When companies in the same industry merge, there are usually job cuts to yield consolidation savings for the surviving business.
But when Bob Shaw’s Engineered Flooring acquired one of its cross-town carpet makers, J+J Industries, no jobs were eliminated and both companies have continued to grow.
“There has not been a single job lost,” says David Jolly, the third generation CEO of the carpet and rug maker founded by his grandfather Rollins Jolly in 1957. “Instead, there only have been opportunities for our people.”
That was an important criteria when Jolly and other family owners decided to sell their business in 2016 to Shaw to help create the third largest carpet company behind only Mohawk Industries and Shaw Industries, which Bob Shaw also once headed.
J+J has focused on the commercial floorcovering market for the past half century, while Engineered Flooring has targeted other markets so there was very little product overlap when the two companies merged.