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Dixie Contract Carpet Employee Spotlight Director of Business Development

Hi!  I’m Maryanne Hewitt and I am Director of Business Development for Dixie Contract Carpet.  Sam Jacobson (Vice President) and I created the position of “A&D Marketing” to support the efforts of the design community in flooring specifications back in 2001.  I had a degree in Interior Design and had worked for an office furniture dealership and for HOK (the largest architectural firm in the world at the time) in Tampa, Florida. 

With Sam’s background in fashion combined with his technical knowledge of commercial flooring products and installation, he had garnered great relationships with many of the local interior designers.  They trusted both his taste and expertise in recommending appropriate flooring products in commercial construction projects.  My job was to expand on those relationships.
In order to be able to give technical advice on flooring products and installation, I had to become well educated in these areas.  Even though I knew a little about commercial flooring from being a designer, Dixie Contract Carpet sent me to “carpet college” at a technical school where I learned about the history, components and construction of commercial carpet products.  They also supported me in attending commercial trade shows such as Neocon and Coverings where I continued to expand my exposure to, and understanding of commercial flooring products including carpet, resilient, ceramic tile, and engineered wood products.  I visited manufacturing mills where I saw products being made.  I’ve seen tufting machines, weaving machines, carpet tile constructed, fiber extruded & dyed, carpet beck dyed and porcelain tile made from dust.

Sam and I realized that the dealership was the only entity who could provide accurate and guaranteed installed prices for commercial flooring products.  We saw this as an opportunity and developed an installed budget price guide with the goal of helping designers choose products in an installed budget range appropriate for their projects.  We became very involved in our local IIDA city center sponsoring and even hosting designer events.  We hosted our first CEU lunch in 2002 when we brought Neocon Keynote speakers David Oakley and Dana Beaumeister to Jacksonville to give their popular presentation, Biomimicry as our commitment to supporting the education of our local design community on trends in the flooring industry.  Since then, Dixie has carried on this tradition of designer support in these ways. 

I left the company back in 2005 to start my own design consulting business.  My concept was to spend the hours my children were in school working from my home office on design projects for architectural firms as a sub-contractor and be “off when the kids were off”.  Well before you knew it I had an office outside the home, a small design and office staff and was working full time and then some!  While design work was super fulfilling and creatively gratifying, the business began to consume me.  I was bringing my laptop home and working all night on projects at times and feeling the frustration of making ends meet in the worst economy in the US since the great depression.

In the Fall of 2009, on September 18 (I’ll never forget it) I had come to Dixie to borrow their projector for a series of marketing appointments I was preparing for my design firm when Sam asked me to think about coming back to work for Dixie.  After much discussion with family and close friends I made the decision to close my interior design firm, hang up my interior designer hat and go back to work for Dixie!  On January 11, 2010 I returned to work, sat in my own old desk and even found some of my old files I’d set up from the first time I worked here!!

It has been a fantastic year of re-connections and new connections!  I love my new position and approach it with a new perspective now that I have owned and operated my own business!  Everyone who I work with now I had worked with before and I truly feel at home here with my work family.

I am excited to be engaged in developing new market segments for Dixie and still utilizing my background and experiences to support our local designers in their flooring specifications.  I am also responsible for marketing the company in new ways such as social networking and website maintenance and enhancement (Thus, this blog!).  We are starting to push the geographical boundaries and I’m making new designer connections in other cities like DDP Architects in Orlando, CRG Architects in Palatka, and Hansen Architects in Savannah, Georgia!  If you are a design professional who specifies commercial flooring, I would LOVE the opportunity to work with you on your flooring specifications.  Maybe a goal for next year will be to have a flooring connection in every state in the US!  Wow, the possibilities!!