Malden Mills
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Malden Mills owner and CEO had several problems; most notably he was considering bankruptcy for the second time in 20 yrs. Another perhaps less important to the other executives but much more important to Aaron Fueurstein, was what the court action would mean to the employees of his textile company. The Chapter 11 invocation meant a restructuring of the family owned 95 year old company. The impending change was endangering several long term employees way of making a living. At its inception Malden Mills was one of many New England textile mills, it primarily produced knitted products. When the competing mills went south to be closer to the raw materials like cotton Malden was able to buy up existing mills cheaply. This worked good for awhile but in 1956 Aaron took over and started to convert the mill from yarn to fabric. Having bought up many old mills in nearby towns Fueurstein was able to use them to dye the fabric and assembly it in the Lawrence plant. The mill was successful until and Malden Mills faced its first bankruptcy. Against internal opposition Aaron restructured the mill to make Polartec® material that was basically created by Malden employees from recycled plastic. This development was a success, garnering $200 million a year business from customers like L.L.Bean® and Lands End® and the mill prospered again, until a fire in 1995.
The fire whether the owner wanted to admit it or not, was the beginning of the end for Malden Mills, maybe if other decisions had been made or advice had been accepted, the future of the mill may have had a happier ending. The mill family sprang into action immediately. Human Resources personnel headed by Bill Perez and including Alan Kraunelis, and Kathy Skala, located a vacant mall and negotiated space for a workers center that could be used by employees for updates on the companys rebuilding efforts, pick up their unemployment checks and to receive job and computer training that would parallel the new machines that were replacing outdated damaged equipment. Another person that was memorable for quick thinking, fast acting, and problem solving techniques was Patti Fitzpatrick. She organized company managers at her home, got production up and running in three days and reopened a closed division in a couple of weeks. Her innovative reaction to the fire should have inspired Aaron to pay attention to her other ideas, which were cost effective and long term, however that was not to be. Fitzpatricks ideas to install automated labor saving machinery and to bring production down from the plant in Maine were met with instant and vehement resistance from Fueurstein and eventually this disagreement was settled by Fitzpatrick being fired. This was after he was quoted as saying, “Before the fire, that plant produced 130,000 yards a week, a few weeks after the fire it was up to 230,000 yards. Our people became very creative. They were willing to work 25 hours a day.” (Boulay) In public Fueurstein said all the right things but behind the scenes he had tunnel-vision and that contributed to the mills downfall. He was blinded by his goal to help the employees and he refused to change with the changing times.
Aaron Fueurstein was one of the most employee oriented CEOs to be found but