Brand Influencer Partnerships: If executed correctly, alliances with influencers can be a strategic marketing shortcut – Nov 2025

By Jessica Chevalier

Many in the flooring industry recall supermodel Kathy Ireland’s early 2000s partnership with Shaw Floors, a highly successful venture wherein the parties collaborated on branded soft surface flooring and, eventually, expanded into hard surface. In fact, the Kathy Ireland Color Wall has been touted as one of Shaw’s greatest selling tools, and both entities benefited from the partnership. These sorts of celebrity partnerships in the flooring industry have since evolved, focusing today primarily not on former swimsuit models but on partners with expertise in the home renovation space.

While relatively few players across the flooring producer landscape utilize this form of marketing today, those that do tend to implement the strategy time and again, believing that the right partnerships yield benefits hard to match through other advertising means.

That said, the crux of these partnerships is based on establishing relationships based on mutual trust and benefit, as a problem on either end has the power to hurt reputations in an instant and leave both parties damaged.

THE RIGHT PARTNERSHIPS

Finding a partner whose design style and audience complement their offering is job number one for manufacturers hoping to establish such partnerships. That may look different for different manufacturers.

AHF Products looks for partners that have reach into the specific audience that they are hoping to target with a brand or a line. For example, if they are seeking a Millennial and Gen X audience, they may seek an HGTV star, but if they are hoping to reach Gen Z, they might instead go with a TikTok or Pinterest influencer.

Most importantly, says Catherine del Vecchio, vice president of marketing for AHF Products, it has to be clear that “what they like about our products and brand is authentic to their beliefs. You don’t want the pairing to look fake.”

Karndean prioritizes “partnering with a pop-culture figure like Ty Pennington, whose recognition and appeal transcend the flooring space,” says Julie Thomas, senior retail marketing manager. “This is a powerful way to connect Karndean with homeowners who may or may not be interior design enthusiasts.” In addition to Pennington, the company has also partnered with HGTV personalities and online influencers who are more niche to the design space, including Brian and Mika Kleinschmidt from “100 Day Hotel Challenge,” Mina Starsiak Hawk from “Good Bones” and Jess Tracy, a lifestyle and design influencer.

For Loloi Rugs, finding the right match is “a little bit of imprecise science,” says Steven Loloi, co-principal. “It’s partially about how dedicated we feel a brand partner’s audience is to them. It’s not just about the size of their audience but their ethos with that audience.”

The potential partners’ design style is also a critical consideration. Loloi Rugs seeks to connect with celebrities and influencers who carry a different perspective from the company’s internal design team, partners who will push them beyond their natural design bounds. “They are spotting trends that we might not have been as keen to explore without their nudge, and that’s really beneficial,” says Loloi.

Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Home was one of Loloi’s first big licensing partners. Joanna and her husband Chip were stars in HGTV’s Fixer Upper when the relationship began, and Loloi notes that the pair was “well-liked and had a unique design perspective.”

Finding the “right fit” is key to a partnership’s success. “Although we get plenty of outreach from design pros and personalities who love Karndean, we’re careful to be selective,” explains Thomas. “Our partnerships need to be organic and authentic to the Karndean brand. That starts with a shared passion for design, regardless of an individual’s level of fame or influence. Partners who can inspire our audience, both retailers and homeowners, are the priority.”

Similarly, the selected partner must be-and continue to be-who they purport. Loloi Rugs looks for partners who carry an “authenticity in their space,” says Loloi. “Consumers are really savvy. If an individual isn’t invested in the day-to-day business, if they aren’t designing and being a creative, the consumer can sniff that out.”

THE TERMS

Different brands utilize their partners in different ways, and this is an important decision to make at the outset. Loloi’s partners play a significant role in designing the product they are putting their name on, and this is a usual approach in the area rug industry.

In hard surface flooring, however, it isn’t common practice. None of AHF’s current influencer partners-Jenny and Dave Marrs of HGTV’s “Fixer to Fabulous” and Lamb & Co. twins Lyndsay and Leslie Lamb of HGTV’s “Unsellable Houses”-have designed the wood products that they are representing, and their roles as representatives vary. The Marrs represent Bruce engineered hardwood at Home Depot only, where they endorse ten SKUs, chosen by them, for which they receive commissions from sales.

The Lamb twins, however, represent the entire Robbins engineered hardwood line.

Karndean’s approach is different, as its partners represent not just certain products, but the entire flooring brand. “The essence of the Karndean brand is great design,” says Thomas. “By having partners advocate for the brand as a whole, rather than a specific collection, for example, consumers can be confident they’re getting an exceptional floor regardless of the particular product they choose.”

No matter the case, manufacturers and influencers agree to terms around how the influencer should represent the brand: how much promotion is expected and via what channels, what events require attendance, how the influencers’ image will be used at the point of sale, and so on. As influencers often have their hands in many pots, having the terms nailed down clearly from the get-go eliminates pain down the line.

“One thing we love to do is have them at our events,” says del Vecchio. “They have all been super professional.”

STAR POWER

Given that residential consumers purchase flooring relatively few times in their lives, their exposure to flooring brands is quite limited. As such, homeowners, at the start of their consumer journey often feel overwhelmed and confused. The categories of hard surface flooring have proliferated since they last shopped. And with carpet, fiber type and construction variables can be overwhelming. And, ultimately, many consumers don’t care about what type of material ends up on their floor so long as it looks great, is distinctive and lasts.

