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At this time, Enterprise was starting to expand at a faster pace, first throughout Florida where a state law on car insurance helped boost the rental business for a few years and then throughout the Midwest and the great plains. Kansas City was the fourth area that was chosen for expansion. Jack Taylor didn't feel quite ready yet for larger cities such as Chicago or New York. In 1976 Jack and his son Andy decided to take Enterprise into an aggressive growth phase that would propel Enterprise into the largest rental company in the U.S by the mid 1990's. Houston and Indiana were added during the mid 1970's. In 1979 and 1980 Jack decided that he was ready to tackle on big cities and entered the Dallas and San Francisco markets. Around that time, they also stated buying into other companies such as the Keefe coffee maker to diversify business, though a couple failures in that area would limit the number of acquisitions. Also, 1980 saw Andy Taylor taking the presidency of the company, though Jack still acted as chairman (Enterprise to this day is a privately owned company so there is no board of investors to report to). 1983 saw the opening of the first office in Chicago. By then the South from Florida to California has been the primary focus of Enterprise (Indiana, St. Louis and Kansas City being the only Midwest locations). Enterprise was now entering markets with more established competition but also a rather larger customer base. The following years saw Washington D.C (1984), Philadelphia (1985), Baltimore (1986) and Detroit (1987) were added to the list. As Enterprise grew so did its reputation, it started winning some trophies for its superior customer service and has been winning some ever since. Having a strong foothold across the Midwest and being successful in large cities, Enterprise became fully national in the beginning of the 1990's as they entered the Northeastern and Northwestern United States. New York, Boston were entered as well as Seattle and Portland. Enterprise was now truly a national rental company.
As the customer base grew, Enterprise went where Jack had refused to go for years: the airports. Despite the price competition, Enterprise kept to its customer service image and is now very successful at airports. At the same time, Enterprise became an international company as office were first opened in Canada (1994), Great Britain (1994), Germany (1997) and Ireland (1997). Having been very successful in Canada and Great Britain and growing in Ireland and Germany, Enterprise is looking at growing larger in Europe. Spain and France are both being looked at for future expansion.
One of the things that made Enterprise successful was the fact that they treated customers and employees well. Also the fact that Jack Taylor was willing to let other managers take hold of the reigns as more offices opened up helped his company grow faster. A strong company identity was also pushed so that Enterprise employees were more part of a large family rather that just employees. He also believed in promotion from within, which is why 99% of Enterprise employees started at the bottom as management trainees or interns. There are only a few accounting and computer systems employees who came in directly to the position they are at currently. This promotion lets first time employees know that the manager will understand the difficulties in learning the job, will understand why mistakes are made and will know how to effectively teach the skills needed to do well.
All the historical facts were found using these sources:
http://onlinepressroom.net/erac/ 2003 Enterprise rent-a-car company 06/25/04-07/08/04
Exceeding expectations, Stan Burns, 1997 Greenwich Publishing Group Inc. Lyme, Connecticut
Some of the facts about the Ohio and Grandview locations were given by:
Lori Whitmore, Human resource director, Columbus Group
Kevin Gibson, Branch Manager, branch 3849(Grandview) |
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