Mohawk Home

-- Home Textiles Today, 2/26/2001 12:00:00 AM

Sugar Valley, GA

It wasn't until five years ago that Mohawk, the nation's top area rug manufacturer in 2000, branched out its offerings to include imported hand-tufted, gun-tufted synthetic and wool area rugs from China and India.

"We did it at the request of our retail partners," said Patrick Moyer, vp, marketing. "They need someone big enough to handle the orders, the inventory and the capability to ship product chainwide-sometimes to 2,400 stores; so they asked us, and we did it."

Since then, Mohawk's area rug import business has grown from 2 percent to 10 percent-about $60 million-of the entire division, "which sounds like a small percentage but is actually a pretty healthy business in itself," Moyer said.