Hospitality Design - December 2009 - 62

on site randy rubin Right: Another William Wegman pet bed for Crypton that is not only odor- and bacteria-resistant, but also has a built-in moisture barrier to prevent liquids from penetrating the fabrics. HD: How did you bring it to market? RR: We wanted to be a branding and technology company, which is what we really are. We had the first piece of Crypton within eight weeks. Then Craig had lists of people he did business with in healthcare and hospitality. We had 3,000 brochures printed. It had a piece of fabric on the inside and said ‘C’mon try and abuse me, wrinkle me, stain me.’ I had a 34 percent response to that mailer. It was mindboggling. It was freedom. [Renowned healthcare interior designer] Kay Trimmer was our first customer and our second big customer was McDonald’s. We were showing the fabric at HD Expo and this woman came up. She wanted us to come to the test kitchens at McDonald’s that following week. We laid out the samples. They brought out the mayo, ketchup, and mustard. She poured the junk on it and she looked at us and said you guys are going to be rich. Within two months, we had the global McDonald’s programs. bath of chemical formulation. And this formulation has been third-party certified green. The research people in the campus have developed the formulas and we formulate everything in our own plant. It is then 100 percent wet and goes into an oven where the formulation encapsulates every single fiber of that fabric and so now it comes out dry; but every thread is like dental floss and has a permanent ionic barrier to stains and germs that is forever linked to each fiber. Then it goes through another process where we have an integrated backing into the fabric so we’re not taking a backing and laminating it. We have a formula that gets integrated into the back of the fabric and nothing will ever penetrate that backing. Crypton is one unit; it’s not a fabric with a backing. The integrated barrier sets us apart in the world; we are the only fabric that can make a claim that we are disinfectable because the barrier is one and we are considered actually a solid surface. The EPA proved that nothing will penetrate the fabric. So if you use our disinfectant and deodorizer in conjunction with the Crypton you have the first disinfectable fabric system in the world, which took us four years. they would not get all of the soap off the material and soap is a magnet for dirt. Then we said, ‘this soap and water is really problematic so let’s get the best upholstery cleaner that doesn’t hurt our fabric and let’s endorse it.’ So now you look for an upholstery cleaner; guess what, it doesn’t exist. So we had our fiber people and cleaning chemists, and developed our own line of cleaning products. My biggest fear of having our own cleaning products is that people are going to think that the only thing you could clean Crypton with are our cleaners and that is not true. It’s just that no one makes great upholstery cleaner so we made one. You need a special protein cleaner for blood and urine and an ink remover. This cleaner tests better than any cleaner in the world. Also, they say you can’t use bleach to sanitize Crypton, but that is another mistake. You can for almost every piece of Crypton unless it has rayon in it. HD: So how did you come up with the name? RR: Craig went down to the Carolinas and there was a party store sign along the highway with Superman on it. He kept looking at the signs [and thought about a play on Superman’s home planet, Krypton]. If we take the ‘K’ off and we make it a ‘C’ for Craig and ‘R’ for Randy, we could call it Crypton Super Fabrics. HD: And this barrier protection against germs is so important to hospitality. HD: You’re very proud of your North Carolinabased facility. Tell us about it. HD: What makes it a super fabric? RR: Crypton is its own category of fabric. It’s not a fabric with a treatment, it is a category just like vinyl or wool or rayon. We work with licensed mills. Crypton has the highest stain resistance and microbial repellency; works within a certain number of double rubs; and has certain strengths. RR: The traveler does not want to come into a room and see stains. Living clean—I think that my market research and instinctively I know, we are going to move from the word green to the word clean. We have a registered trademark for the phrase Live Clean. As people are talking about living green, really what you are doing is living clean. RR: The American textile industry is hanging on by a thread, it is the most tragic thing. We are only making American-made fabrics because we want to support the American mill. The other thing is that you are not shipping fabric across the ocean—saving fuel. Our plant is about 30,000 square feet and it’s on a 30-acre campus. We contribute to renewable energy sources. We put nothing into the environment. We also have a way where any chemical that isn’t used goes into vapor and then we change the vapor back into the chemical again; a packaging system that uses only the exact amount of packaging material; and we recycle HD: And the process? RR: When a fabric comes in, depending on the construction and fibers, it’s routed into the appropriate stream so that everything gets organized and batched. Fabrics [then] go into a HD: Why did you decide to offer cleaning products along with your fabric? RR: We always said clean with soap and water and then detergent and water. What would happen is they would use soap and water and hospitalitydesign www.hdmag.com

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - December 2009