Interface, Inc.: Business Case Study

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In 1973, Ray Anderson started a company called Interface, it manufactured carpet tiles. During which the company flourished and expanded. While making remarks on the company’s environmental vision, he went through a fundamental perspective change. Anderson planned to move the company away from the traditional industrial model and towards a business focused on sustainability. In 1987, the company’s name was changed to Interface, Inc. Interface became the undisputed world leader in carpet tiles. Over the years, the company’s growth has been augmented by more than 50 acquisitions. It entered the residential market in 2003 with the introduction of FLOR. By the time of his epiphany in 1994, Ray Anderson was a 60-year-old executive who had given …show more content…
And theft of our children’s future would someday be a crime. But I realized for that to be true for theft of our children’s future to be a crime there must be a clear, demonstrable alternative to the “take/make/waste” Industrial System.(Anderson) He read Paul Hawken’s book, “The Ecology of Commerce”, and saw how business and industry are causing the major decline in the biosphere.He wanted to set an example of sustainability to the world, “if Hawken is right and business and industry must lead, who will lead business and industry? Unless someone leads, no one will”. Anderson wanted to change the world in an environmental way. He hopes to change how business is conducted between each other.
His vision for the 21st century: Interface would no longer use virgin nylon yarn to stitch its fabrics. Interface's factories and offices would use power from a renewable sources only. It would reclaim its own products and use them as raw material for new textiles. And Interface would pull its suppliers and customers into its sustainability orbit, insisting that the products it bought be recyclable and nontoxic, pushing clients to think differently about carpeting - and about their own businesses. "I want to pioneer the company of the next industrial revolution," says Ray
…show more content…
Today that bottom line is vastly subsidized. If anyone of us were paying the full cost of oil our bottom lines would be very different. If you internalize the cost of oil, look at the cost of the war in the Middle East or the cost of global warming for future generations, if you internalize those external costs and what you pay, that bottom line would look very different, whatever business you are in. If we somehow put a value on species extinction and factor that into our costs that bottom line would look very different. So what we have is a dishonest market that does not take into account all the costs when it establishes its prices. We need an honest marketplace before we can let the market work for sustainability rather than against it as it works

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