down onto it, it’s going to make a nick, right? Just like if it was veneer or paint, right? So I know you’re comparing yourself to all these These other laminate materials, these super durable materials, but 3DL really replaces paint and solid wood because you can carve these contoured edges, you can carve interior details in a door front, you can engineer in a cutout in the middle of a 3DL panel, like when you’re at the doctor’s office and they have the little hole where you toss the the gloves into the waste basket, right? Through the top of the thing. So, you know, 3DL is really replacing other more traditional finishes that have all this design flexibility, odd-shaped pieces, contoured edges, soft edges, etc., etc. So, you know, I’ve been heard you, I’ve heard you make this comparison before. I’m like, you’re comparing yourself to the bullet-proof stuff in our industry, which is what design ways, which you’re really competing with are these really fragile, more natural and more traditional services that don’t stand up to cleaning like in a healthcare situation, right? So it’s kind of like the context of what you’re talking about needs to be really firmly established. And so 3DL is the most flexible, laminate material we have. And the cost of that is, well, you can’t stab it, right? And you can’t put a boiling pot of water on it. Sounds like the same thing with a painted surface or a veneer surface, you know, those are going to fail under the same situations. A quick word here about the miracle material that is MDF. MDF is made from the fiber of the parts of trees or the pieces of wood that are left over from other woodworking processes. What used to be waste, it’s refined down to particles and then further refined down to fibers and turned into panels that have this very smooth, very homogenous surface even as you machine into the wood. So any kind of material like a 3D laminate or a 2D laminate that is thin enough to show through any imperfections that you might have in the substrate, MDF is an excellent choice. And it’s also a course because it is using waste wood, wood that we used to landfill or burn. It makes it a very sustainable component once you put the durable long lasting 2DL or 3DL material on it. And then application categories for 3DL, right? We’re talking commercial and residential all over the board. I talk about healthcare a lot because this is a lot of feature stories I’m working on right now or in the healthcare world. And 3DL because it does that, you know, laminate five of six sides of a panel in one processing step. I cannot get that phrase out of my mouth because I think it’s really important. There’s efficiencies there. But it’s also seals that panel for easy cleaning. And because it is a thermoplastic surface, you can clean it with really simple compounds, right? I think I’ve done this on some CEUs in the healthcare world. It’s open water. Greg 18:07 – 18:21 Because it’s hydrophobic, because it stands up to a lot of common and maybe not so common surface cleaning agents or even practices. Kenn 18:22 – 18:57 A quick side note here on the testing that needs to be done on surface materials that are going to be used in healthcare applications. They need to be able to withstand not just the cleaning agents used in those settings, but also any other chemicals that might splash around, body fluids, disinfectants, other types of things used in a medical setting. So while cleaning these materials is relatively easy with soap and water, they need to stand up to a lot harsher chemistry than just soap and water. But I digress. Greg, please continue. Greg 18:58 – 19:51 When you talk about reagents, it’s not Lysol anymore. It’s not just Lysol. It’s 50 versions of the same thing. And it’s going to make an impact on what you test and what you have available. And really, it’s driven by our customers. The things that are obvious, okay, iodine and betadine and those things, yeah, that’s pretty clear. But you know, when things change and technology changes, not just in our industry, but in cleaning and everything else, this UVC lighting has made us reconsider coatings and how long it can be contacted for. It’s an interesting challenge. 3D still performs in that world, I would say as good, if not better than most. It’s an aggressive environment. It’s very hard. Kenn 19:51 – 21:04 Well, in that same sort of desire for a low maintenance, easy to clean surface is not just limited to healthcare too, right? I mean, I’m doing stories on education environments and how important it is to keep our preschools as sanitary as possible, even though, you know, the entire population are little germ buckets running around. And then also multifamily. Developers are, they don’t have access to the cleaning crews. They can’t afford them or they’re just not available as apartments turn over or as the community rooms or the shared kitchens and the other amenity spaces in multifamily need to be cleaned by the tenants. Well, you got to keep it simple. It’s important to note that in commercial specification especially, very few of these materials