Haines, the nation’s largest floor covering distributor, announced on Jan. 3, 2013 the acquisition of Allied Products of Baltimore, Md., effective January 1, 2013. Allied is a 72-year old distributor of flooring related supplies and sundries with eleven locations throughout Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Allied operates in those four states plus DC and Delaware and areas of New Jersey and West Virginia. Allied employs forty four people and has sales revenue in excess of ten million dollars.
Haines’ CEO and president, Bruce Zwicker, said, “Haines is a 138-year-old company with a rich heritage and strong values towards our customers and people. Those values are shared by Allied Products. Together we are a great combination of complementary businesses that make money and can improve together. Haines is now resuming its growth strategy”.
All Allied employees are being hired by Haines and all locations will remain open. The current management will continue to run the business and join the Haines team. This includes Bob Davison, the former primary owner of Allied, his partner, Ken Wells, and Davison’s son, Eric Davison. Fred Reitz, Haines vice president of Operations and Development, reporting to Zwicker, will be the liaison between Haines and Allied.
Fred Reitz said, “Allied will be run as a separate business with only back office activities integrated. In this way we keep the integrity of the supplies business methods of doing business and cause little change for Allied Product’s customers and suppliers. Over time we will invest in Allied and make sensible improvements”.
John Coakley, Haines’ CFO, said, “Keeping our new Haines supplies business (through Allied) separate from the Haines floor covering business also ensures that the floor covering customers and suppliers are not subject to much change at all”.
Bob Davison, now part of the Haines team, said. “All of us at Allied Products will have to work together with the Haines team to accomplish our growth goal and improvements. We don’t expect everything to change. We will figure out what are the most important things to improve and how best to improve over time.”
Ken Wells, also newly part of the Allied team said, “Of course, the first priority is to keep the business running smoothly and make our customers, suppliers, and employees feel as comfortable as possible. Whenever two companies come together there is always going to be apprehension and curiosity. It may take awhile for us to satisfy that curiosity and help everyone feel comfortable with the change.”
Zwicker added, “I believe that the combination of these two excellent companies and their complementary but separate businesses will be great for customers, suppliers, and employees Our goal is to grow the supplies business, and the floor covering business, in Haines’ entire territory in the Mid Atlantic and Southeast. Our other goal is to be the best distributor we can be in floor covering and supplies for the sake of our customers, suppliers, and employees.”