Hospitality Design - December 2009 - 61

randy rubin on site breaking barriers In the past 15 years, Crypton Super Fabrics has revolutionized the hospitality industry with fabrics that do far more than what one would expect them to do—resist stains, bacteria, and mildew while still looking beautiful. The husband-and-wife team, Craig and Randy Rubin, could have never dreamed that a simple idea from a package of Depends and some experimentation in their kitchen would turn into one of the biggest innovations in the hospitality industry. With 20,000 Crypton options already out there (no, they aren’t stopping there), everyone is getting to enjoy Crypton these days, even the dogs. Randy lets us in on their secret to success, the marriage of marketing and invention, and how Superman fits into it all. By Jana Schiowitz Photography courtesy of Crypton HD: Your background is in marketing. How did you get started in the fabric industry? about the idea, it was just so logical that he would invent this amazing fabric and I would market it. fabric do that. So that’s really what started it. RR: My background was doing national rollout programs for companies like General Motors, Chevrolet, JCPenney, and Kmart. Everything I did was geared toward the women’s market, and after 10 years, truthfully I was tired of doing women’s programs. Then, I met Craig and he was in the fabric business. HD: When you and Craig started the company, what was your initial plan? HD: Is it true that this all started with a package of Depends? RR: It has always been and always will be to make Crypton a household name. I never think small. I don’t know how. For me, Crypton was nirvana because it’s like once in a lifetime that you get to work on something that never existed before. It was like I was the medicine man that went town to town and it was unbelievable because everyone was shocked. If you show them what it does, first they smile, but then comes amazement. RR: To understand, Craig is from a family of inventors. His grandfather invented the folding chair, the cot, and the child’s raincoat with buckles. When he had this idea he knew that there had to be a way. He was walking through a Walgreens and saw a huge rack of Depends diapers and just at the moment, it was perfectly clear to him. If you could have a product like Depends where someone who is incontinent could urinate and it couldn’t go through, then it had to be logically possible to make a HD: So it was love at first sight—both you and Craig, and you and fabric. RR: At the time, Craig was selling fabric where people would put vinyl on them, but the vinyl would crack and peel. It was years before he tried to create a fabric that would do things like a vinylized fabric would do. When he told me HD: So there was nothing else like this out on the market? RR: Before I got into marketing, I was in the legal field. There were only six patent offices in the country, one in Denver. It happened that we were in Denver and while I was there, I went to the patent office, for two days, I did nothing but look up water-proof fabrics, stain-proof fabrics, microbial fabrics, and fabrics with special strength. I started researching them and what my research showed was that there were pieces of Crypton in different places, but no one bundled it. And I knew after spending the first day in the library that we could get a patent. I was positive. Top: The Doodle Dog rectangle pet bed from the William Wegman Collection for Crypton. From far left: Randy Rubin, co-founder of Crypton Super Fabrics; various fabric selections from Crypton Super Fabrics. www.hdmag.com December 2009

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