work in a vacuum. They are part of a package of other materials. They need to coordinate functionally. They need to coordinate design-wise with other types of materials. So what can distributors and material suppliers do to make sure those projects turn out successfully? Jessica 21:06 – 22:47 As far as the specification side of it, I really think it just comes down to really educating and thinking about how to include 3DL into the laminate conversation. So a designer can essentially pick whatever aesthetic they want to, and then they can pick the laminate product that best fits the application. One question we get faced with all the time is, what is the radius tolerance? Well, it depends. So if you’re looking at TFL, if you’re looking at HPL, you know, there’s obviously some limitations there. Enter 3DO, you know, as a solution. So that’s why we really tried to work with designers and educate them to include us on their whole design process and the applications because we see it all the time where a specifier will put into a written specification that states, okay, we want melamine, but we want it has to meet NEMA standards, which obviously don’t exist for melamine. And so we see a, we really see a confusion in the industry between the differences of TFL, HPL, and 3DL, right? And they’re not always used properly. So that’s where we really need to kind of group them together and target the market as a whole, that there’s always a solution. I mean, we can really achieve just about any interior application between the three product lines, and they can work together. Kenn 22:49 – 24:41 And this is something, and you mentioned design matching earlier, Greg, design matching programs of these other materials. In a perfect world, our industry would supply design and then be the consultants and the experts to advise what material carrying this design should be used in each part of your project, if that makes sense. So if we have good design matches between HPL, TFL, and 3DL, and of course now 2DL as well, how do we educate the specifier about the whole package rather than just the vertical of this or that or that or that material. In other words, like you’re saying, you know, offering, uh, Jessica, offering the, um, ability to design first and then worry about the application later because we have the material to suit, you know, high use healthcare or, you know, one thing I didn’t mention was the use of 3DL in retail. I mean, I would forever and ever like the best buy cash counters were 3DL targets, cash counters or 3DL material. I can’t think of a much more abusive situation than that. But they don’t need that kind of wear resistance for maybe some of the vertical surfaces. Maybe in some areas, Greg, to your point, where there’s people are throwing scissors and scalpels around. Maybe you want HPL or TFL on those surfaces. I know there’s cooperation between different suppliers and I can’t think of any companies, actually as a manufacturer that offer 3D LTFL and HPL. So is our industry, Jessica, doing a good enough job as the individual vendors who have matching programs? Are they team players when it comes to helping you make the case for choosing design first and let us help you figure out the exact material for the application? Jessica 24:43 – 25:58 I can tell you, Ken, it’s definitely come a long way. (laughing) We’ve seen a lot more cohesiveness. But I will tell you that there are still challenges, just finding the exact right match when you start mixing these materials, where maybe one has a really long lead time. Maybe you need an edge banding that matches a particular 3D L or HPL color and it has a really long lead time. Well, now the whole project and everything is in jeopardy because you’re out trying to source and find the appropriate match. Again, we have a lot more cohesiveness. The colors definitely are coming together a lot better than they ever have. I know that I’ve seen some really great applications where a TFL and 3DL were working together on a panel or 2DL. And visually, the designs work great together. And it also provides a good application at a cost effective solution for a customer. What it takes to get that downstream, we can definitely have some room for improvement there. Kenn 25:58 – 26:46 Well, and this is what you, I think, what started this conversation was you looking for some of this kind of guidance for your teams out in the field and how to better make the case for working with multiples of these materials rather than just, okay, we made our decision, going to be XYZ material, we can move on. And then I think another thing you said really sparked something, Jessica, a conversation I had with some commercial interior designers was getting the interior design team involved at the outset of a project, rather than bringing them in, you know, okay, we’ve, you know, we’ve decided on everything else. And we’ve got this much of a budget left. Here you go, interior design team. good luck. Do you find that kind of with your market? Jessica 26:47 – 28:24 I call it the squeeze. Interiors is always the thing that gets