5 min read
May 7, 2024
There are a few superstar names in the world of carpets, where the quality and vision of the carpet tiles are so evident that you can pinpoint the brand as having a particularly distinct style. Desso is one of those names.
Now part of the Tarkett Group, Desso is an unusual supplier in a lot of different ways, but its biggest difference is that it primarily focuses on tiled carpet solutions rather than rolls, rugs or other materials.
Part of the reason for this is that for 85 years the Dutch brand has focused on sustainability, functionality and creativity as its three driving forces, ones that have shaped the company for a long time and its innovations have appeared in a rather broad range of guises.
Origins In Oss
Founded in 1930 in the city of Oss in the southern region of the Netherlands, Desso quickly became a major carpet manufacturer in Europe, establishing itself for its high-quality woven carpets.
They were an early company to see the potential of carpet tiles as an innovative, convenient way of manufacturing, distributing and fitting carpets, and within 25 years of the company’s launch in 1955, they were offering modular carpeting solutions.
At the time, the two main types of carpet you could find were woven rugs, which were beautiful but would by design only cover part of the floor and could potentially become a slip hazard if not secured, and carpet rolls.
Carpet rolls were (and still are) the primary way of buying carpet, but they have a fundamental issue for heavy traffic areas that if a small area is damaged and cannot be fixed, the entire carpet needs to be taken up and replaced.
Desso spotted this, took advantage of it and became a market leader in commercial carpet tiles for decades, taking this approach and adapting it not only to a wide range of styles but also entirely separate industries.
Bringing Carpet Technology Outdoors
It is impossible to truly discuss Desso without talking about one of its most major and influential innovations, one that took the principle of versatile, strong carpeting outside and into the world of sports.
Pitch management is an exceptionally difficult and complex task, requiring a lot of money, time and effort to maintain a grass playing field in competition condition. This led sporting clubs, schools and stadium grounds managers to look for an alternative.
Desso started to offer artificial playing surfaces similar to the market-leading Astroturf. However, they also started to look for solutions to offset the issues seen with a playing surface sometimes nicknamed “plastic pitches”.
What they created was Grassmaster, which took advantage of their manufacturing knowledge in making comfortable carpet surfaces and incorporated it with natural grass to create a reinforced playing surface, avoiding the damage, divots and bumps that often end up in traditional turf.
When Desso was eventually bought by Tarkett, they continued to develop the technology alongside their existing FieldTurf artificial playing fields, but both the indoor and outdoor markets for Desso would work with each other to help produce the best and most robust flooring possible.
However, Desso had a broad vision in mind to take the whole industry further.
Cradle To Cradle
Desso has shown creativity in carpets for nearly a century, and it has shown through a range of innovations to their surfaces, designs and the technology behind their backing, whilst their functionality is such that they transcended interior spaces with their developments.
The final point of the triangle that makes Desso such a unique carpet company is their commitment to sustainability, best epitomised through a philosophy known as Cradle To Cradle.
At this point, Desso had been bought out by The Armstrong Group and then by a collective of private investors.
In 2007, then-CEO Stef Kranendijk was fascinated and deeply moved by the book Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braungart and William McDonough.
This book rejects the then-conventional business concept of “reduce, reuse, and recycle” in favour of making sustainable design the core of their business philosophy.
Mr Kranendijk aggressively adopts this approach at Desso, creating a product known as EcoBase that is 100 per cent recyclable, free of toxic chemicals, easy to disassemble and takes stewardship of natural resources.
This was the inspiration for AirMaster, a carpet tile product that absorbs and reduces fine particulate dust in the atmosphere and helps to clear the air above it, a product that would become one of the company’s most important.
They also took steps to recycle waste and cuttings to turn into new raw carpet materials, as well as take significant strides in reducing water use.
Desso’s parent company Tarkett also runs a ReStart recycling programme, where old flooring is taken away for reuse to help prevent waste. Lots of UK contractors use it and it couldn’t be easier to sign up for the scheme. Once enrolled, you can sign up for a ReStart container to collect all the offcuts and then book in with a local Tarkett waste collector to come and pick them up. It’s as simple as that!
