One of the global giants of the carpet industry, Spencer H. Wright, has announced he will step down as president of the Cobble organization after more than 30 years.

Mr. Wright will, however, retain the chairmanship of Tufting Machine Company Inc., the parent group in Dalton Georgia, which includes Cobble’s worldwide manufacturing, sales and distribution activities. Citing the need to “take a step back” from frontline leadership of the company, Mr Wright nevertheless remains an active and passionate proponent of the carpet industry’s continuing commercial and technical development. He will be succeeded as president of TMC Inc. by Geoff Hemingway, Managing Director of Cobble Blackburn Ltd., the UK-based producer of carpet tufting and Axminster weaving equipment, who will also retain his present duties.

Spencer Wright is widely regarded as one of the great pioneers of tufting technology. With an engineering degree, his business experience also included working with Price Waterhouse in New York and a period as a lobbyist in Washington. He bought the Singer Cobble business in 1976, setting up a new company known as Spencer Wright Industries, and soon afterwards relocated its US base to the carpet capital of Dalton.

At the same time he developed the British-headquartered Cobble business, establishing it firmly among the global leaders in tufting machinery and associated equipment. Spencer Wright Industries Inc. expanded steadily to take in wide-ranging interests in specialised engineering sectors, including automotive, aerospace and civil engineering. Later Mr Wright took over a local US bank, and as his investments increased was recognized as one of the leading figures in the business community across the Southern United States. Textile-related acquisitions over the years have also included UK knitting machine maker Camber International and various other smaller textile firms.

Mr Wright remains as chairman, president and Chief Executive Officer of Spencer Wright Industries, of which TMC Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Geoff Hemingway was appointed MD of Cobble Blackburn in 1997, following several years’ experience in the aerospace and machine tool sectors. He has led Cobble through a challenging period, playing a key role in expanding the company’s global influence into the Middle and Far East, and setting up Cobble CTS as a joint-venture operation in Shanghai to serve the burgeoning Chinese market. He also served for three years as chairman of the British Textile Machinery Association.

A major commercial move saw Cobble acquire the Crabtree Axminster machinery business in 2000, and technical progress in tufting has accelerated with the spread of servo- and microprocessor-based controls and the refinement of patterning techniques. Basic research, in collaboration with UK universities, has produced significant benefits in the design of gauge parts and other key components for tufting. Today, Cobble is the biggest name in UK textile machinery manufacturing, and with its US parent company is one of three major players in tufting machinery worldwide.