cut at the very end when concrete has gone over budget and there’s no more room for change orders. I do. I call at the squeeze. And it is a number one frustration for interior designers. I can attest to that in various conversations. There’s also the value engineering side of it, right? So how do I get the highest end aesthetic within this price budget? So, you know, I mean, it really is a challenge and it needs to be the design teams need to be included in the onset whole design process because you know when you get into things like healthcare for instance there’s a functionality component to all of this. There’s an efficiency component to all of this. How can we create a design that is not only cleanable that’s aesthetically pleasing that has a long a long ROI on it can stand type abuse but also cuts down on the overall operating cost of the hospital itself, things like less hours and maintenance and cleaning. So all of those things are challenges that designers are faced with now. And so if they know more about all of these different material options and how they can work together, it’ll solve a lot of problems. Kenn 28:25 – 28:27 When is the crucial moment for this to take place? Jessica 28:28 – 29:22 This happens during the bidding process. So generally, when a project goes out to bid, let’s say that a GC gets awarded, he’s sending his sub-bid packages out. The Millwork fabricator firms, they’re quoting in a price group one or a price group two within a certain product line. And so then the designer will go back and say, “Well, I want this product. I want this color.” And they’re saying, “Well, we didn’t quote it that way. So we were awarded this bid.” And so you’ve got to choose between this color group that meets this price point because that’s how we bid it. And by the way, there’s no more funds for change order approvals. So they’ve got to go back to the drawing board. So a lot of it really happens during the bidding process where what I call the squeeze is really just a timing thing between the finished selection and when the bid actually happens. Kenn 29:24 – 29:48 So this sounds like a fairly detailed conversation to be getting into when you’re weighing the relative benefits of different materials and how effective they’ll be for the specified application versus the costs. It sounds like it can be a pretty in-depth conversation. Is this something that you find yourself engaging in often? Jessica 29:49 – 31:28 Absolutely. We do. In fact, it is the biggest value that an architectural and design rep has to a specifier. To be the lookout their eyes and ears and helping them ensure that their material selection doesn’t get changed downstream for various reasons. So a really good specifier will reach out to their rep and say, listen, this is what I’m being told. And then we’ll work on behalf of that specifier downstream. might do things like, well listen, there might be a price concession, it might be an inventory thing, it might be something as easy as a change out from a substrate. That’s an important piece of this, right? The substrate piece of this. So it could be, okay, the architect designer calls and says, you know, we’re being told that this material is not available or it’s discontinued. Well, it’s because it was specified on particle board and you can’t put that material on particle board. Or you know it really has to be discussed in an entire solution and an entire package with the substrate to ensure that the material is available and that it’s even a viable combination. It really just comes down to sometimes there are millwork or firms that are chosen, of fabricators that are chosen early in the bid package phase, and then a designer selects something like a 3D L and that millwork doesn’t have membrane pressing capabilities, right? Kenn 31:29 – 31:31 So the number one thing that we try to do is change it. Jessica 31:32 – 31:44 Another valuable thing that we do is make sure that we bring partners to the table that support the product line that can actually offer the services that are needed to win that bid package. Kenn 31:45 – 32:23 So, and you brought up a really important point there a second ago, Jessica, that it’s not really clear sometimes to the specifier how this material ends up in their project. And you mentioned somebody picking out a millworkhouse that may not have 3D laminating capabilities. In our world, there are lots of companies that specialize in 3D L components. And so you do the make versus buy sort of thing, but that’s not always in the margin plan for certain mill work houses, I think. How do we prevent these kinds of dead end specification nightmares? Jessica 32:25 – 33:42 We need to start by being advocates for our designers, you know, downstream. And that really just comes down to being part of the project team. So saying, okay, if this is what you’re considering, we’ll have to make some adaptations or the capabilities for this product doesn’t work with this. Or here are some certified and renowned millwork fabricator companies that we know can achieve this. So that we’ll help you bring this