During a recent briefing of the floor covering trade press convened, in the words of Chief Operating Officer and Residential President Ralph Boe, to “set the story straight,” Beaulieu management explained how the company’s January 2000 acquisition of LDBrinkman, then the largest flooring distributor in the United States, combined with a slowing economy to plunge the nation’s No. 3 carpet mill into difficult financial straits.
“The last two-and-a-half years have been a real tough time,” company CEO Carl Bouckaert explained. “Everything that you can imagine went wrong in 2000.”