Senior VP gives a brief history of Mohawk
Senior VP gives a historical background behind what is now the community’s largest employer.
As the largest flooring manufacturer in the world, Mohawk influences more than just Gordon County. But the history behind this massive company goes back to when the power loom was created.
Last week, Mohawk Senior Vice President of Human Resources Phillip Brown hosted and spoke at the Gordon County Historical Society’s spring quarterly meeting. Not only did Brown talk about how he came to live in Calhoun, but he also presented the history of Mohawk Industries.
“The first thing you’ve got to understand is how you got here,” Brown said. “You’ve got to understand your history.”
While Mohawk is now one of the world and country’s largest flooring manufacturing company, Brown said it started off with a simple invention that changed everything.
Brown said the power loom was invented in 1849 by Erastus Bigelow, which encouraged large-scale flooring companies and other types of textile industries to form. And nearly 30 years later, a carpet mill was launched in upstate New York, with many other mills following suit over the next half century.
In the 1950s, Mohawk had already been established and merged with Alexander Smith & Co. to become Mohasco, which was the company’s name for the next few decades, according to Brown. In the 1990s, following going public, the company merged with Aladdin Mills, out of Dalton, and American Weavers, which were moves that Brown said contributed to the expansion of Mohawk as a whole.
Mohawk (which revived their prior name in the 1990s) is the largest manufacturer of rugs in the country, and is also the largest employer in Gordon County, employing about 1,500 Northwest Georgia residents, and is the largest tax payer in the county, Brown said. And since it came to Calhoun in 1992, Mohawk has grown to be about 30 times what it was, and in fewer than 30 years.
One thing Brown said was unique about Mohawk and the flooring industry is that all of Mohawk’s strongest competitors are in the same region. Brown, who’s had a history working in manufacturing and industry, never saw anything like the highly aggressive flooring industry in Northwest Georgia.
HISTORY,
“People come to visit and say, ‘Well, Mohawk is here, and there’s Shaw over there,’” Brown said. “What was very unusual to me was to come to an industry where every competitor is located in the same geography.”
Mohawk has incorporated sustainability into its operations as well, Brown said, recycling over seven billion plastic bottles and achieving “zero waste” at 47 of their manufacturing plants. From 2009 through 2016, Mohawk was recognized by Newsweek as being “America’s Most Sustainable Flooring Company.”
In addition to already existing efforts, Mohawk is working on decreasing water consumption, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and recycling more materials, Brown said. They also have buildings in Gordon County that are certified in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, including the building where Brown presented the company’s history last week.