bid package to your GC and loop in that millwork company. And as far as whose responsibility is it, it really is everyone’s responsibility. So it’s the general contractor’s responsibility to ensure that when they get a bid package that it’s going to be met. It’s their responsibility to make sure that their subcontractor, that mill worker fabricator, is following along the guidelines of what has been quoted and what the scope of work that has been indicated. And then it’s our job as the liaisons to make sure that all of that happens. Kenn 33:44 – 33:58 Greg, do you have any insights from the real world on how to prevent sort of these specification, doom loops where I like this, but I can’t get it. It got knocked out of my spec and I have no idea how to change this next time around. Greg 33:58 – 35:18 The amount of designers that I come in contact with over a year’s time is staggering, and I know how hard they work, and I know what they’re up against. We get calls all the time because our material name gets put on there, “Pinted Accor,” and, you know, “I need to buy five sheets of vertical grade, you know, for a project, and I use my regular red adhesive that I use on Wilson Art.” you know, that’s not the material. Sorry. And we go through an explanation for those that don’t know, you know, membrane pressing uses a water-based adhesive, which is why it contributes to indoor air quality on LV4. It’s a different process. And, you know, the people that have taken the time to understand what they’re specifying, sadly, we run right up against the people that Jessica just described they’ll just move on and say I can’t get it. And then they’ll move on to something that they’re more accustomed to working with that fits into their production facility. I hear Jessica loud and clear. I hear the scenario. I know the scenario. I live the scenario. And, you know, we were the ones that get that back end call that say, well, I want to buy it, but, you know, they’re not looking to buy it and actually use it the way that’s meant to be used. So it’s a challenge. Kenn 35:19 – 36:51 Yeah, because 3DL is creating 3DL components is a little bit of a specialty. You need specific adhesive knowledge. You need to know what you’re doing with your substrates, the MDF. And of course, then there’s the membrane presses that are their own animal as well in this industry. Another quick side note here, membrane presses have come up a couple times in this conversation. That’s the machinery used to apply the 3D laminate to the carved MDF pieces. Either there’s a membrane, like a bladder in the press, that pushes the laminate down into the contoured pieces of the MDF, or a vacuum is created below the parts and the thermoplastic material, which has been slightly heated to be pliable, is pulled down over the carved pieces and basically sucked into every nook and cranny that has been carved in that MDF. It’s important to note also here that these 3D laminate materials are formed to the piece. They’re not just glued down, but they actually take on the shape of the piece, which reduces any possibility of them delaminating if they’re pressed right and used with the right kind of adhesive. of. So that’s everything you needed to know about membrane pressing of 3d laminates, but we’re afraid afraid to ask. So it’s now time to move on to our discussion about 2d laminates. Jessica 36:52 – 37:11 I think that when we’re talking about 2dl and how does that fit into the big picture, Right, so you’ve got TFL, HPL, 3DL. So what’s the end with 2DL that makes it favorable in comparison? Kenn 37:12 – 38:30 2D laminates are decorative surfaces that can cover the face and then opposing sides of a piece. Whereas 3DL, of course, is five sides– the face, the top edges, the side edges. So 2DLs are used for things like moldings, crown moldings, cove moldings, picture frame components that are then assembled into further products, let’s say like a five-piece cabinet door. They can be polymer based and they can be paper based. They’re generally a little less cost than 3D laminates for the material itself and they’re designed to be applied usually by profile wrapping machines which run at a pretty high speed but are really only able to be set up to make one part at a time. So this is for high volume, like we said, architectural moldings and door and frame components. They can also be used to laminate entire flat panel faces for reasons we’ll discuss in a bit. And once again, they are part of the overall package that an architectural interior design specifier has access to to complete their project with the right budget performance and design parameters in mind. It’s important to know that two 2DL is not a lower performing material versus 3DL, right, Greg? Greg 38:31 – 38:50 From a 2D perspective, we can provide the same, if not better, performance in a 2D film than I can in a 3D film. And 2D allows us to kind of hang in that pocket and really live and breathe very well in the 5-piece door world, especially. Kenn 38:51 – 39:10 2DL is growing, I think. I’ve recently published a story in, I believe it was, Closets and Organized Storage Magazine. And Greg, you and I started these conversations earlier this summer. 