Each coconut is driven down onto a spike to split the fibrous husk away from the hard shell. A practiced husker can do about 2,000 a day by hand, and crushing machines can strip that many in an hour.

Husks sit in pits, nets or slow rivers while microbes digest the soft tissue around the fibers. Brown coir for mats is retted in fresh water. Crushing machines can cut the soak to about a week, but the traditional method takes most of a year.

Flat beater arms whirling inside steel drums pound the retted husk until the fibers come loose from the pith and skin. Workers once did this with wooden mallets.

A slower drum grades the loose fiber. Short pieces go to mattress padding, medium lengths become doormats, and the longest are saved for twine and rope. The fiber then dries spread out in the sun.

Dried fiber is twisted into thick yarn, today mostly on a spinning machine called a ratt. In India much of this is a cottage industry in coastal villages.

An automatic line cuts the yarn into short pieces and sets them upright in a layer of liquid PVC. Packed side by side, the cut ends form the scraping brush.

Heat on the curing line sets the PVC into a solid sheet that locks every tuft in place and grips the floor. The mat comes off as a continuous roll.

Mats are cut to size from the roll, and a shearing line trims the bristles to one even height.

Paint is sprayed or printed through stencils onto the bristle tips to lay down the pattern or lettering. The mats are dried, labeled and packed.