In 2023 Shaw tapped Benjamin Liebert, an appliance executive, to lead its residential division. The move represented a departure from the company’s traditional practice of hiring and promoting from within, allowing personnel to rise through the ranks and eventually into executive leadership positions. Now that Liebert has established a firm footing in the industry, he is assessing how the transition is going and cataloging the progress the company is making in terms of its major initiatives.
FCNews executive editor Reginald Tucker sat down with Liebert recently to get a feel for how things are going three years in. Following are excerpts of that discussion:
You have spent time getting to know the industry and retailers on a personal level since joining Shaw Industries in late 2023. What have you learned and how have you implemented that knowledge into Shaw Floors’ marketing strategy?
There were some things that I felt like I had a good pulse on. And, like anything in life, you learn new things, right? No. 1, I think this openness to listen is the part that stood out a lot. I tried to do a lot of listening, not just with our customers but with our team members as well. I spent a ton of time internally with our territory managers, our regional vice presidents, our divisional vice presidents. I spent a lot of time in Dalton with our functional teams and with our customers. That’s something that I try to prioritize in our busy life is whether it’s a customer trip, a customer visit or a trade show, I really make it priority to be there to continue that listening.
The biggest thing I’ve learned about the flooring industry is it’s about people—there’s a relational nature to this business. And you know this, you’ve been likely in this industry longer than I have. But to actually see that, feel that and witness it. The relational piece of this business is special. And I would say it exceeded even my early comprehension of what it means to truly foster and develop relationships with our customers, deeply understand their business, what are their challenges, what are their fears, what are their ambitions? And to me, that’s what separates this business.
The other piece is really having empathy for when we make changes at Shaw, the ripple effect that has not only in market for our field, our team members, but also the impact that our customers feel. I have a higher level of empathy for how a change might work its way through the system and then how that might impact our customers. For me it’s about continuously learning, continuously trying to receive that information, digest it and then adapt. I can tell you the main thing we’re going to be focusing on this year is really getting back to basics.
The blocking and tackling, so to speak.
Exactly. Especially in a down market. We’ve made a number of changes that are going to be real—great for our customers. These are changes that are required and that we all need to be thinking about in order to keep moving the industry forward, moving our business forward. At the same time, I am also cognizant that a lot of change consecutively does have an impact on our customers and the continuity of our business. Those are some of the things I’ve learned.
Have your retail partners been receptive and understanding of your strategy?
Yes, especially when we engage them in a discussion. And like most things in life, starting with the “Why” versus just the “What” and the “How.” I think we can always continue to be better at that. For example, “Here’s why we’re making this change.” “Here’s what we see.” “Here’s how we think it’s going to impact you.” And like anything in life, there’s going to be people who are pretty excited and embrace it. There’s going to be people who are on the fence. And there’s going to be people who are very skeptical and concerned about it. All three of those buckets are totally natural and totally normal.
But I do think we need to continue to talk about the “Why.” And I will say most of the changes, if not all the changes, are about getting closer to our customer and how we’re getting more integrated in how we work together in the future.
In which bucket do most of your customers fall at this point in time in terms of the changes you’re making?
These are new ways of working. The biggest compliment we can get, and we’ve had a lot of those at Surfaces, is: “Hey, your local team is amazing. They’re integrated with my business. We really see that these changes are making us better.”
And then on the other side, we are hearing from people who are saying, “Hey, there’s been a lot of change at Shaw. Should we be concerned?” Where are we going? Having that dialogue at TISE is really important.
There are early adopters, people who are on the fence and then there are those who are skeptical—and we continue to work through that.
How are those engagement efforts coming along?
Generally speaking, I’m very pleased with how our customers are engaging. At the end of the day it’s about continuous improvement, constantly checking in. We utilize the feedback loop for our customers as an opportunity for us to course correct and adapt. But I would say our intentions are pure and our intentions are all about our customers. It’s all about co-developing programs with the customers, not pushing it on them.
We’ve seen elements of co-development with your customers in practice with the Shaw Flooring Network advisory council, for example.
The Shaw Flooring Network is at the core of everything we’re doing and all our customers are important. That is a deeper level of partnership and a deeper level of co-development. We meet with our dealer council formally twice a year—spring and fall—and we’ve got one of those coming up this month. We’re also planning our SFN convention for 2027, and the dealer council will have a heavy role in that.
Speaking of SFN, during your opening remarks at the 2025 conference, you spoke at length about the importance of shortening the consumer shopping journey, capitalizing on opportunities to achieve that objective for your retail partners. Are you seeing movement in that regard with respect to what you’re doing internally?
This is a big one and it’s an industry challenge—not just a Shaw challenge. And if successful, it’s going to help our customers and it’s going to help the consumer at large. But I would say, yes, we’re making a ton of progress. First and foremost, we’ve done a lot of research here. We have a ton of data—which we can then turn into actions, programs and take them to our customers to solve problems. The first one is the digital journey into the showroom. When the consumer sees something online and can’t validate or they can’t validate it in store—that is a huge negative emotion for the consumer in the journey, and it’s one of the reasons they opt out or defer the purchase.
So we’re focused on the online experience and how that is seamless to the showroom experience or even the installation and delivery experience. In short, making it a seamless transition from the website to the jobsite. That’s No. 1. That means investing in our digital presence. We have a new digital marketing leader working on things like the senior locator to make sure we’re sending consumers to our customers who are supporting us. So, there’s a lot of work going on there.
