FCIF Gala in Gotham - October 5, 2024
Honoree - Sy Cohen - Founder & Chairman - Stanton Carpet
Sy Cohen, the founder and currently executive chairman of Stanton Carpet, has been an industry fixture for more than 50 years, launching the company for which he is known in 1980. But his roots are in retail.
Cohen founded Country Carpet in 1972 as a trade showroom on Long Island selling moderate to better-end carpet products to interior designers. As the business flourished Cohen saw the opportunity to offer more decorative, proprietary products for his clients. In 1978 he visited Domotex Germany to source products and deliver on his vision.
Among the first products were wool flatweaves from Denmark and Belgium, a perfect fit for his clients. Cohen started supplying proprietary products to differentiate and accelerate Country Carpet's growth. “The good thing was it was proprietary; the bad thing was you had to buy a lot of it,” Cohen recalled.
The strategy was working, Country Carpet was selling exclusive products, gaining higher margins while exciting the client base. The challenge: selling the inventory through one showroom. Cohen began to contact his dealer friends and a few agents throughout the Northeast. He knew instinctively better end flooring showrooms could sell his product. A new idea was born. Tapping his roots from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Cohen formed Stanton Carpet in 1980.
In the beginning the product portfolio was small, two wool/acrylic blends and a flatwoven wool/nylon. Within a year Cohen added three more products and never looked back. Throughout the last four and a half decades, Stanton grew into a decorative powerhouse, supplying over 800 carpet products across multiple brands. Stanton utilized a combination of organic growth with instrumental launches like "The Wilton Gallery" in the mid ‘90s and strategic acquisitions including Antrim, Rosecore and Crescent to fuel its growth. Today, the company also offers decorative hard surface products.
Stanton, under Cohen's leadership, has been a true pioneer and frequently credited with being the first and still the most formidable supplier of high-end woven products to the better-end retail community around the U.S. and Canada.