Shaw Industries

In 1990, Shaw Industries primary competitor became Salemcarpets. From a selling price standpoint, Salem and Shaw became the market leaders and low cost producers.  A standard part of Shaw's strategy was to seek out Salem's top sales producers and hire them and assume their customer relationships.  A significant number of Salem's reps were hired by Shaw.

In 1990, Shaw offered me the south Florida Market with the goal of assuming management of their top customer, Miami Rug.  Miami Rug operated 57 retail outlets in south Florida and was Evans Black's (Shaw) only south Florida customer and purchased approximately $4.5 million/year from Evans Black.

In late 1990, Miami Rug went bankrupt leaving no E&B customers in the south Florida market.  I quickly went to work building a customer list.  I approached Gary Henick at Southland Floors, a local flooring distributor and sold them a number of products which we private labeled and resold under the Southland name.  Within 18 months my south Florida territory went from $4.5 million to $0.00 back to $3.5 million.  During this period my sales territory decreased in size from (south of Orlando) both coasts -Fort Myers across to Melbourne to Dade and Broward County only.

• In working with Dade and Broward Schools  I began to develop a relationship with these school systems.  Nationally, schools began to limit use of carpet due to mold, allergy, and chemical emissions concerns. 

• In 1992, CBS aired the Rosalyn Anderson mice testing/chemical emission test results on the weekly news magazine Street Stories.  The Carpet industry went into full scale mobilization to refute these claims. 

• I began working with CRI in May 1993 to manage their cleaning and maintenance biological and allergen removal testing program.

Michael Hilton

706-463-2168