The second one is really around brand strategy. We’re investing in this brand clarification—not for selfish reasons but because the consumer is confused because there are so many choices. And what we know about consumers regardless of category, regardless of industry, is a brand stands for trust and gives people peace of mind that they’re making a good decision. When you partner a manufacturer’s brand with a really strong retailer brand, that is an unstoppable force—I really believe that. And so, that is the reason we’re trying to create clarity around our brands. They need to be different and target a different consumer versus just being a label or a logo with the same sameness. That’s why we’re focused on making sure our four brands complement one another but don’t compete with one another. That revolves around providing clarity to our customers on how to merchandise and clarify the consumer to get them in the right place and the right product—and that’s the big plan.
But it’s not necessarily about offering more products—more selection does not yield more sales. I constantly see retailers adding more and more SKUs, more and more displays. That’s doing the consumer a disservice. We’re going to reduce our SKU count by as much as 40%—not to kill things that are selling, but to give more demonstration opportunities for our customers and the consumers. If we can simplify the shopping journey, then the selection process, consumers will buy more frequently. The typical flooring purchase is a six-month shopping journey, but 40% of people opt out and defer that purchase. We need to shorten that purchase cycle significantly.
Internally, you’ve also made changes in terms of personnel, people in management positions—realigning, if you will. How are those changes going to translate into greater efficiency relative to how different divisions run?
Staff and leadership changes we’ve made early in ’24 was segmented into four major geographies—West, South, Midwest and East. The goal in doing that was really what I call decentralized command. As a result, we have senior leaders embedded in the market as close to our customers as possible—which gives you quick decision-making ability while allowing us to adapt our strategy to the local market. I don’t want the decisions to come from the control tower; I want those control towers to be decentralized and close to the market. So we have these four general managers who are empowered to take care of the customer while executing our strategy. The leadership team and their teams are able to get immediate feedback from our customers. They’re gaining competitive intelligence, they’re seeing market trends. If we were trying to run a play from headquarters, or central command, it would be pushing one solution to everybody. However, we know that one solution doesn’t work for everybody. So to me, that’s the biggest change that we made. We’re almost two years in, and I do see that getting momentum.
The other piece I would highlight is we think about some of these key functional disciplines such as marketing, brand and product development. We really wanted to bring in more horsepower there. That means filling roles and bringing expertise in these functional areas. And if we can’t do that by looking within the industry, then of course we will go outside the industry. In some instances, we’ve had to go outside and bring some of that functional expertise in. Take Carolyn Haicl, for example. She’s really getting into the role and she’s really gelling with our customers. She’s bringing technical discipline in marketing and brands and all the things that come along with that. They’re going to ultimately level up our customers’ performance, our partnerships and our performance in the future. But it takes time to cultivate those.
You talked about marketing and branding—what about new product development?
We have a ton of investment in product development. We have this ambition to be much faster to market from an idea to market launch, and we’ve made some changes there—again, in the spirit of the feedback that we obtain from our customers.
Shaw obviously has long been known as a leader in the soft surface category and a respected player in hardwood. Shaw expanded the laminate category for a few years before getting back into it early last year. What are some of the things you’re seeing in terms of laminate investments in this market?
Starting with soft surface, we have made significant investments. It’s approximately a billion dollars of investments over the last four or five years to modernize our facilities in Andalusia, Ala., and Aiken, S.C. Specifically, it starts with our fiber—having the right fiber so we can make the designs customers want and retailers can sell. It took us about four years to get that capability built. Anytime you’re making these investments in your assets, your facilities, the most exciting part is we’re now starting to reap the benefits of those investments.
Starting last year, we launched our first two carpet collections that were a result of those investments. This year we’re launching three more. So now we have these five major collections. So far, these collections are exceeding our expectations. The feedback from our customers is really positive, which is great because we’re starting to have fan gain.
And on the hard surface side? What’s happening there?
We are a firm believer that a balanced approach in sourcing and manufacturing hard surface is important. We do source a number of products with select partners abroad. This gives us a ton of flexibility in what I call the “make vs. buy.” You can make it or you can buy it, but ultimately our goal is to own the innovation, to have the IP and work with our partners and to do that.
At the same time, we are also making investments here domestically. We have a hardwood facility in the Northeast Georgia area that continues to play a huge role in our hardwood investment and product launches. We’re also in the process of making a $90 million investment in our resilient plant in the Georgia area as well. This balanced approach between hardwood and resilient and then how we think about those domestic assets into the broader portfolio are really, really important—especially with a 20% tariff on some of these categories.
Regarding the investments in your resilient operations specifically, will they be dedicated to multiple categories within the resilient segment, i.e., SPC, WPC, resilient hybrid?
Sure. They will be LVT flexible and SPC rigid as well—and they’ll serve both our commercial business and the residential business.
Same for laminate?
Regarding laminate—this is a great example of just listening to your customers and your team members. When I came on board in January 2024, we had just exited the laminate category. When we met with a number of customers, builders and retailers, what I heard overwhelmingly is it’s a viable product category. But we needed a solution there. Re-entering the laminate category was one of the quicker pivots that we made in the first half of 2024. So we built a plan, a playbook on what laminate represents in our portfolio. We’re going to have a very focused, highly productive lineup there. We’re going to stick with it and then we’ll be using that line both retail and builder as before.
Clearly, carpet and resilient are larger categories and we’re market share leaders in those two categories. At the same time, we also see laying a strong position in laminate, tile and stone and hardwood. Our goal is to bring a portfolio of products and brands to our customers to solve problems and help them. And we know if we choose not to participate in some of these viable categories, we’re not living up to our promise to our customers.
Regarding the laminate program specifically, would that entail a strictly sourced model, or do you plan to eventually go back into producing laminate domestically?
Now we’re say never, but right now we’re focusing on sourcing laminate through a trusted partner. However, we’re continuing to evaluate and re-evaluate the marketplace. Will it continue to grow? Or is it shrinking? Moreover, what strategic relevance does it play in our overall portfolio?
