NEW YORK CITY — During the BDNY conference in November, Diana Dobin, co-CEO and chief sustainability officer of Florida-based Valley Forge Fabrics, was recognized as the 2024 NEWH Icon of Industry. The award celebrates leaders of the hospitality manufacturing industry with more than 30 years of experience who have made a unique impact through “innovative work and community or industry outreach.”
The recognition was especially meaningful for Dobin, whose mother Judy Dobin was an early member of NEWH and was the first woman to be named an Icon of Industry in 2010. The younger Dobin is the eighth woman to be recognized in the award’s 20-year history.
A Life in the Industry
The husband-and-wife team of Judy and Dan Dobin founded Valley Forge Fabrics in the early 1990s and their children grew up in the industry. In high school, Diana Dobin was an intern for NEWH’s New York chapter, and she later went on to join as a board member for both the New York and Florida chapters. She served on NEWH’s National Board as the director of expansion and helped grow chapters across the country as well as in London and Toronto. “It was just really wonderful to work with a group of people that are so passionate about connecting people to each other,” she told Hotel Management on the trade show floor.
Joining the family business at a young age, Diana Dobin moved to Asia to open Valley Forge offices in Hong Kong. “My job was to sell U.S.-made textiles to the Asian markets,” she recalled. Returning to the U.S. in 1998, she worked in the company’s New York City office. At the time, she said, Valley Forge was a very small company, and brand standards were becoming more regulated as investors like Barry Sternlicht acquired and grew companies like Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Her focus, then, became on getting specifications for chairs or drapes that would fill not just a hotel, but a number of hotels in a region or even a country.
“The concept of the standard program back then was, ‘Let's provide a product—a hotel product, a room product—that allows people to have familiarity with our brand,’” Dobin said. “And people loved that.” Since then, however, the mindset has changed. “People who go to hotels, they want to wake up and feel connected to the place where they are. … There is a different desire on how, as travelers, we want to connect with places.”
As such, Dobin sees standard programs fading away, particularly in upper-upscale and luxury properties. “Hotels want to all be different—lifestyle experiences, emotional connection—and that is done through design, where fabrics play a big role.”
Sustainability and Innovation
Dobin has been an advocate for eco-conscious design for nearly 20 years, but those early days left her and the team feeling rather isolated in their efforts. “When we started to talk about sustainability in 2007 at Valley Forge, we were talking to ourselves,” she said. “There was nobody else having these conversations.” That year, Valley Forge began investing in products made from recycled content, particularly polyester. “Polyester is the most popular fiber in hospitality because it inherently passes fire codes,” Dobin noted. Beyond that, the material can be used in many ways in a hotel space: “It can be flat, it can be lofty, it can be shiny. It can be used for upholstery, it can be used for drapery, it can be used for bedding.”
The company invested in developing polyester from recycled plastic rather than from oil, and gave (Dobin estimates) 200 presentations to industry insiders to get them to buy the products. “[We talked to] design firms, hotel companies, brands, developers—anybody that we could get an appointment with.” In these meetings, Dobin and her colleagues talked about climate change and how the design industry could be a part of making things better. Later innovations included linens made from Tencel+Plus Lyocell (a material made from eucalyptus and other botanicals) and upcycled fabrics made from reclaimed ocean plastic.
Today, Dobin said, the industry is recognizing that sustainability is not something that is merely “nice” to do. “It is a must-do.” Significantly, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission now requires climate-related disclosures by public companies. “There are a lot of public companies in our industry, and they have to be able to get data—and [furniture, fixture and equipment] products contribute towards that data,” she said. “Companies like mine, which have been focused on this for a long time—we have that data. We are able to provide it and we can help our clients work with companies to do the reporting that is necessary.”
Collaboration
Both as a designer and entrepreneur, Dobin appreciates the collaborative nature of the design community. “Nothing is ever done by one person,” she said. “It's always done as a team.” From her colleagues at Valley Forge to local nonprofit organizations to large-scale groups like NEWH, Dobin recognizes the need for teamwork in design, and noted that her nomination came from the people she works with at Valley Forge. “It's very humbling to get this award—and it's also very exciting.”
This article was originally published in the January edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.