FLEXI-Roll® & FLEXI-Connect®: Dollamur’s Commitment to Quality and Innovation Over the Decades

Some products get invented once and then get marketed forever. Others get invented, and then get improved every year for three decades by people who keep listening to the coaches using them.

Dollamur is the second kind of company. Two products tell that story: FLEXI-Roll®, the lightweight roll-up mat that changed what a wrestling mat could be, and FLEXI-Connect®, the patented tapeless connection system that removed the most tedious recurring chore in the sport.

Here is how both came to exist, what they actually do, and why they still matter.

Fort Worth, 1996

Dollamur Sport Surfaces was founded in 1996 in Fort Worth, Texas, making wrestling, gymnastics, and cheerleading mats.

That origin matters more than a founding date usually does, because the company started in the middle of the customers it serves — American wrestling programs, cheer gyms, and school athletic departments — rather than in a flooring conglomerate somewhere upstream of them. The feedback loop has always been short.

Thirty years later, the mats are still built in Fort Worth.

The problem FLEXI-Roll® solved

To understand why FLEXI-Roll® mattered, you have to remember what a wrestling mat used to be.

Mats were heavy. They came in large, unwieldy sections or single enormous pieces. Setting one up meant assembling a crew. Moving one across a gym was a project. Storing one meant giving up real estate you probably did not have. For any program sharing a gym — which is most high school programs in America — the mat was the thing that made the sport logistically difficult.

Dollamur is the original inventor of the FLEXI-Roll® style lightweight mat.

The engineering insight was elegant: precision cuts in lightweight foam, spaced so the mat rolls up cleanly along its length instead of fighting you. A mat built that way can be produced in manageable roll sections — Dollamur’s standard is a 6-foot roll width — that two people can unroll, position, and put away in minutes.

That single change had knock-on effects across the sport:

• Shared gyms became viable wrestling spaces. Roll out for practice, roll up for volleyball.
• Setup stopped requiring a crew. Two athletes and a few minutes.
• Storage became practical. A rolled 6-foot section fits places a rigid panel mat never will.
• Tournaments got easier to run. Multiple mats down and up on a schedule.
• Damage went down. Mats that are easy to handle get handled properly instead of dragged.
  

The technology was introduced around the turn of the millennium and has been refined continuously since. Today FLEXI-Roll® is the foundation under Dollamur’s entire product line — wrestling mats, martial arts mats, carpet-bonded foam for cheer and gymnastics, and fitness and yoga flooring all build on it.

What is inside a FLEXI-Roll® mat today:

• Closed-cell, cross-linked core foam that resists hardening and shrinking
• An anti-microbial vinyl surface, with a biocidal additive infused during vinyl production and registered with the EPA under FIFRA
• Shock absorption tested to ASTM F1081 / F355 and G-Max standards
• A choice of Smooth or Hybrid Tatami surfaces
• 14 smooth vinyl colors and 8 Hybrid Tatami colors, PMS-specified
• A 5-year limited warranty
  

2008: Swain Mats, and a champion’s input

In 2008 Dollamur acquired Swain Mats, the traditional judo mat line designed by Mike Swain — World Judo Champion, four-time Olympian, and the 1996 U.S. Olympic Judo Coach for the Atlanta Games.

This was not a logo acquisition. Swain’s continued involvement produced one of the genuinely differentiated surfaces in athletic flooring: Hybrid Tatami.

The problem Hybrid Tatami solves is a tradeoff martial artists had simply accepted for decades. Traditional tatami texture gives you the traction you need for throws and takedowns — and takes skin off your shins and elbows during ground work. Mat burn was treated as the cost of doing business.

Hybrid Tatami’s low-profile texture maintains reliable traction for throws, takedowns, and striking while reducing the excess friction that causes abrasion during ground work. The result is a surface athletes can train on longer and harder. Its shallower texture also holds far less debris than a deeply embossed traditional pattern, which makes it meaningfully easier to clean completely.

It is a good example of how Dollamur develops product: take a problem everyone has stopped complaining about because they assume it is permanent, and engineer it out.

