J+J brings harder approach with kinetex line
DALTON, Ga. — Tom Jones, an International Harvester truck sales agent, was trying to sell a truck to Dalton Cone Co. owner Rollins Jolly in 1957 when the sales meeting quickly took a different turn. By the end of the session, the two Dalton businessman decided to go from selling equipment to the textile industry to getting in the business by making residential rugs.
The company they formed with an initial 15 employees, J+J Industries, initially made candy-striped rugs for its first decade. But from its single Dalton production complex, J+J has evolved over the past 60 years to become one of the leading manufacturers of commercial carpets in the world.
The company has remained family owned
throughout its history. For 59 years, the company remained owned primarily by descendents of the original founders, including the current president David Jolly — a third generation CEO who has worked at J+J for the past 26 years.
But last year, Jolly and the other family owners of J&J agreed to sell the business and merge with Engineered Floors — owned primarily by Shaw Industries’ founder Bob Shaw — to create the nation’s third biggest carpet company.
“We’re still privately held — just a different family involved,” said Jolly, who has remained head of J+J Industries as a subsidiary of Engineered Floors. “This merger was obviously a huge thing and something I would have not envisioned 10 years ago. But it’s been a very good merger in strengthening our business, especially in the growing commercial modular tile business. With Engineered Floors, we’re going to be able to do even more to grow our modular floor business.”
Shaw, who is regarded as the godfather of the carpet industry for building the biggest carpet maker in the world before selling Shaw Industries in 2005 to Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, has largely given J+J a free hand. Engineered Floors, which Shaw started in 2010, was primarily a residential carpet maker while J&J focuses on commercial carpet sales.
“What’s refreshing about this acquisition is that Bob Shaw and Engineers Floors has allowed you to continue to focus on your business,” Kemp Harr, publisher of Floor Focus magazine and owner of the Floor Daily website, said in a recent webcast with Jolly. “Almost like how Warren Buffett has done with Shaw Industries, Bob Shaw has left you alone and allowed you to continue to focus on what you do best.”
Jolly said Engineered Floors has provided investment, oversight and certain synergies for human resources and financial operations.
Jolly said J&J over its history was approached numerous times about mergers, sales or acquisitions in the carpet industry, which has shrunk from hundreds of carpet mills in the 1960s to only a few dozen today.
“We were very comfortable with what we were doing and doing it our way, and we were always a very conservative company so we continued to reinvest in the company rather than to take cash out the business,” Jolly said.
“We stayed technologically advanced and competitive so while we we had a lot of opportunities to merge or sell, it just never made sense to us because we were very comfortable being an independent company. But when Mr. Shaw came to us and we talked, we only had a few meetings and we entered into an agreement to sell.”
Within a few months of when talks began, the two companies were combined.
“Mr. Shaw puts people and the community first, so we shared the same culture, and there were wonderful opportunities to come together because they were strong with residential carpets and we have been strong in commercial carpets,” Jolly
said. “There has not been a single job lost. Instead, there have only been more opportunities for our people.”
J+J is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year with a series of employee and public events. But company leaders are spending far more time looking to the future than the past.
Last year, J+J introduced 36 new products, and a similar number of new products are planned to be added to the market this year. To accommodate its growth, the company is building a $50 million modular tile plant adjacent to J+J’s existing 40-acre campus in Dalton.
Ross Leonard, vice president of marketing at J+J, said the “action office” in most businesses today features modular, hightech furniture designs that demand more modular floor tiles than in the past.
“Our business has shifted dramatically from being a commercial broadloom manufacturer in the past to today when more than 70 percent of our business comes from modular carpet and tile,” Leonard said.
J+J will soon introduce its own version of luxury vinyl tile, which has been one of the fastest growing segments of the floorcovering industry.
Prior to the new luxury vinyl tile product being developed, J+J introduced a hybrid version of soft and hard flooring in 2013 known as Kinetex, a type of textile composite flooring that remains distinctive in the floorcovering industry.
“That has been the most exciting part of our business in the past few years, doubling in sales every year,” Leonard said. “It gives you the performance and clean-ability of a hard surface with the aesthetics, the safety and the acoustics of a soft surface. It really is that thing that is in the middle.”
“[Kinetex] has been the most exciting part of our business in the past few years, doubling in sales every year.”
— ROSS LEONARD, VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING AT J+J
For all the company’s focus on its newest products, J+J officials insist that employees are most important to its success.
“We’re not too big and we’re not too small,” said Heidi Fenoglio, sales representative for J&J. “We’re really sized correctly in that we can be really nimble and solve our customers problems very quickly.”
Nathan Lloyd, a tufting machine operator, followed the career of his father who worked at J&J for 33 years. Lloyd said J&J “is the best carpet mill to work at” in the industry.
The company salutes its veteran employees with a wall of honor in the entrance of its manufacturing complex.
Jolly said the 725-employee staff has been key to the company’s success in developing new designs, products and process improvements.
“We have a saying here, ‘We are in the people business, and we just happen to make carpet.’ This could not be more true. Our 60 years of success would not be possible without our dedicated and talented associates and the unwavering support from our customers.
“As we look forward to our next era of growth, we will continue to focus on what’s made us successful: putting people first, providing quality flooring solutions, delivering outstanding customer service and being responsible stewards of the environment.”