Malden Mills: Rising from the Ashes

Maiden Mills is the company creating commodity-based textile industry.

              →making a cloth from raw materials

●  Founded by Henry Feuerstein in 1906

●  The successive president- Henry Feuerstein→ Samuel Feuerstein→AeronFeuerstein

Aaron Feuerstein

1.     First success - In the late 1970s

Polarfleece: a fabric created from recycled soft-drink bottles

→enabled a person who likes outdoor

to look sharp and to stay warm in the cold weather

Then, used by many popular outdoor company (L.L.Bean, Paatagonia…)

2.     Second success- In 1991

Polartec: the ability to have numerous combinations of essential characters

→made it true that the fabric with Polartec has unlimited applications and be used for almost any type of outdoor clothing.

Sales are more than $200 million (in 1995).

The challenge: the fire in the evening on Monday in December 1995 

●  A tragedy: The evening was Aeron’s seventieth birthday

              He got a phone call that tells the fire burned the entire company and made it out of control at 11:00 P.M.

●  By the time he arrived, the fire reached three of four main production building.

●  One Good News: no one had died in the tragedy

Aeron realized that

“He might be able to save the company, if he could save the fourth building.”

●However,

  His director of engeneer said that

  “the forth building will be burnt by 7:00 A.M.

Strategy 1: Never lose sight of the ultimate goal, and focus energy on short-term objectives.

Feuerstein organized his employees and told them that they must save the fourth mill, if they wanted to ever work at Malden Mills again, if they wanted to save the company and the community.

●  He inspired his workers to make the best to save the forth mill.

→the forth building was still standing and the fire was under control by the next morning.

Strategy 3: Instill optimism and self-confidence, but stay grounded in reality.

Feuerstein had called his customer and assured them that he could be in production in thirty days.

→People said that this would be nearly impossible.

●  However, he realized that he could achieve this by doing more rapidly what people are used to doing more slowly.

→worked around the clock and made effort to focus on the number-one priority.

Strategy 8: find something to celebrate and something to laugh about!

By late fall 1996, the company rebuilt the manufacturing lines based on new computer-controlled machines. Moreover, with the new technology and efficiency, the company was producing a new and high-quality fabric than before fire.

● The company-wide gala celebration to thank his employees and celebrate the success they had in rebuilding the company.

→ In September 1997, the celebration was hold with more than 15,000 guests, including all employees and family members, along with local and nation political, religious, financial, business, and media leaders.