00:00over the next few years pierre would go on to expand the company into dozens of new industries
00:05including winemaking cigarette manufacturing plastics and chemicals but despite the company's
00:11growth it was clear that their true cash cow was the michelin tire company and so in 1946 pierre
00:17decided to focus on growing michelin into the world's largest tire manufacturer he began by
00:23investing heavily in new technologies to make the tire manufacturing process more efficient
00:28at the same time he began acquiring smaller tire companies to expand michelin's reach across europe
00:34but his greatest stroke of luck came in 1955 when the government awarded michelin the contract to supply
00:40tires for the united states military overnight michelin went from being a small european
00:45tire company to one of the biggest tire manufacturers in the world unfortunately pierre would not be
00:52around to see this success just a few years later he passed away and control of the company was
00:58handed to his son edward pinot unlike his father edward was not interested in expanding the company
01:05he was perfectly happy with how things were and wanted to focus on keeping the company profitable
01:10but as the years went on he began to realize that he had a serious problem the michelin company was
01:16about to enter a period of rapid growth but he had no interest in expanding the business eventually he
01:22would come to the realization that he needed to hire a professional to run the company and so he brought
01:27in a man named andre may together they would grow the company to new heights eventually making michelin the world's largest tire manufacturer
01:36but while the company was doing well the pinot family had a serious problem even though they owned seventy
01:42percent of michelin they only controlled about thirty percent of the voting shares and so even though they
01:48were the majority owner they had no say in how the company was being run
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