Floor Covering Weekly: The Flooring Industry's Business News Resource
Floor Covering Weekly, known throughout its industry simply as FCW, is a trade publication serving the floor covering business — the manufacturers, distributors, retailers and contractors who make and sell carpet, resilient flooring, hardwood, laminate, tile and stone. Published by Hearst, it describes itself as the industry's business news and information resource, and it has covered the trade since 1952.
The publication is closely associated with Dalton, Georgia, the northwestern Georgia city that became the center of the American carpet industry and remains the symbolic heart of the flooring business. From that industry heartland — and from Hearst's offices in New York — FCW reports on the companies, products and market data that shape how America floors its homes and commercial buildings.
Overview
Floor Covering Weekly is a business-to-business magazine and website read by flooring retailers, manufacturers, distributors, design professionals and commercial contractors. Hearst describes it as the leading source of news and information for the global floor covering industry. Its remit is the whole channel: mill and factory news, retail strategy, product launches, installation and commercial market coverage, and proprietary market research.
Although its name preserves its weekly origins, in recent years FCW has published twice a month with additional issues in March, April, June and September, supported by a continuously updated website at floorcoveringweekly.com and digital editions of each print issue.
History and Founding
Floor Covering Weekly was established in 1952, just as the postwar housing boom and the rapid growth of the Georgia carpet mills were transforming floor covering into a major American industry. The publication grew up with the trade it covered, reporting on the tufted carpet revolution centered in Dalton and on the retail networks that sold flooring across the country.
In 1980 FCW was acquired by Hearst, becoming part of one of America's largest media companies. Under Hearst the title professionalized its research operation and expanded its influence: Hearst has credited the magazine with helping to shape and define the industry through proprietary research such as its annual Statistical Report and its ReCo market studies. In 2016 the then 64-year-old brand moved its offices into the Hearst Tower in New York and relaunched with a redesigned look and broadened coverage of business, marketing, merchandising and design.
Publisher and Ownership
FCW is published by Hearst Business Communications as part of Hearst Business Media, the division of Hearst that handles business-to-business information brands. Its masthead lists Hearst's corporate leadership, and its editorial and sales headquarters have been in the Hearst Tower at 300 West 57th Street in New York, with advertising and editorial staff also working in Georgia, close to the industry's manufacturing base.
Leadership of the title itself passed in December 2022 to Amy Rush-Imber, whom Hearst appointed publisher of FCW while she retained the editor-in-chief role she had held since 2016. Rush-Imber had joined FCW in 2010 as managing editor and became executive editor in 2014, after earlier editorial positions at Fairchild Publications.
Editorial Content and Sections
FCW's editorial mix combines hard business news with practical retail guidance. Its pages and website carry manufacturer and retailer news, executive appointments, financial and capacity developments such as plant investments and acquisitions, product introductions across soft and hard surfaces, and coverage of industry events including The International Surface Event and regional markets.
Regular features include design and style coverage, commercial flooring reports published as supplements, installation and technology stories, and the magazine's widely cited research products. The annual Statistical Report sizes the flooring market by category, while the ReCo studies examine the retail channel. Anniversary and special issues pull together industry milestones, executive interviews and trend forecasts, and the magazine regularly profiles the people — founders, executives and retailers — behind the industry's companies.
The 2016 relaunch showed how the magazine renews that formula for new generations of readers. Alongside a cleaner, more contemporary design with color-coded departments and larger photography, FCW broadened its scope beyond mill news to include marketing, merchandising and technology guidance for retailers, and introduced a Style & Design page, edited by Emily Kiker Finkell, intended as a portal to trends across home design as a whole — on the reasoning that flooring retailers sell into whole rooms, not just floors. Hearst supported the push commercially as well, appointing a chief revenue and business development officer for the title in 2015 to grow markets the magazine had not previously considered.
Audience and Circulation
The magazine is written for decision-makers in the floor covering channel: specialty flooring retailers first among them, along with manufacturers, distributors, buying groups, commercial contractors, architects and designers who specify flooring. Its subscription terms have traditionally priced domestic subscriptions modestly, reflecting a controlled business-press model supported primarily by advertising from flooring brands eager to reach retail buyers.
For advertisers, FCW's pitch is influence rather than raw numbers: the publication argues that it reaches the most influential people and companies in the floor covering industry, the retailers and executives whose stocking and specification decisions move products through the entire channel.
Print and Digital Editions
Print remains a visible part of the FCW operation, with issues distributed to the trade and posted as digital editions that replicate the magazine page by page, complete with its masthead, departments and advertising. The 2023 issues, for example, list a compact editorial team — publisher and editor-in-chief, senior managing editor, business and special projects editor, senior and associate editors and a contributor at large — producing the print magazine from New York and Georgia.
Online, floorcoveringweekly.com publishes news between issues, hosts the magazine's special reports and supplements, and serves as the subscription and marketing hub for the brand under its fcw1.com address. Hearst has positioned the website, relaunched alongside the 2016 redesign, as a user-friendly daily companion to the twice-monthly print cycle.
Notable Editors and Contributors
Amy Rush-Imber is the title's best-known current figure, serving as both publisher and editor-in-chief, and representing FCW in the wider industry as vice chair of the Women in the Floorcovering Industry executive board and a board member of the Floor Covering Industry Foundation. Before her, Santiago Montero served as publisher and editor-in-chief during the brand's 2016 relaunch period.
Earlier generations remember Al Wahnon, who ran FCW before leaving to found the rival Floor Covering News; industry lore recorded in that competing publication recalls that under Wahnon's leadership FCW was voted the best trade journal in any industry in America. Long-serving staff and contributors such as business editor Sharyn Bernard and contributor at large Janet Herlihy have given the magazine continuity across decades of industry change.
Awards and Recognition
FCW's authority in its field rests less on journalism prizes than on its research franchise and longevity. Its Statistical Report is treated as a benchmark source for the size and direction of the U.S. flooring market, cited by manufacturers, analysts and other trade publications. Hearst itself describes FCW as, by every measure, the undisputed leader among flooring business publications.
The magazine marked its 65th anniversary in 2017 with a special issue celebrating the industry's investments, innovations and new products, and its 60th and 70th milestones were similarly used to take stock of the trade. The historical "best trade journal" honor from its Wahnon era remains part of the brand's institutional memory.
Recent Developments
In December 2022 Hearst elevated Amy Rush-Imber to publisher, tasking her with accelerating growth across all of FCW's platforms — print, digital and events-facing coverage. The magazine has continued its twice-monthly print schedule with themed additional issues, expanded its design and consumer-trend coverage to help retailers read the wider home market, and kept its research products at the center of its offer.
More than seventy years after its founding, and over four decades into Hearst ownership, Floor Covering Weekly remains what its name promises in spirit if not in strict frequency: the regular business briefing of record for the flooring trade, reporting from the industry's Georgia heartland and its New York publishing home alike.
