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.
Although J+J Flooring is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year with a variety of employee events, company managers are looking more to the future than the past. Last year, J+J introduced three dozen new products and a similar number of product introductions are planned this year. In 2013, J+J pioneered a new hybrid version of soft and hard flooring known as Kinetex, a type of textile composite flooring that remains distinctive in the floorcovering industry. J+J is also beginning to sell its own luxury vinyl tile this year.
To accommodate the growth of J+J, the company is building a $50 million modular tile plan adjacent to its existing 40-acre campus in Dalton.
"We have always tried to be innovative in our products and production by encouraging creativity and bringing in talented people from a variety of businesses," Jolly says.