By Ken Ryan
White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.—Mullican returned to its West Virginia roots this month to celebrate its 30th anniversary as a hardwood flooring manufacturer. The company chose the iconic Greenbrier resort here for the gathering, which featured 240 guests, among them leading Mullican distributors, core lumber suppliers and other key vendors.
Starting with 10 SKUs in 1985, today Mullican offers “1,000 SKUs across prefinished solid, unfinished solid—so many surface textures it blows my mind,” said Neil Poland, president of Mullican. “We are going to keep producing leading-edge styles to keep pace with the latest design trends.”
Except for a brief pre-event meeting, the two days were devoted to fun and fellowship. “We wanted to celebrate in a big way…30 years is a tremendous accomplishment,” added Poland, who joined the company 17 years ago.
Mullican’s birthplace, Ronceverte, W. Va., is just 10 miles from Greenbrier. The company was founded by Bill Mullican, Sr., who bought a facility that made flooring for large trucks and converted the site into a hardwood manufacturing business.
Originally known for unfinished solid wood flooring sourced from Appalachian forests, Mullican has since grown into an international competitor with a broad range of prefinished, engineered and exotic products. In all, it offers more than 1,500 products through 50 distributors and 5,000 retailers. Mullican still operates the original plant in Ronceverte while manufacturing hardwood in Johnson City, Tenn., its headquarters; Norton, Va.; and Holland, N.Y.
In recent years Mullican has increased its domestic production by shifting a large segment of its engineered manufacturing from Asia to the renovated facility in Johnson City.