The carpet brand name most recognized by consumers is Mohawk. Tommy Mohawk, developed by Walt Disney, was being marketed and advertised on TV when I was a kid many years ago. The Karastan name has been synonymous with high-quality carpet for decades. Generations of consumers have purchased Mohawk and Karastan brand names because someone in their family had one of these carpets.

The soft side of the industry as a whole has never been at the forefront of marketing, but Mohawk has been unique in this respect by keeping a presence before the consumer.

This is a company that just over a decade ago had an annual sales volume of less than $300 million. Today, it is the largest flooring manufacturer and supplier in existence with sales near $8 billion. If your business grew this big and fast you'd experience some of Mohawk's growing pains, but the pains of growth have not prevented it from being on the cutting edge of technology, environmental stewardship, assimilation of various flooring categories and keeping up with the ever-changing demands of the marketplace. Not an easy task for any company in the business.

One of the accolades I have to bestow is on Mohawk's commercial tech services group, largely populated by the Gentry brothers. These guys have been in the industry all their lives, are extremely knowledgeable about product and installation, and are some of the finest gentlemen in the industry.

I have had the occasion to work with them quite often, and if there's a situation requiring a solution or a problem needing an answer, they will put forth whatever effort is required. Just recently we resolved a problem that could have cost them a small fortune, a major account and a lot of pain for our client- the end user- with mutual satisfaction. Not once was there an issue of the end user being satisfied.

Mohawk has also just introduced a carpet and hard surface cleaning and maintenance program, essentially providing a service department for its flooring products by and for its retailers and the end user. I have harped on this concept for years and it is the first to actually implement a viable program headed up by Brian and Trish Warren.

Mohawk also has one of the most highly regarded training centers in the industry, Mohawk University, bringing in retail dealers on a regular basis to educate them about flooring and how to sell it. The most successful dealer is the one who is knowledgeable, flexible and financially astute and knows his product line and his market. Mohawk helps dealers in all these areas. I speak to retailers daily, and the ones who are the best at what they do are diversified and savvy. Business for them is still good and, for the most part, up in a tough market.

I have always had the pleasure of having an open relationship with Mohawk, one where we could sit down and talk about issues pertinent to the industry and business. I'm not exactly the person any manufacturer wants to see walking through its doors, yet Mohawk's management has often been different. They've actually asked, "How are we doing?" and "How can we do better?"

No manufacturer is perfect, and it's more challenging for the biggest guy on the block when it's growing, but Mohawk will continue to succeed because it has a heritage and history of doing so.