Armstrong World Industries

We will be a fast and flexible learning organization committed to ever-improving the value of Armstrong for our employees, customers, and shareholders. We will be a world leader in all our businesses by excelling in customer satisfaction, innovation, marketing, and manufacturing. These capabilities, our people, and our commitment to quality will be our global platform for growth. Armstrong World Industries, Inc. is a leading international manufacturer and marketer of products used to finish interiors of homes and other buildings. Its products include floor coverings, ceilings, and adhesives. To a lesser extent the company also produces specialty products such as gaskets and insulation materials for the building, automotive, textile, and other industries. Armstrong also holds a 33 percent stake in Dal-Tile International Inc., a leading producer of ceramic tile in North America. About one-third of the company's overall sales are derived outside the United States. Armstrong's original business was cutting cork stoppers, first by hand then after 1862 by machine, from the bark of cork trees which grow in Portugal, Spain, and northern Africa. During the Civil War, 1861 to 1865, the company made bottle stoppers for the Union Army and was singled out for official praise for fulfilling its contracts at the agreed prices with top-grade corks. This good publicity enabled Armstrong to land a large contract with a New York drug firm after the war, beginning the move toward national distribution of its products. In 1864 Thomas Armstrong pioneered the concept of brand-name recognition in his industry by stamping "Armstrong" on each cork and offering a written guarantee of quality with each sale. Originally cork was purchased from American importers, but in 1878 Armstrong made arrangements to purchase, process, and ship corkwood and corks direct from Spain, thus beginning the foreign operations that eventually would make the company the largest cork processor in Spain. By the 1890s Armstrong was the world's largest cork company, employing more than 750 people, most of whom Thomas Armstrong knew by name. In 1891 the company incorporated as Armstrong, Brother & Company, Inc. and, in 1893, purchased the Lancaster Cork Works, beginning its long involvement with the Pennsylvania Dutch area. During the 1890s Armstrong expanded its cork product line to include insulation, cork-board, gaskets, and flexible coverings for machinery. In addition, foreign markets were expanded with sales offices opening in Montreal and Toronto in 1895. In that year the corporate name was changed to Armstrong Cork Company. Thomas Armstrong died in 1908 and was succeeded as president by his son, Charles Dickey Armstrong. Under Charles Armstrong's leadership the firm expanded its product lines with cork insulating board and other insulating materials, packaging closures, and gaskets, as well as linoleum and related flooring materials, becoming in the process a much more consumer-oriented company than before. He also continued his father's policy of responsibility towards his employees by initiating benefits that were rare, if not unprecedented, early in this century. In 1909 he established free dental service for employees. Other pioneering examples of corporate responsibility followed: extra pay for overtime in 1913, shop committees to communicate with management in 1919, paid vacations in 1924, and group life insurance in 1931. Armstrong was one of the first U.S. companies to provide such fringe benefits as pensions and group medical insurance. Thus Charles Armstrong's presidency expressed the company's philosophy that employees should be provided for voluntarily by industry rather than by means of government compulsion. Charles Armstrong became chairman of the board in 1928 and the next year John J. Evans succeeded him as president. In 1934, the vice-president, Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., who was to have a great impact on the company's development, became the next pr