The problem FLEXI-Connect® solved

Once mats rolled up easily, one irritation remained, and every coach knew it intimately.

Mat tape.

Every setup meant taping seams. Every teardown meant pulling tape off. Tape peels mid-practice and opens gaps in the middle of a live session. Tape collects dirt at exactly the spot that is hardest to clean. Tape that sits too long bonds permanently and takes vinyl with it when removed. And tape is a consumable — a line item that reappears in the budget every single year, forever.

So Dollamur engineered it away. Around 2009, the company introduced the patented FLEXI-Connect® system — a Dollamur innovation, developed in-house: a built-in industrial-strength hook-and-loop connection mechanism integrated directly into the roll edges, joining adjoining sections to each other with no tape at all.

It is the same move that produced FLEXI-Roll® a decade earlier. Coaches had stopped complaining about mat tape the way you stop complaining about weather — it was simply part of the sport. Dollamur treated it as a design problem instead, and solved it. That instinct, more than any single product, is what three decades of building mats in Fort Worth has actually produced.

What FLEXI-Connect® actually delivers

• No mat tape, ever. A recurring annual cost eliminated permanently.
• Setup and teardown in minutes. No additional hardware or tools required.
• Easy to clean and maintain. Removing the tape seam removes the adhesive edge where grime accumulates.
• Includes the original FLEXI-Roll® technology, so you keep everything the roll-up mat gave you.
• 5-year limited warranty, with a minimum thickness of 1-1/4” on FLEXI-Connect® mats.
  

The math that makes it obvious

A 42’ x 42’ mat built from 6-foot sections has six seams, each 42 feet long.

At common mat tape roll lengths and prices, a single full taping runs somewhere in the $50 to $100 range in materials alone. And the guidance from manufacturers who sell tape is to check it before every session and replace it as soon as it shows peeling or dirt buildup.

Run that out across a season, across a room with multiple mats, plus the labor of taping and untaping, and mat tape becomes a meaningful recurring line item that produces nothing except a seam you then have to clean around. FLEXI-Connect® removes the line item.

Innovation is not only the headline products

Three decades of continuous development show up in a lot of places that never get a product name:

• Dollamur Digital printing. Direct-to-surface printing technology for logos, mascots, sponsor branding, lettering, and full-surface graphics — with PMS color matching and an in-house design team. Traditional hand-painted artwork by skilled artisans is still offered alongside it, because some jobs still call for it.
• Coordinated room systems. FLEXI-Wall Pads® and FLEXI-Post Pads® in matching smooth and Hybrid Tatami surfaces and matching colors. Wood-back panel wall pads with phthalate-free, high-temperature-resistant vinyl and foam meeting California flame-retardant requirements. GoFit Turf™ for programs extending a wrestling room into strength and conditioning space. A room can be finished as one system rather than assembled from mismatched parts.
• Purpose-built maintenance. Mat Attack! PLUS® surface disinfectant, 24” and 48” mop systems, microfiber wet and dry pads, and floor scrubbers — because a mat that is easy to clean correctly stays healthy, and a company that builds mats should also solve the problem of keeping them clean.
• Segment-specific engineering. Tri-Flex® EVA foam, which fuses layers of varying densities for speed, rebound, and shock absorption in cheer and gymnastics. Standard cross-linked polyethylene for programs prioritizing durability under repeated compression. Yoga and Pilates tile mats using the same Hybrid Tatami surface logic applied to floor-based movement. Landing pads, puzzle mats, foam-only rolls.
  

Where it stands today

Dollamur mats are used in more than 5,000 schools and colleges across 90+ countries, and Dollamur is North America’s largest tournament mat supplier.

