Focus on Leadership: Denis Darragh focuses on natural materials and honesty – August/September 2024
Interview by Kemp Harr
Born in Pittsburgh in 1961, Denis Darragh, now vice president of North America at Forbo Flooring Systems, was shaped by the challenges faced by the city in the 1970s: high unemployment due to the collapse of the steel mills; inflation; environmental irresponsibility by local industry; crumbling infrastructure; and the toll all this took on the residents and the family unit. “Proof that there is a God was the Steelers in the ’70s; that was the only thing that kept the city from dropping off the edge of the earth,” says Denis, who, taking it all in during his foundational years, came to the conviction that there had to be a better way to conduct business-one beneficial for both the people and the earth.
The youngest child of six birthed by a mother who had earned two master’s degrees by the age of 21-in the 1930s no less-Denis put himself through college with the goal of identifying a path of study that offered him job security first and foremost. He found that in electrical engineering and spent 12 years in that field before being recruited to Forbo, where he has spent almost three decades working toward goals that align with the values he established in his formative years.
Denis and his wife, Susan, have shared their home with four now-grown children and many rescue dogs.
Q: Why did you select the University of Pittsburgh for college, and why did you major in electrical engineering?
A: It was a pretty straightforward decision process. I grew up in the Pittsburgh of the 1970s: great football, lousy employment prospects. I was putting myself through college, and Pitt was the most affordable. I researched what degree had the highest employment rate at graduation, and that was electrical engineering.
Q: After a 12-year career in your field of study, what led you to the flooring industry and Forbo in particular?
A: Like a lot of things in life, it was an unintended path that has led to a great destination. I was not looking for a change of industry or even employment at that time, but, in the way of the times, I was approached by a recruiter and decided to make the change.
Q: How has your early focus on electrical engineering and in the electrical engineering-focused segment of the construction business contributed to your success in flooring?
A: The knowledge of electrical engineering has had very limited use; however, the process of engineering has been critically helpful. Engineering offers a pretty defined approach to problem solving, irrespective of the discipline. It is an analytical approach to root-cause analysis to find and address the real underlying problems/challenges. Properly applied, it accelerates, not slows, decision-making and inherently builds a path of checks and balances to ensure the decision is creating the desired outcome.
Q: You have spent almost 30 years at Forbo. To what do you attribute this long tenure?
A: The short answer is that I found my non-financial reason for working. Forbo’s approach to business aligned with my value system: a manufacturing, not sourcing, mindset; providing quality employment beyond sales and marketing and logistics and distribution positions; and true sustainability integrated into every aspect of the business, long before it became the marketing mania of hollow claims we’ve seen for the last decade.
Q: Give us a brief history of the linoleum flooring business and explain why Forbo is the global leader in this category.
A: I have to be honest, the words “brief history” and “linoleum flooring” don’t really go together well, but I will try. Our oldest plant has been producing linoleum for close to 150 years, and our largest plant has been in continuous production for 125 years. It is an incredible testament to the product, as very few products in any industry have ever seen that longevity.
Even more interesting and exciting is that if you invented and introduced the product today, people would think it was the coolest thing ever! It is perfect for today’s priorities: it’s climate positive (carbon negative cradle to gate without offsets), and it has double to triple the system service life of any other alternative competitive raw material product (such as PVC and rubber). It’s the most durable, healthiest and most sustainable resilient floor with the lowest cost of ownership. That is why Forbo has stayed committed to this product for over a century.
Q: Why is there no U.S. production of linoleum?
A: Linoleum production has a massive first cost. Why did the market move away from linoleum? It’s not that consumers didn’t like it, but that manufacturers drove the market away from it intentionally due to production cost and the advent of plastic.
If a manufacturer receives the raw materials for PVC-based flooring, four to six hours later they can give you a PVC-based flooring product. For linoleum, it takes somewhere between eight weeks and six months to produce a finished product. The shortest production cycle we have is eight weeks. And most of that is watching nature take its course.
In addition, linoleum is made in three- to five-mile batches, so you are sitting on stock, which makes it working-capital intensive. And the facilities must be huge; to simply open a facility today would cost in the $150 million range.
Linoleum production exists only in the most environmentally responsible countries in the world-Germany and the Netherlands.
Q: What percentage of the business you oversee is linoleum? What other parts of the business do you manage?
A: I am responsible for the flooring business in North America, and linoleum makes up more than half of the total business. Beyond the continued development of linoleum, we have an exciting program centered around the development of our Flotex product, the most hygienic, cleanable and durable textile product in the market. To support our growth, and representative of Forbo’s values, we are in the middle of a large investment in the construction of a Flotex production line at our Hazleton, Pennsylvania location to support our growth.
