Shaw Industries: A History

An academic history of a carpet company in Dalton, Georgia, and I am aware of how that sounds.

Shaw became the largest carpet manufacturer in the world in a product where the customer genuinely cannot tell one roll from another, which by every rule in Competition Demystified should have been impossible. The way they did it was not the product at all. It was owning more of the chain than anybody else, from the yarn to the truck, so that their cost per yard was structurally lower and nobody could follow without rebuilding the whole thing.

There is a version of this available to almost any unglamorous business and it is the least discussed kind of advantage there is, because it is boring to build and it does not photograph well.

I bought this one because of Berkshire's interest in the industry and expected to skim it. I did not.