Mohawk’s Jeff Meadows: Domestic Production, High-End Market Remain Strong Despite Housing Slowdown

Despite existing home sales hitting 30-year lows, Mohawk sees opportunities in high-end products and new construction. At Edge Summit 2025 in Aurora, Colorado, Mohawk President of Residential Sales Jeff Meadows discussed the company’s strategic focus on domestic production, luxury products, and builder partnerships amid challenging market conditions. 

Here are excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Listen to the podcast here.

Floor Trends & Installation: How was the turnout for this year’s Edge Summit?

Jeff Meadows: This year, we had about 300 retailers and probably close to 600 people. A lot of our major customers were here. The attendance was really good for to be this late in the year because it’s a little tougher. Normally, our Edge conventions are the first week of December, this one being a little later this year. But we’re very pleased with the turnout. Everyone seems to be having a great time.

Floor Trends & Installation: What’s your outlook for the flooring industry in the coming year?

Meadows: The two things to look out for, what really drives the flooring business, are existing home sales or the pent-up demand of people who aren’t going to leave their house and want to redo a room. And so right now, we’re at a 30-year low for existing home sales. And then with inflation that’s happened over the last two or three years, a lot of the consumers, especially in that mid-category, have decided to postpone, basically redoing anything. The business that’s good is the high-end business where if someone’s wealthy, they’re going to go ahead and do a project when they’re ready to do it.

Floor Trends & Installation: Can you discuss Mohawk’s strategy in the high-end segment?

Meadows: What we try to do with our retailers is we try to give them a good trade-up strategy. Probably a disproportionate amount of upper-middle to better-end goods in Mohawk and then also in Karastan. The Karastan business has been really good even during the downturn. The Karastan business the last two years has grown pretty substantially. And those retailers that have Karastan, of course, you saw Karastan Black being introduced here at the market, which is a new upper-end, super-high-end wool program that people are really excited about. But the Karastan dealers really enjoy selling Karastan because they have exclusivity. They make a lot of money doing it.

Floor Trends & Installation: How is Mohawk addressing supply chain concerns through domestic production?

Meadows: Since we saw the turn in the late second quarter and early third quarter of 2020, we started investing in a lot of domestic production. We built a plant in Mexicali. We also expanded our laminate facility three different times. As a matter of fact, we’re going to do it again in 2026. So we’ve probably added 500 million feet of waterproof wood-look capacity. What’s happened over the last seven or eight years? There’s always some kind of disruption on import, whether it’s tariffs, child labor, container shortages, or whatever you name it. It happens over and over again. So we doubled down on domestic. And so we’re in great shape if more tariffs go into play; we’ve built a domestic strategy for that.

Floor Trends & Installation: How has your builder business performed?

Meadows: We picked up some nice builders and picked up a couple of top 10 builders in the country last year. So we’ve seen that business this year. And really, the builder business is not off as much as the retail business because the most affordable house you can buy is a new one, and the big builders have bought down the mortgage rates. So they’ve gotten mortgage rates under, let’s call it 4.9%. So, rather than paying a 7% mortgage on an existing home, the most affordable house right now is new. So, they haven’t been impacted as much as pure retail.

Floor Trends & Installation: What are builders looking for in flooring products?

Meadows: They want things that are easy to install, and of course, that’s why they kind of lean towards RevWood; there’s no acclimation. So if it’s cold outside or if you’re in Phoenix in the summer and it’s 130, you can put the product in, and you don’t have to worry about it. The other thing is, I think, it’s more around scratch because the last thing a builder wants to do is a consumer have a punch list, and then the other people are in that house, and they’re scooting stuff around. Before the consumer ever moves in, they get scratches on their floor and other things. So they’re looking for more ease of maintenance and installation.

Floor Trends & Installation: What’s next for Mohawk’s customer outreach?

Meadows: We’re excited about our roadshows, and you’ve been to ’em over the years, but they’ve always been well attended. And last year, we had our biggest attendance ever. This year our registrations are up 35% versus last year. So I think more and more customers want to see what’s going on with Mohawk.