3 How might your various strategies change and what further considerations would need to be made if, after initial success in the US market, the Middle East and Japan offered good export opportunities? This company was founded in 2000 by William Jackson and John Turner in Kidderminster, a UK town with a tradition of carpet making going back hundreds of years. Carpet manufacture and related activities had been the major provider of employment in the area up until the late 1960s.

However, after that date the carpet industry, like many other areas of British textiles, faced problems and decline.

Paradoxically, it was this decline that brought Quality Kraft Carpets into existence. William Jackson had been production manager with one of the largest carpet-manufacturing firms in the area, with a worldwide reputation for quality carpets. John Turner had been a loom tuner (a maintenance engineer) responsible for maintaining over 100 carpet looms for another large company. Jackson had been made redundant as a result of a drastic decline in orders and Turner’s company had gone into liquidation. They were good friends and since their unemployment had come at the same time they decided to start their own small company, specialising in the product they knew best – traditional, woven, good-quality Axminster carpets.

Because so many firms in the area were either closing down or cutting back production, there was a steady supply of textile machinery being sold very cheaply by local auctioneers. By pooling their respective resources, plus help from the bank, they were able to acquire a 15-year lease on a small factory and purchase enough equipment to enable them to commence production.