Mohawk Industries - Case Study Example

Mohawk Industries 0 Introduction: Being one of the oldest companies in the carpet and flooring industry, Mohawk has a tradition of more than 120 years to back its fame and standing in the world market. The company produces all major flooring categories like carpets, rugs, hardwood, laminate, ceramic tile and vinyl flooring. Having specialized in the flooring and carpet sector by virtue of its high standards of quality Mohawk has established a brand name and the company's products can be bought all over the world.

This short paper describes the history of the company, the major competitors and the uniqueness of the company that has made the company stood over a century.2.0 History of the company:Per the website of the company, Mohawk-Flooring.com, the Company was started in Amsterdam City in New York, in the year 1878 by Shuttleworth brothers. Although the company was started in the year 1878 the first major break for the company happened in the year 1908 when the new carpet 'Karnak' was introduced by the company.

For this product there were numerous orders because of the quality and novelty of the product. The large and continuous orders made the company work on the same product for at least next five years without changing the design or colour of the product. The real name Mohawk was attributed to the company in the year 1920, when the Shuttleworth Brothers Companies amalgamated itself with McCleary, Wallin and Crouse. The Company was named after the Mohawk River Valley a part of the New York. This merger gave the additional strength for the company to become a monopoly producer of domestic woven carpets.

During the 1950s the company took bold steps for major expansion and also set up manufacturing facilities in Mississippi and South Carolina. This period also witnessed the creation of an animation character 'Tommy Mohawk' by Walt Disney.In the year 1956, Mohasco Industries was formed by a merger of Mohawk Mills Inc and Alexander smith Inc. The company Alexander Smith Inc, another New York based company was also having a steady background for its growth starting from the year 1845. The combined firm Mohasco became a leading manufacturer of carpets in the next 15 years through a process of innovation and design improvements.

The company could see its growth by expanding to 81 locations in the United States with manufacturing operations spread over 26 plants. The year 1898 gave a rebirth to Mohawk Industries when a group of senior executives from the company made a buyout deal from Mohasco and retrieved the original Mohawk Industries. Since then there was no looking back in the company's progress and growth. The company grew with a series of mergers and acquisitions and remained the largest producer of carpets and added many more connected product lines to it production.3.0 Strengths of the Company: The following are some of the important factors that have contributed to the magnificent success of the company Mohawk and made them unique in the products that they are dealing in:State of the art equipments to produce world class productsAward-winning innovative product designsCustomer-friendly marketing strategiesOverwhelming customer support which is the backbone of their successEfficient transportation and logistics that really has a cutting edgeUndeterred employee commitment through a positive work environmentAll the above factors have given the company a unique standing in the carpet industry.

Competitors of Mohawk:The major competitors for Mohawk Industries are Inter Face Inc., Beaulieu LLC and Shaw Industries Inc. While the latter two are privately held companies, the company Interface also does not have operations that are comparable with Mohawk who have established themselves as the clear market leader. As per the Yahoo Finance Website the market cap for Interface for the year 2005 is $ 978.53, while it is an enormous figure of $ 5.61 billion for Mohawk. Similarly Mohawk was having 37,100 employees on its roll whereas it was 8,300 for Beaulieu Group who had revenue of $ 1.

10 billion as against that of $ 7.91 billion of Mohawk. 4.0 Conclusion:Mohawk Industries is a classic example for t proving that sheer product excellence coupled with the employee commitment and innovations in designs could lead a company to greater heights apart from making it stand over the period with its name and fame. References:1. http://www.mohawk-flooring.com/about/history.asp2. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cos=MHK1.