The credentials, current as of 2026:

• Wrestling— Official Mat Sponsor of USA Wrestling through 2028, a relationship dating to 2016. Officially licensed UWW mat provider through December 2028. Official mat of USA Wrestling’s Final X championship series. Licensed provider for 15 state high school wrestling championships. Official Mat of Real American Freestyle (RAF). Title sponsor of the Reno Tournament of Champions. Official mat at the U.S. Open, USA Wrestling Women’s National Championships, Senior World Team Trials, and USAW Junior Nationals in Fargo.
• Martial arts — Official Mat of USA Judo and FloGrappling. A five-year partnership with USA Taekwondo. Exclusive Competition Mat Provider for the UFC BJJ Opens. Official partner of USA Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the North American Grappling Association, Gracie Barra, and Bellator MMA.
• Cheer and gymnastics — Trusted by USASF, IASF, and The Cheerleading Worlds. Official Spiritline Mat of the Arizona Interscholastic Association. Official sponsor of the CIF Boys and Girls Wrestling Championships and CIF Competitive Cheerleading.
  
• Fitness — Built for gyms, strength and conditioning facilities, functional fitness spaces, and training centers. Dollamur flooring and mats provide versatile solutions for strength training, functional training, conditioning, and other fitness programs, helping facilities create durable, adaptable training environments for a wide range of workouts.

What it means for your program

The history is interesting. What matters is what it buys you.

• A mat two people can set up. Three decades of refining a roll-up system means your athletes can put the floor down and pick it up without a crew, which means the mat gets used more and damaged less.
• No mat tape line item. FLEXI-Connect® removes a recurring annual cost and the labor that goes with it, permanently.
• Seams that are simpler to keep clean. A built-in connection removes the taped edge your mop has to work around — and the step of pulling tape before a thorough clean.
• A surface engineered for your sport. Smooth vinyl for wrestling, Hybrid Tatami for martial arts, carpet-bonded foam for cheer and gymnastics — each developed for what actually happens on it.
• Materials that hold up. Closed-cell cross-linked foam engineered to keep recovering its shape season after season, tested to ASTM F1081 / F355, and biocidal vinyl with an EPA-registered additive infused during production rather than coated on.
• A company that stands behind it. Made in Fort Worth, with in-house design, specialists who size your room with you, and a dealer network that has been at this a long time.
  

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a FLEXI-Roll® mat? FLEXI-Roll® is Dollamur’s original lightweight roll-up mat technology, invented by Dollamur and introduced around the turn of the millennium. Precision cuts in lightweight foam let the mat roll up cleanly in manageable sections — standard 6-foot roll width — so two people can set it up and store it in minutes rather than requiring a crew.
2. What is FLEXI-Connect®, and how is it different from FLEXI-Roll®? FLEXI-Connect® includes all of FLEXI-Roll®’s technology plus Dollamur’s own patented built-in industrial-strength hook-and-loop connection system in the roll edges — a Dollamur innovation developed in-house, and the second of the company’s two foundational mat technologies. Sections connect directly to each other with no mat tape, no additional hardware, and no tools. It is available in a minimum thickness of 1-1/4”.
3. Does FLEXI-Connect® really eliminate the need for mat tape? Yes. That is the point of the system. A 42’ x 42’ mat built from 6-foot sections carries roughly 252 linear feet of seam, which is a full taping’s worth of material every time you set up — a recurring annual cost plus the labor of taping and untaping. FLEXI-Connect® removes both.
4. When was Dollamur founded? 1996, in Fort Worth, Texas, originally making wrestling, gymnastics, and cheerleading mats. Mats are still manufactured in Fort Worth today.
5. Are Dollamur mats made in the USA? Yes. Dollamur mats are manufactured in Fort Worth, Texas.
6. What warranty comes with Dollamur mats? Vinyl mats — wrestling, martial arts, and Swain Mats — carry a 5-year limited warranty. Carpet-bonded foam carries a 3-year limited warranty, with carpet logos covered for one year. Wall pads and pole pads carry a 1-year limited warranty.
7. Is Dollamur the official mat of USA Wrestling? Yes. Dollamur is the Official Mat Sponsor of USA Wrestling, a relationship that began in 2016 and has been extended through 2028, covering the LA Olympic Games. Dollamur is also an officially licensed United World Wrestling mat provider through December 2028.
   

Thirty years in, still building the best mat we know how

Whether you are outfitting a full wrestling room, replacing a competition mat, or building a martial arts academy from an empty floor, Dollamur’s specialists will walk you through it.

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