Shaw Industries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shaw Industries is a carpet manufacturer headquartered in Dalton, Georgia. It agreed to be acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 2000.
Shaw Industries is not related to The Shaw Group, a publicly-traded company in Baton Rouge, LA.
History
Shaw Industries: A History by Randall L. Patton
(Randall L. Patton is an associate professor of history at Kennesaw State University. He is coauthor of Carpet Capital: The Rise of a New South Industry (Georgia).)
Shaw Industries, based in Dalton, Georgia, is the nation's leading textile manufacturer and the world's largest producer of carpets. This history, published by The University of Georgia Press, focuses on the evolution of Shaw's business strategy and its adaptations to changing economic conditions. Randall L. Patton chronicles Shaw's rise to dominance by drawing on corporate records, industry data, and interviews with Shaw employees and management, including Robert E. Shaw, the only CEO the company has known in its more than thirty years.
Patton situates Shaw within both the overall context of Sunbelt economic development and the unique circumstances behind the success of the tufted carpet industry in northwest Georgia. After surveying the state of the carpet industry nationwide at the end of World War II, Patton begins the Shaw story with the boom years of 1955-73 and continues through the transitional decade of 1973-82, the consolidation phase of the 1980s and early 1990s, and the "new economy" of the mid- to late-1990s. Throughout, Patton shows, Shaw's drive has always been toward vertical integration--controlling the outside forces that could affect its bottom line. He tells, for instance, how Shaw built its own trucking fleet and became its own yarn supplier, all to the company's advantage. He also relates less successful ventures, most notably Shaw's attempt at direct retailing.
The picture emerges of a company proud of its image as a steady and profitable business surviving in a competitive industry. Patton traces the history of Shaw Industries from its start as a family-owned operation through its growth into a multinational corporation that recently joined Warren Buffett's holding company, Berkshire-Hathaway. The Shaw saga has much to tell us about the continuing vitality of "old economy" manufacturers.
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