Story of the Month
Recreation Carpet Party
Each year American Supply hosts a themed Carpet Party in partnership with industrial and material partners, inviting artists, designers and creatives to collaborate. The carpet party is an exclusive opportunity for our clients to discover the latest material developments, and see the ongoing work and research of our in-house creative team.
The theme for 2019 was Recreation with our in-house creative team investigating the double sense implicit in the word: both to Recreate and to experience Recreation – a moment of leisure and fun out of working hours – that allowed us to focus on innovative, eco-friendly, and recycled materials. We are particularly conscious of the impact materials and material productions can have on the environment and dedicated to contributing, promoting, and raising environmental awareness, so Recreation Carpet permitted us to focus on these important concerns.
The carpet and furniture were created using a new material from our database, Creafoam : a 100% recycled agglomerated foam which is made entirely from industrial foam waste with no added glue or additives. We worked with it in various applications, and in varying thicknesses. The carpet and cladding was created with 10mm adhesive and non-adhesive variants, and the foam seating and tables were thermo-cut from 300mm plaques, whilst shelving and tables were made from the waste that was created from cutting the solid furniture from the 300mm plaques. These were used as supports to display our latest eco-friendly, sustainable and recycled materials. Details for these materials can be found on this page. The colour for the foam was ‘pure recycled’ – random multicoloured – with no specification given to the factory, but we are able to choose the colours and create something bespoke if it is needed.
Our main material partner for the party 3A Composites develops, manufactures and markets high-quality aluminium composite panels, structural composite materials, plastic sheets and lightweight foam boards. We worked with their 100% paper Dispa material in seven separate layers for the invitation to the event, and with their 100% aluminium Alucore material – an aluminium composite panel consisting of two cover sheets and a honeycomb core of aluminium traditionally used in the transport and architecture industries – to create a luxury POS in 200 separately cut layers, expertly machined by our industrial factory partner Almay Technologies. This allowed us to work with, and celebrate, the honeycomb edges of the two materials that is not often utilised. Both materials are 100% recyclable. We also printed the aluminium face of a plaque of Alucore for their partner presentation, demonstrating the beautiful luminosity and hardiness of this material as a potential printed support.
Our innovation partner IWD provides software and services to help brands achieve perfect merchandising solutions. They presented their one-of-a-kind 3D software solutions for visual merchandising on a flat screen television, elevated on a specially created lollipop form in MDF and aluminium, covered in our 10mm Creafoam adhesive.
For the first time, we hosted a professional conference – ‘Innovation and Creativity in Retail’ – hosted by our President Albert Benguigui with key industry professionals: Jonathan Siboni (President at Luxurynsight), Elie Papiernick (Managing Partner and Creative Director of Centdegrés) and Guillaume Vignerot (Head Of New Business Development at IWD).
We also presented several new woven textile works by the artist Jeanne Goutelle, that sit at the crossroads of art and design, as prime examples of artisanal textile and colour research, and textile experiments by material researcher Tiphaine Saint-Martin re-imagined using our excess waste materials. Last but not least, Joué, a team of designers who produce innovative digital instruments presented two different iterations of their tactile interfaces, dressed in Creafoam and Micro Bille Stretch Silver, that guests could freely interact with. The sounds we imagined produced by the materials were a collaboration between American Supply and musician François Marcaud.
Last but not least, the canapés were provided by Pain Perdu, a new 100% anti-waste caterer that recuperates the old bread from boulangeries and breaks it down into flour, before baking new breads, cakes and products – a true act of sustainable recreation that we were happy to have on board !
Our partners this year included 3A Composites, Almay Technologies, IWD, Formes de Luxe, centdegrés & Luxurynsight.