An apt celebrity/influencer partnership, however, has the power to weigh in on the buyer’s calculation. If a homeowner’s favorite home renovation celebrity endorses a brand, that leads the buyer in a particular direction, building their buying confidence in the process.

It’s the simple idea of putting a face to a name. While the name of a particular producer may mean little to the common consumer, a familiar visage gives them something to hold onto.

“In our consumer flooring research, we have found that 60% of consumers can’t recall a single brand of hardwood,” says del Vecchio, who notes that AHF’s hardwood brands Armstrong and Bruce perform the best when it comes to consumer awareness. “The best way to create recall awareness today is sponsorship of the highest impression TV shows. Using influencers is another way to create awareness around a product. Look at LVT: as a category, it benefited greatly from its use by HGTV influencers on quick-turnaround renovation shows, where they explained its features and benefits.”

Adds Loloi, “Because [the ownership of the Loloi brand] don’t want to be front and center ourselves, the partner can serve as that connection between us and the consumer. The influencer trusts us, and the consumer trusts the influencer. Without a doubt, our partners get our name out there.”

EXPANDED AUDIENCE

Celebrities and influencers bring with them audiences. And these audiences are a highly desirable asset.

“You can have great product, but if people don’t know that the best in the industry are using it, where is the payoff?” asks Loloi.

He continues, “We give influencers the tools to bring their vision to life, provide them a great product and give them something substantial to talk about, a story. People trust people. As humans, we form our best connections with people. The ambassador can serve as the connection, the glue the consumer needs to connect with our brand. Our partners all have such great audiences. Some overlap with ours, and some are unique.”

Tapping into these influencer audiences is a great strategy for staying atop movements and trends. Expanded audiences offer a broader vantage point from which to survey the movement of the market and its desires.

With product lifecycle being faster today than ever before, products are adopted faster but are more niche, says del Vecchio. This requires influencers who are more niche. Finding these niche influencers-and their niche audiences-can be greatly beneficial in promoting a specific product or line.

SOCIAL CONNECTION

Social media is a natural pairing to influencer marketing because it allows the partners to speak directly to the audience and, therein, create or nurture a personal connection.

“In general, on all media channels, it has become more difficult to get your voice out and be seen,” says Loloi. “Whether it’s a declining audience in some forms of media or the pay-to-play transition that all the Meta-owned platforms have taken, it has all become more challenging. The bigger onus is on us and our partners to be more creative and inspiring to compete for consumer attention.”

Karndean has found social media to be a natural fit for influencer outreach. “We’ve found success with social media because that’s where people are looking for inspiration,” says Thomas. “Retailers and homeowners love to see real-life before-and-after images versus something staged, and everything on social feels more authentic.

“We work with partners in ways that most effectively tell our story to the audience, which could be retailers only or both retailers and homeowners. Most often, that means using social media to drive people to our website versus print or digital advertising. Along with seeing product, the website is also an easy way for homeowners to find our retailers.”

MEASURING SUCCESS

While it might be tempting to measure success with only data points and sales figures, the success of celebrity-influencer partnerships doesn’t necessarily correlate to numbers alone and, in fact, may vary from one partnership to another. This, of course, makes the strategy more of an art than a science.

“It’s hard,” says del Vecchio of measuring influencer partnership success. “In the old days of advertising, we determined a goal and knew how to measure that. Today, we look at key performance indicators on social media. We look at the results of our partnership email campaigns, the sample requests generated from those and the sales from those SKUs that they represent.”

Del Vecchio says that she and her team have conducted test campaigns where they included the influencer’s name in the subject line, and they saw the open rate double. However, they have also conducted test emails with the Armstrong brand name in the subject line and found similarly successful results.

Another consideration of success is whether the influencer partnerships prove useful to downstream players, including distributors and retailers. Again, measuring success is tricky, but AHF has seen excitement around the brand generated by bringing celebrities to trade shows, where they can interact with downstream players one-on-one.

In addition, some retailers have reported to AHF that having celebrity endorsements on the show floor can open up a conversation, but others shy away from point-of-sale materials featuring celebrity faces because they feel it draws attention away from their own brand.

Of course, more cooks in the kitchen adds complications and expands timelines. And Loloi notes that the success of these partnerships depends heavily on open communication channels and honest feedback. “It is complicated to work with partners. All the benefits also come with challenges and obstacles to overcome in getting the right products to market,” he says. “You are paying royalties; there is a huge onus to find the right partners and to be the best steward of that partner.”

Conversely, “a phenomenal brand steward wants to be sure all their ventures are additive and high quality,” he says. “If one partnership brings success, they all make money.”

Thomas notes that one way of measuring the success of a partnership is consistently strong growth of social media engagement. “Brand recognition among the general public is an important factor in getting people into our retailers’ showrooms and, ultimately, driving sales,” she says. “There has been a lot of enthusiasm from retailers about our partnership with Ty Pennington. Retailers realize that his recognizability and appeal have broad reach. The ability to have Ty’s face on graphics in their stores and leverage the connection on social media is nothing but a positive, as far as helping their businesses stand out. He’s also hosted a retailer webinar to share his insights about serving as an expert for homeowners, just as retailers do.” n

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