In parallel to this, Forbo has the most diverse, own-manufactured, commercial PVC product portfolio of any manufacturer globally, offering many exploitable opportunities in the North American market. This is another area targeted for growth.
Q: Given the fact that linoleum is made of natural materials and has an unmatched sustainability story, what is holding it back from having a bigger share of the resilient flooring business?
A: In a word, installation. Linoleum installs differently from PVC. Not harder or more expensive, just different. This is a challenge we have to tackle as the manufacturer.
Q: Who are your mentors, and what did they teach you?
A: This will sound a bit corny but my parents, particularly my mother. What I was taught by them has little to do with business directly, but everything to do with business indirectly: honesty; treating all with respect, balanced with the obligation to stand up for what’s right when something isn’t; and, particularly from my mother, that strength is not the ability to put yourself in front of others but, rather, the ability to stand solid to let others stand on your shoulders.
Q: How does working for a Switzerland-based company differ from working for a U.S.-based company?
A: It’s a balancing act. We are a Germanic Swiss company. The German business culture and the U.S. business culture are 180 degrees out of phase with one another in many aspects. Both are successful, but one can’t be fully superimposed on the other-either way.
Q: What would you say was your biggest “aha” moment in your career?
A: This is a difficult question for me, as more “duh” moments than “aha” moments come to mind. I have a lot of sayings that I repeat. Two of them are, “The only person who never made a mistake never did anything,” and “The day you stop getting better is the day you stopped being good.” With those two in mind, I actually keep a list of what I consider the dumbest business decisions I ever made, to ensure I learn from them.
Q: What’s wrong with the way we look at sustainability in the commercial flooring sector?
A: If I fully answered this question, you would need a separate article. I will approach it this way, indicating what our aspiration as flooring manufacturers should be by drawing a parallel to the automotive industry. In the 1970s, we had “lemon laws” introduced because the quality of the cars was so bad. Quality control was a bolt-on, end-of-line function in those days. That’s where the flooring industry was with sustainability a decade ago-let’s jam in some recycled content or whatever will get us LEED points-a bolt-on activity without actually improving the product.
But the automotive industry changed, and quality got a seat at the table, from the very beginning of design through the entire manufacturing process. This brought the era of mass advertising of quality, like Ford’s “Quality is job #1.” This is where I believe we are today in the flooring industry with regard to the sustainability journey. Manufacturers are looking at sustainability more holistically but, in truth, not as far along as you would be led to believe. They’re not just grasping for LEED points now, but also taking tangible actions structurally throughout the entire design and manufacturing process. For the record, buying carbon offsets is paying to pollute, not a solution.
In the automotive industry, quality penetrated so significantly across the board that nobody markets it today. It is an assumed attribute. It is my hope that in my lifetime we reach that point in flooring, where no one markets sustainability anymore because it is an assumed attribute, not a marketing differentiator.
Q: What character traits do you look for when you are considering adding someone to your team?
A: First and foremost, that they recognize they are part of a team and not a standalone island, and they have to respect those teammates and their contributions. Second is will. Skill can be taught, but motivation, responsibility and accountability are more inherent attributes.
Q: A family of four children can be very demanding. How have you managed balancing your personal and professional life?
A: I have been truly blessed with what continual advancements in technology have allowed me to do. I was an early adopter of Skype in the late 2000s, and that made my ability to work with our Asia team so much easier. Technology is one of the ultimate two-edged swords. In the positive sense, it creates much higher productivity potential to do our jobs. In the negative, it can be all-consuming to some, limiting their actual “living.” It’s all about balance.
Q: Your son just got married. What advice have you given him and his wife about achieving success and happiness in their new life as a couple?
A: Those who know me know I have a bit of a sarcastic streak. I told my son and his wife that they should now feel free to USE each other continually for the rest of their lives. USE: Understand, Support, Empathize. I’m not going to pretend to know what love is. You will define and redefine it a hundred times over during your life, but I do know the universal way to express love throughout your life, and that is Understand, Support, Empathize.
Q: What do you and Susan do for fun when you aren’t focused on work?
A: Pray for grandchildren! In all seriousness, though, we enjoy playing golf together, any family time we can get with our adult children and taking care of our rescue dogs.
Q: What do you do to stay healthy?
A: I still run whenever I can, although I think it now qualifies as more of a waddle. I actually try to continue the same workouts I have done most of my life, adding in more stretching and flexibility as I age. Age is about adapting, not slowing down, for as long as you can.
Copyright 2024 Floor Focus