Today our class visited a textile company named Glen Raven. Glen Raven is a family-owned and run business which is also headquartered right outside of Burlington, North Carolina. Glen Raven specializes in dyeing fabrics, military equipment, and technical fabrics. The company was established in 1880 by John Q. Gant. A member of the Gant family has been in-charge of the business ever since it’s conception. However, in about four years someone will take over the business who is not a member of the Gant family and this is a very significant change to the Glen Raven business. Glen Raven sells fabrics to about a hundred and twenty different countries, while employing 2,700 people around the world with 1,700 of them being in the United States.
Glen Raven’s mission includes “enhancing life for global consumers with the world’s most innovative fabric-based, market-driven solutions.” Or in other words trying to give each of their customers around the world cutting edge fabric material to use for all different types of reasons including; automative parts, military equipment, and other. During the presentation that the Glen Raven employee gave our class she made a huge emphasis on innovation. She said that innovating and providing their customers with materials created by Glen Raven that their customers didn’t even know they needed is one of Glen Raven’s main goals. Glen Raven as a company has some specific values that all of their associates must abide by and according to the employee who gave us the presentation these values really help the company thrive. First off each associate must be engaged and come to work ready to create professional experiences through enthusiasm, creativity, innovation, teamwork, focus, diversity, and a shared vision. Also each employee needs to be able to embrace change or to be able to evolve technological and socially according to how the market is forcing our world to change. For example in the 90’s Glen Raven found their success on making professional sports jerseys like the National Football League’s jerseys but once that business left the United States and went over seas for lower costs on making the fabrics Glen Raven had to embrace the change and find a different way to be successful. So Glen Raven turned to the automotive business and they thrive on making fabrics for the inside of every car manufactured around the world. Also they found more business in helping our military by making certain fabrics that help us in combat for the soldiers. This was an example of how Glen Raven embraced change for profit because since they lost the jersey business they had to find another way to make profit. During the presentation the women talked about how Glen Raven is committed to safety of all of its employees and the devotion to each an every employee seems to help them be very successful.
Another very interesting fact about Glen Raven is that this company is the largest producer of sailcloth fabric in the world. The other types of fabrics that Glen Raven produces is furniture and awnings in fact, Glen Raven is the market leader in awnings and casual furniture. Also the company creates ventilation curtains called MineMesh that are used in coal mines by hanging the curtains up through the entire mine to help create more air flow for the miners to breathe better. Glen Raven also finds business in geosynthetics and is also a logistical company which delivers their fabric all around the world.
The business structure of the Glen Raven business definitely seems to help their business thrive and since this business has been able to stay alive since 1880 obviously their doing something right. It seems that their devotion to innovation and to embrace change for profit has definitely helped them in the long run. The company as a whole was very interesting and seeing how the fabric was actual made and dyed was very intriguing.
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