2DL is really kind of on the upswing right now. Is that still true? Did I perceive that correctly? Greg 39:10 – 40:46 Yeah, the perception is exactly right. We just recently updated our 2DL page on our website to add even more solid imprinted items. The beauty of our 2DL program, and this is something that it really needs to be said because we starved for these exact matches and versatility in the design world. So why do we pick 2D? Well, it’s probably because of cost at some point or really design specific, but the beauty of it is we actually have matching wood greens in 2D and in 3D. And then we have solid colors and matching 2D and in 3D that allow people to have that design confidence. And we have partners in the industry, TFL partners in the industry that are cheering us on for those matches as well and supporting it. So that’s a 2D competitor in a matter of speaking, but also a tremendous partner to us. And, you know, this is a category for SSI that really didn’t exist before. really in two, two and a half, three years, we have literally built over 70, it’s 70 stocked 2D items. And, you know, the Radiance Program continues to be a tremendous success from a PET standpoint. When we, when we have those needs that it can’t be PVC, we definitely have opportunities in polypropylene, as well as PETs. Everything that we hear in North America right now, 3D is important and 2D is vital. You absolutely have to have it. Kenn 40:46 – 40:58 What specifically, applications-wise, is 2DL being found on where it wasn’t before? Or is it just an increase in certain types of components and design features that 2DLs? What’s the Greg 40:58 – 42:32 growth all about? Well, it’s a good question. We launch a trend book about every 18 to 24 months. That really talks about the four megatrends. And from emotion and design. And these things really are overarching trends. And then as we experience what we would call micro trends or things that happen within the mega trend, that kind of shows maturation. If you think about five piece doors, that has been around for over 40 years, that door was made in high pressure laminate in Detroit by a company called LaMica. In that door was the talk of the town over 40 years ago. So in other words, this isn’t new. We’re designing with five piece doors. We’re designing with profile wrap pieces. We’re finding ways to incorporate flat panel lamination in combinations of shape, as well as elegance and, you know, just simple concepts of solid colors. So from a, from a cost perspective, like if you’re looking at How much film is used and wasted versus, you know, one over the other 2D dominates in that perspective because, you know, if you’re running a lot in those moldings, then you’re, you know, you’re very efficient and effective with how much material you’re using. 3D, you have to have some space on the table and there’s a little bit of, you know, spillage to get the part to press properly. Kenn 42:32 – 42:36 Right. There’s some leftover material scraps after you cut the pieces out. Greg 42:36 – 42:37 Yeah, exactly. Kenn 42:39 – 42:42 One thing I was surprised to learn about 2D laminates Greg 42:42 – 43:01 is that– – Well, there’s a lot of flat panel lamination too. There’s a lot of four by eights that get flat laminated with 2DL material. Yeah, for, you know, whether it’s a wall panel application, we have tremendous business and our radiance and our PET walls, wall program as well as our PVC wall program as well. Kenn 43:01 – 43:14 So why would somebody choose to flat laminate a 2DL, right? which could normally be sort of the realm of a TFL or an HPL panel. Why use the question? Yeah. Well, Greg 43:14 – 44:00 it’s design consistency is probably the first and foremost. And then I would say performance. We are going to get a lot of stain protection that we didn’t get or impact resistance. You know, I go back to casinos all the time. Um, what panel applications and casinos is a real thing. Um, they have a ton of flat walls everywhere and they get beat up really bad and 2D starting to get into those retail environments where they’re specifying specifically, I want this material with this coating because they understand as DeJustice point earlier, education is key. So we can explain to people what you get and let them ask the question of their other materials. Kenn 44:01 – 44:18 When you mentioned, I think the first thing you said when I asked why use it, you said design matching or color matching, right? So meaning that is exactly the same material flat laminated to the center of this panel that’s being wrapped around the moldings that frame the panel in the case of, you know. Greg 44:19 – 44:55 In the world, in the world of materials, and I am a partner to a lot of different people. SSI is a partner and I have commitments that we are going to match. And I’m here to tell you right now that anybody that has ever gone through the process of matching, there are very few crossover materials that match one to one. There’s