Who Owns Shaw Floors?

The company behind Shaw Floors began in 1946, when Clarence Shaw founded Star Dye Company in Dalton, Georgia, with two partners. Star Dye dyed tufted bedspreads and later moved into dyeing carpet as the tufted textile industry grew around Dalton, which became known as the Carpet Capital of the World.

Clarence's son Robert E. "Bob" Shaw joined the business in the 1950s and became the driving force behind its expansion. In 1967 the family interests were consolidated into Shaw Industries, which went public in 1971. Through the 1970s and 1980s the company moved from dyeing and finishing into carpet manufacturing itself, acquiring mills and building a vertically integrated operation that ran from yarn extrusion through finished goods.

The 1990s brought aggressive diversification. Shaw acquired Philadelphia Carpets, Queen Carpet, and other mills, and pushed into hard surface flooring as American consumers began shifting away from wall-to-wall carpet. The company also built a private trucking fleet and a national distribution network, unusual moves that gave it control over delivery times to retailers.

Berkshire Hathaway bought a majority stake in Shaw in 2000 for about $2 billion and acquired the remaining shares in 2002. Under Berkshire, Shaw bought hard surface producer Anderson Hardwood in 2007, folding it into what became the Anderson Tuftex brand, and acquired US Floors in 2016, which brought the COREtec luxury vinyl line that became one of the fastest-growing product families in the industry.

The Shaw Floors name has been the company's residential retail identity for decades, while the corporate name Shaw Industries covers manufacturing and the commercial divisions. In recent years the company has invested more than $750 million in domestic hard surface and yarn manufacturing capacity and launched EcoWorx Resilient, billed as the first zero-PVC commercial resilient flooring.