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IN DECEMBER 2012 CHIP DEGRACE WAS APPOINTED EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR FOR INTERFACE, A POSITION FROM WHICH HE'S "COLLABORATIVELY LEADING CREATIVE DECISIONS THAT DEFINE THE INTERFACE EXPERIENCE GLOBALLY," THE COMPANY SAID. AT THE TIME OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT, INTERFACE CHAIRMAN AND CEO DAN HENDRIX SAID OF DEGRACE, "CHIP HAS A GIFT; HE CAN ROMANCE MODULAR CARPET LIKE NO ONE ELSE, AND HE DOES IT WITH AN IRREVERENT STYLE THAT BRINGS A NEW DIMENSION TO CONVERSATIONS ABOUT DESIGN."
Recently we had the opportunity to talk with DeGrace and listen to his take on design; what it takes to succeed and standout in a competitive landscape; how company culture influences innovation, and what the future holds for Interface and the industry at large.
Floor Trends: You've been tapped as what the company is calling the "creative conscience" of Interface. What exactly does that mean?
Chip DeGrace: It pretty much starts with the kind of company we are. Everything about Interface is about design and innovation in its broadest possible definition; that's the kind of group they are, and always have been.
What attracted me to the company originally - my background is commercial interior design - was that it oozes that kind of energy, whether it's about product, changing the customer experience, changing the supply chain, sustainability; you get the same kind of creative energy from the bulk of the associates. I joined the company in 1990, and it was different then than when it started in 1973, and it's different now than when I started, but at the core it's the same creative organization.
Not every discipline in an industry such as ours thinks of themselves as designers, so I try to remind people that whether they're on the shop floor, out selling to customers, in the marketing department, that we're all designers, we're all trying to create a great customer experience. We make carpet tile, but we're selling design. So connecting some of those dots maybe is where the "conscience" comes in, letting people know where...