A new sound mat seems to come out every two minutes. Each one says they have something new and something great. Today with multi-family a hot market that two-minute mark might be short. In entangled net products KEENE has as much experience as anyone in the industry. We have tests that tell how our products perform in every floor/ceiling assembly with every floor finish. We test the products just about every month in a laboratory and pride ourselves on our material and application knowledge. We provide the industry with alternatives to enhance performance. These are alternatives they have never had before.
So when the new guy comes in with the two-minute experience we’ll be just fine. Some will say they have hundreds of years in the sound business but are just now getting around to copying KEENE innovations from the past ten years. Some will make an approach more like a rouge foreign country and steal our intellectual property. They’ll say it’s new but from what I see, it is new to them. The “me too” circular wheel just keeps on circling. Just another player jumping on!!
KEENE isn’t circling or on the merry-go-round. KEENE will continue to innovate.
We’ll create the next generation of sound mat improvements. When you are in the field and in the plant it is easy to put the two together to make something better. Better products are what make this industry fun. The industry does follow our lead. KEENE created the moisture control fabric as an improvement to entangled net products used with gypsum concrete. Before KEENE, the only separation fabric was one for below grade drainage. KEENE created the use of muffling technology to make 0.25” mat perform like 0.75” mat. KEENE thinned out the gypsum concrete with its fiberglass reinforcement separation fabric. We’ll find ways to save developers money and that always rings the right way!
We pioneered the use of the “living hinge” polymer, polypropylene so that sound mat lies flat and doesn’t curl. We divided the sound mat into channels that help eliminate roll memory so contractors can install easily and never need a staple gun to make things work. We insert machine direction channels so that temperature changes don’t affect the mat. By the way, polypropylene is hydrophobic and unlike other polymers won’t have a problem with expansion in the face of moisture from the gypsum concrete. Many polymers like polyamide can absorb moisture and cause seams to fail.
Watch the followers – they are looking to us for their next innovation. They are looking for a merry-go-round to jump on. It’s passed them. We’re on an elevator up.
It starts with a KEENE Idea!