>> DAN HENDRIX: Interface turns 40, April 6th, and Ray had a way of thinking about the
founding day of Interface, it's not when you're incorporated, it's actually when you get capitalized.
So the day that Interface got 1.2 million dollars in the bank, that was the day that
Interface was founded in Ray's mind.
Of the 40 years I've been here 30 years and I actually audited Interface for 5 years before
that, so I've been involved with the company for about 35 years.
If you look at Ray's original team, and Ray referred to them as founders, he had Joe Kyle,
who was the technology person, the guy that actually made GlasBac work, he came out of
Armstrong.
Then he had Don Russell who was the marketing individual, and then he had Don Lee who was
the cost accountant for Milliken in the accounting.
So he had to put those disciplines together and that nucleus of a team were the founders
of Interface.
Interface is in great company, there was a lot of other companies that were founded in
the 1970's, you had FedEx, you had Oracle, you had Microsoft, you had Apple.
So we were born in a time where a lot of businesses were struggling, if you think about the oil
embargo and what was happening in the world back then.
One of the really unique statistics, if you want to quote statistics, is that if you go
back to the fortune 500 companies that were born in the 70s, a third of them are gone
by 1983, when Interface went public.
I think the stock market fell 50%, the Dow Jones went from 800 to the 500s, and so it
was a really interesting time to start a company.
But if you got through that, you had a great opportunity to grow, because you really knew
how to grow your business if you grew in the 70s.
Well another thing about the 70s was it was the beginning of the open plan office, and
people said that Ray could see around the corners.
And what Ray saw was a better product, used to call it a better mousetrap than carpet,
and that was carpet tile.
And the way Interface got named, was the way carpet tile interfaced with the floor, you
used to put flatwire between the floor and the carpet tile, you could actually plug and
play with the systems furniture with flatwire, but by code you had to have carpet tile over
flatwire, and so that's how Interface got born was with the movement of the open plan
office, and people like Steelcase and Herman Miller, and Haworth, they grew, and Interface
grew with them, with the open plan office.
What's next for Interface?
We're 40 years old, about time we grew up in maturity and into an adult, we're going
to become one company around the world, we're going to really really go after the benefits
of our global footprint, and we're going to be a growth company.
You have to be disruptive in the marketplace, and we're going to do that, we're going to
lead by design.
We're going to be the most creative carpet tile company out there in the world.
And we're going to cover every floor, I don't care where the floor is, we're going to be
the category leader in covering a floor, either in the home, or in the office, or in healthcare,
hospitality, wherever.
We're going to be the category leader globally.
And we're going to maximize what should be local, we're not going to take the local side
of Interface away.
But we're also going to leverage the fact that we're global, half our business is outside
the United States, we manufacture on 4 continents, and our customers are all going global as
well.
So why doesn't Interface go global with our customers and meet them where they are.
So what's next around sustainability?
You know Interface turns 40, next year we'll have 20 years of climbing up Mt.
Sustainability, and we're going to amp up the sustainability conversation, we're going
to be thought leaders, we're going to talk about going beyond sustainability, we're going
to talk about be restorative.
We're going to talk about networks and community, and the social aspects of it.
One of the questions that sometimes you hear at Interface is 'what would Ray do?'.
And I think about Ray a lot, Ray is very sentimental, obviously he's been a mentor to me, and I
knew him most of my working life.
He allowed us to run the company, he was out being the spiritual leader, but he allowed
us to be professional managers and delegated and I think about Mt.
Sustainability, and Ray told us what to do around sustainability, so I think what would
Ray do?
We're doing it, we're actually climbing up that mountain, and yeah, we think about Ray
a lot at this company.
We miss him.
To have a 40th birthday in today' s world is pretty unique!
Most companies don't really make it past the startup, believe it or not, and then when
they hit what I call maturity at 25 years, and they get to be over 100 million dollars,
a lot of them disappear.
So for Interface to be 40 years old, it's a huge milestone for this company, but to
be 40 years old and thriving in this marketplace is really unique for Interface.
Happy birthday Interface, the best is yet to come!