very few. Even when they’re called or industry accepted as a one to one. So to get an exact match, it is always best to design with the same material across every aspect. You’re never going to get a better match that way ever. But most people don’t design that way. Kenn 44:55 – 45:21 Well, and I think, I mean, part of the matching challenges, I think, is not just the material and the color and the way they’re printed. It’s also the textures that are applied and the way these different material surfaces catch light a different way, right? So it’s not really the material. It’s just there’s a wall, I think you hit when you’re talking about how light interacts with the surfaces of these, you know, these different engineered materials. It’s just they’re different animals. Greg 45:22 – 45:52 It’s funny to say like, because that’s part of what we call launch sheets for our materials. So for every item that we stack, which is a lot, you get some sexy language to help inspire the sales mind, as well as information that seems simple, but the full repeat of the design is also something that is really important for people. also found when we’re talking about wood grains also found on our launch sheet. Kenn 45:52 – 45:56 Where would people go to look at this launch sheet, Greg? Oh, Ken. Greg 45:59 – 46:00 www.ssinorthamerica.com. Kenn 46:02 – 46:17 Jessica, you know, we just sort of dove real deep into 2DL. Did this spark any ideas or any sort of needs that you have on communicating exactly what 2DL is and where to use it? Jessica 46:18 – 46:52 Absolutely, I think, you know, the first thing that popped into my mind is the balance of aesthetic and affordability. And I can see that in an FF, in FFB and the applications all day long. What a great solution for a lot of FFB product. So even RTA, Cabinetry, which is becoming a little bit less competitive from what I hear in the coming months. Kenn 46:53 – 46:53 Right. Jessica 46:53 – 47:17 So there’s really a great channel and opportunity for the 2DL. balance of functionality, price, and aesthetic, I think is really a home run to designers who are looking for all three of those factors there. Kenn 47:19 – 47:45 So this whole conversation today has been about trying to demystify 3D laminates and 2D laminates and help the spec teams who are calling on architects and designers do a more effective job of educating them on their material options at the outset of the project. Is there anything we left on the field? I mean, what’s the big takeaway here? Jessica 47:46 – 48:24 Doing exactly what we’re doing today is absolutely a great start. Just having a conversation, bringing awareness, putting the product out there front facing into the marketplace. making a concerted effort to go after those areas where we see opportunity to provide a 2DL or 3DL product and application as a solution and really just listening to the designer’s struggles. Really just asking the right questions and being able to offer solutions is really key. Kenn 48:25 – 48:45 And I think also being able to express the challenges that we’re addressing, express those challenges in the same terms that the design community is expressing them. But are designers and architects comfortable with suppliers and distributors being so proactive, reaching out with advice at the outset of their design process? Jessica 48:46 – 49:55 You know, oftentimes they are, right? Because what they don’t want to have to do is go back to the drawing board and spend more billable hours. You know, That’s why specification is so repeatable. Because once you have a product that performs and you’ve used it and you know that it achieves what you want it to achieve, it’s repeatable. From that point on, it becomes trusted. So the education piece of that starts first and foremost. And then it moves into repeatable process, which is obviously where you gain more awareness and more cases, case studies and examples and comfort and trust and all of those things, right? So designers don’t know what they don’t know. If there’s a product out there that solves a problem for them, they are absolutely willing to sit and listen to how you can help them solve a problem. Because at the end of the day, our job is to make their job easier. So if we can bring something to the table, they are absolutely willing to listen. Kenn 50:09 – 50:22 This has been a production of Material Intelligence LLC made possible by SSI North America, SSI North America dot com. Thanks for listening. We hope we’ve improved your material IQ by a point or two. Jessica 50:23 – 50:33 I call it the squeeze. At the end of the day, our job is to make their job easier. We can’t be strangers for too much longer, Ken. Kenn 50:34 – 50:35 It’s been a while. Jessica 50:35 – 50:38 We’ve got the juices flowing here. We’ve got to keep it going. Kenn 50:40 – 50:48 You can find out more about all of the material and sustainability topics covered in this podcast at materialintelligence.com and climatepositivenow.org. Kenn 50:48 – 50:54 Please visit both sites, subscribe, and click like on this podcast. See you next time.

7. 

