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Owens Corning roars into FR bedding arena

By David Perry -- Furniture Today, April 10, 2005

Aiken, S.C. — The Pink Panther is lending a paw to mattress producers adding fire-resistant protection to bedding.

The familiar cartoon figure, a fixture in Owens Corning's advertising and marketing materials for 25 years, has added FR bedding products to his portfolio.

It's part of a major entry into the category by the $5 billion-plus global company, a leader in FR building materials and products for the home.

Owens Corning spent millions of dollars and almost two years to develop a fire-resistant fabric that company officials say can efficiently and economically provide high levels of FR protection to the bottom of single-sided mattresses, the dominant type of bedding on the market today.

And the company isn't stopping there. It says the new FR fabric also can be used throughout promotionally priced beds to help them pass California's stringent new open-flame mattress standard.

Looking beyond bedding, Owens Corning is investigating additional uses for its new FR product in the furniture market.

Owens Corning says it is committed to safety and has a corporate mission of "transforming markets," and intends to leverage its vast industrial expertise to the FR bedding marketplace.

"This product hits home," said J.P. Blanchard, business manager for the Owens Corning Veil Technologies program. "We are all about safety."

Veil technology produces a thin sheet of nonwoven fibers. Owens Corning uses the technology to create a broad range of products for homes and commercial buildings, including insulation and other building materials.

The company uses the Pink Panther in its consumer and trade advertising and marketing materials to draw attention to its products. While Owens Corning is only now developing marketing plans for the new FR fabric, company officials said the Pink Panther will help spread the word.

The company, based in Toledo, Ohio, has more than 19,000 employees worldwide.

Blanchard said that Owens Corning officials, "always searching for new markets," saw the development of FR legislation in California as a natural opportunity.

The FR fabric is produced by the same process used to make millions of miles of nonwoven products for the home. Owens Corning makes the nonwoven Veil products at the 200,000-square-foot Aiken facility and at two other plants in North America.

The high-tech Aiken plant, built in 1978, has extensive automation and modern quality control systems. It produces the FR fabric on 90-inch rolls that can be cut to meet customer needs. It takes a single Owens Corning production line less than an hour to produce a roll of FR fabric more than a mile long.

That capacity should alleviate any questions the industry may have about a shortage of key FR products, said Bob McKinnon, CEO of McKinnon-Land, which supplies FR fibers to Owens Corning.

The "wet lay" Veil production process runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week in Aiken and is one of Owens Corning's core competencies, Blanchard said.

"Our new FR product addresses our core competencies on fire-resistant products and nonwovens and links them with our stand on safety," he said. "It is an unbeatable one-two punch."

Owens Corning will service some mattress makers with shipments from the Aiken plant. It also is finalizing arrangements with distributor partners who will warehouse the FR products at facilities strategically located around the country.

Sales to mattress producers directly from Owens Corning will be of Owens Corning-branded products. Some distributor partners might use their own brands for the FR products they ship, Blanchard said.

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