In 1986 carpet sales were flat. Then DuPont introduced a television commercial with little Ricky throwing his food on the carpet and told prospective buyers how quick and easy it was to clean Stainmaster®. The consumer bought it, and they bought all other brands of stain resistant carpet by the truck load. Everyone in the carpet industry, including cleaners, profited from DuPont’s great ad campaign. It worked because Stainmaster sold “ease of maintenance.”
   When carpet began losing market share to hard floors the CRI tried to reinvent the magic of the DuPont campaign with “Carpet, it just feels better!” That great program was terminated in less than a year. Now in a complete strategy reversal, CRI is implying that carpet cleaning is really a complicated process, even comparing it to rocket science at one point. Equipment and chemicals must be tested and only certain products can be used to clean carpets. Some mills are telling consumers that only a few hundred cleaning firms out of more than 40,000 nationwide can service their carpets or the warranty will be void. That message says one thing to the consumer. Carpet is hard to clean.
   Carpet sales will continue to suffer until the entire carpet industry reverses this destructive agenda.  DuPont had the right idea!