   24 Sept 2025

   Material IQ Episode 000: “The world needs that from us”

   This episode talks about the role of sustainable materials for high-demand, high-traffic areas like airports, lounges, and retail areas with designer Jordana Dall’Igna (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jordalligna). Every episode of the Material IQ podcast explores in detail the materiality of the built environment: innovation, inspiration, and case studies from leading architects, designers, suppliers, and manufacturers with an emphasis on climate-positive outcomes in commercial and residential design. Read a transcript of this podcast episode The following podcast transcript was generated with Whisper AI and may contain errors. [Music] As a young designer, we need to keep those things in mind. We are the change, we are the future. So if we don’t change our mindsets and the way we approach materials, that’s not going to change. So it’s up to us, especially to space fires, like we need to push better materials, better solutions. The world needs that from us. [Music] The world needs that from us. Holy cow. That’s Jordana Delinia. She is a commercial interior designer specializing in airport food and beverage areas, lounges, and retail areas all over the world. And I am Ken Busch, your host for the Material IQ podcast. This is episode zero. It’s an episode I’m putting together to inform our industry partners about what’s going on with Material IQ—what we’re going to be doing with it in the future, and what’s happening with Material Intelligence 2.0. Jordana and I met at Neocon. She’s from Vancouver, but she works on airport projects all over the world. We met during Neocon in my Material Intelligence Destination Neocon exhibit, where we were showing lots of different sustainable materials. She was taking the long tour and visiting all of our sponsors. She was kind enough to let me interrogate her about her job, her company, the projects she works on, and the challenges she faces in always trying to choose the most sustainable materials and products. It turns out a big part of her job is educating her customers—not only about performance and aesthetics but also about the long-term sustainability of the project. Ken: I’m guessing you feel obligated to educate your clients about what sustainability means in their context. How do you do that? Jordana: Well, that’s a big challenge. We always try to bring them data. I think that’s the best way of selling something—showing studies and proving our point. That should touch our clients. We’re talking about the future, we’re talking about the environment, and that’s why we try to push sustainable products to them. Education is the biggest thing. We might share an article or numbers. We really like hemp. Hemp, for example, is a great product. We’ve been seeing it in furniture and clothing. In Canada that’s legal, so we can get a lot of hemp stuff, which is really nice. We always try to share data: you’re going to use much less water to produce it, sometimes you get a better price—sometimes not, sometimes it’s more expensive upfront—but it pays off over time. She’s talking about hemp-based products there, and she likes them because they’re sustainable. Those suppliers have done a great job of giving her the data and information she needs to sell it to her clients. She also brought up another material category that I won’t mention because she asked me not to. It’s not very sustainable. It is durable, but she loves it because she gets excellent support from the supplier. They have teams ready to answer her questions and help her sell that material to her clients. Remember: a commercial interior designer doesn’t buy a single square centimeter of anything until they’ve already sold it to their customers. As you probably know, the most effective way of educating interior designers is through Continuing Education Unit presentations and programs—CEUs. Whether you’re an architect or an interior designer, residential or commercial, CEUs are required by professional associations. Usually it’s so many hours every two years. But they have to be relevant and engaging. I think the days of “here’s absolutely everything you need to know about this material” are past. Ken: How important are CEUs to you? Jordana: Quite important. We see that most designers just want them for the hours. It’s not really important to them, but we try to have a different approach. Ken: I have clients who look at CEUs as a chance to train their best salespeople—which are you—because you don’t buy anything until you’ve already sold it, right? Jordana: Absolutely. Education is everything. If you know what you’re selling, you can sell it. If you don’t, it’s really hard to convince anyone. If you’re not convincing yourself it’s the best solution, there’s no way you can pass that up to your clients. Ken: Are you getting enough support from your suppliers? Jordana: I think so. But often we have to reach out and ask for things we hope would just be delivered to us. I’m talking about information, not samples. We have to chase them: “Hey, why is this better? How can I sell it to my client? Your price is higher. I like your product, but how do I sell that? I can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful.’” So a lot of times we have to chase that information. That’s the process, I guess. But how can I sell it if I don’t know what it is? Her answer shows some hesitancy. A couple of suppliers do a great job, but many don’t. She often lacks the information she needs to not only design but also to sell her choices to clients. One of the through-lines of our conversation was sustainability. She and her young team were very concerned about how their choices impact resources, the future, and indoor air quality. Companies like the hemp supplier—those who connect with her values—get specified more often. Ken: How do you talk about sustainability? What’s most important—carbon footprint, longevity, ease of care? Jordana: They all count. I think that’s the future. You can’t