Everyone is a flooring designer with Milliken Couture

Published by
Ola Moszumanska
February 1, 2021

Milliken-Ontera has been bringing a uniquely customisable brand of creativity to Australian and New Zealand flooring design for over three decades. Having always designed and supplied from their manufacturing facility in Sydney, it has also been renowned for its impressive speed to market. This year, however, the brand boosts its already advanced personalisation capabilities by introducing a mass customisation concept that makes it even easier to create distinct flooring solutions in just three weeks.

Setting a new precedent for seamless and efficient bespoke flooring design, the new and simplified design process is called Milliken Couture, and it further elevates the brand’s capability to create unique, tailored commercial carpet solutions with flexibility and at speed.

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While the Milliken product design process always involved the customer, Milliken Couture fosters an even more collaborative partnership with the clients to achieve the desired outputs. From a detailed briefing, hands-on design process, ability to refine the design and swift production – the customer is a crucial contributor across each stage and can look forward to a finalised design concept in 4 days, with the product produced in just three weeks from date of order.

Embodying Milliken’s industry-leading print digital dye injection technology PrintWorks™, the Milliken Couture process streamlines customisation through four distinct and simple stages: CONCEPT, DESIGN, REFINE and PRODUCE.

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The CONCEPT stage kick-starts with a digital submission of the design brief by the customer. The brief can be accompanied by a digital concept and inspirational visuals that might form part of the finished interior. If the customer doesn’t have a specific vision for the end product, Milliken offers a pre-existing collection of designs that can be modified to the individual’s liking as part of the complimentary Design Service offer. This intricate and collaborative part of the process ensures that the achieved design precisely reflects the original vision – whether it’s a fully customised design or a simple colour tweak to an existing, standard pattern.

Following the comprehensive and collective briefing process, the design team proposes a series of designs developed in line with the specified requirements as part of the DESIGN stage. To ensure the proposed product can be evaluated in the intended environment, Milliken utilises various innovative visualisation techniques. In the review phase, the customer has a chance to assess the flooring design in a high-quality 3D room scene and on 2D a floor plan that showcases the positioning of the carpet flooring design in relation to the layout of the space. In addition to that, the seaming diagram provides the exact placement of carpet tiles on the floor plate.

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Project: QUT International College S Block | Architects: RAL Architects | Photographer: Christopher Frederick Jones Photograph

From there, the REFINE stage begins. Based on the final builds from the customer, the finishing touches are applied, and the carpet design is finalised. Once approved, a sample of the final product is created to showcase the texture and final colouring of the target product, all this can be achieved in 4 days from the start of the process.

Project: Kimberley Clark Head Office, Sydney | Architects/Designer: Gensler

Through a collaborative process of reviews that allow the customer to appraise the aesthetic and tactile qualities of the final carpet tile, the last touch-ups are incorporated both in the sample and through visualisation tools, to offer a completed visual of the future state before the project is completed – and the bespoke flooring design enters the final stage: PRODUCE.

Milliken Couture is all about bringing simplicity to the customisation process with speed and flexibility. From initial concept to delivery of the final product, Milliken’s proactive and engaging team combined with the brand’s innovative technology provide a seamless customer experience. This unique combination can transform any idea into a truly bespoke design solution in a sophisticated, collaborative and swift manner that makes space for inspiration, exploration, and quality. Bring your vision to the floor with Milliken Couture.

Milliken
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