run away from that. For years we’ve known that much of our practice isn’t sustainable—we just kept doing it. But there’s no going back. You have to look forward and understand why this matters. It’s a personal thing. It matters to me because this is our environment. This is the only world we have. There’s no other way. It matters to her because this is the only world we have. I hear that from young designers again and again. Sustainability is personal. Which is why I was surprised when I asked about wood. Ken: How do you feel about specifying wood products, like hardwoods? Jordana: That’s a trick question. Durability and look—it’s great. We like to specify it. But at the same time, it’s not sustainable. A lot of companies aren’t sustainable. Some are. But many clients aren’t interested in real wood anymore. “Wood isn’t sustainable.” Clients aren’t interested in it anymore. That’s a colossal fail on the part of the wood products industry—the forest fiber value chain. You have no idea how hard it was for me not to shift into lecture mode. But I asked her to elaborate. Jordana: I think it’s a combo of price, sustainability, and durability. Cleaning and caring for natural products is harder. Airports are trickier—we need the most resistant surfaces. People don’t care. They’ll put their feet up. It’s not like home. Ken: When you say you get pushback on wood, is it because people think managed forestry isn’t doing a good job? Jordana: Yeah, I think so. People aren’t well educated on where it comes from. They have an idea and stick with it, without understanding what it really means. She’s making a great point: many don’t understand what managed forestry means. I once ran a focus group with 11 designers and architects. I showed them two pictures: One was a healthy forest of tall sugar maples, managed six years earlier. The other was a clear-cut Brazilian rainforest, nothing but stumps. Nine out of 11 chose the stumps as “managed forestry.” In reality, that’s deforestation—the opposite of managed forestry. Jordana also noted something I’ve observed: inertia in design firms. Older designers have fixed ideas. Younger designers are tasked with educating them. Jordana: Management can be a problem too. Companies in the market for a long time, with older managers, often have a closed vision. They think sustainable materials won’t last. So it’s part of us young designers to educate the old people in our offices. Ken: Good luck, right? Jordana: Yeah. But it works. So suppliers like us need to give Jordana the tools she needs—not just to educate clients, but also her own senior colleagues. And at that point, I couldn’t help myself. Ken: Did you know that wood, by weight, is 50% stored carbon? Jordana: I did not know that. That’s really interesting. I’m definitely bringing that back to my team. So how can we help Jordana bring information like that back to her team? The answer, right after this message from our sponsors. Well, since I haven’t sold any sponsorships yet, this episode is sponsored by materialintelligence.com. Our site is newly redesigned, and we’re updating all the material guides and other content. Please check it out. Also, climatepositivenow.org, which we’ll be relaunching in September. So now for the big reveal. What is this podcast really about? It’s about helping people like Jordana. We’ll take several tracks with this podcast: Education for industry suppliers on how to connect with the design community. Interviews with designers, association heads, and others in the A&D specification realm. CEU-certified conversations about materials and sustainability. The AIA now certifies spoken-word podcasts as “nano CEUs”—0.25 or 0.5 learning credits. These are also accepted by ASID and IIDA. So podcasts like this can count as educational content. We’ll turn content from materialintelligence.com guides into CEU podcasts, and we’ll work with companies to create custom CEU podcasts. We’ll handle production, approval, and reporting. Sponsors get the leads and contact info of designers who participate. If you’ve already got a CEU, we can adapt it into a podcast. If you don’t, we’ll be an AIA provider so you don’t need to pay $5,000 a year for just one CEU. Not all of our podcasts will be CEUs, but all will be Material IQ. We’ll build a library of certified podcasts, easily searchable, posted on major streaming platforms and promoted by us—and you, if your name is attached. We’ll also interview upstream suppliers—those who provide technology, edge banding, textures, components. Not the sexiest topics for designers, but critical for producers. These conversations put benefits into context with what really matters. These are audio-only podcasts. No video for now, except special projects. Research shows spoken-word interviews are more popular and accessible, especially for young professionals. We’ll also pursue joint displays at future exhibitions—2026 IWF, K-Bus, Neocon, BDNY, and others. But the real goal is launching the Material IQ podcast: To work with industry partners to create content for architects and interior designers. To work with upstream suppliers to create lively, entertaining conversations that deliver value to the decorative surfacing value chain. This has been the Material IQ Podcast, Episode Zero, brought to you by materialintelligence.com and Climate Positive Now. Our goal is a searchable library of certified content and industry knowledge for architects, interior designers like Jordana, and everyone in the specified materials value chain. We’ll expand coverage on materialintelligence.com to include other specified materials beyond wood. So if you’ve got something slightly outside the wood products realm, we’re here to work with you. Thanks for listening. I hope this was entertaining, maybe educational—hopefully both. And congratulations, we hope we’ve increased your Material IQ by a point or two. See you next time. [Music] This has been a production of Material Intelligence LLC. All rights reserved.

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