Here are some basic facts about our company and the recognition it has earned over the years.
W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc., was founded January 1, 1958, in Newark, Delaware, by Wilbert L. (Bill) and Genevieve (Vieve) Gore.
Worldwide sales in the past fiscal year were $2 billion.
Gore is a privately held company.
Approximately 8,000 associates work in more than 45 plants and sales locations worldwide.
Sales and customer service sites are located in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States.
Manufacturing operations are clustered in the U.S., Germany, Scotland, Japan, and China.
By using proprietary technologies with the versatile polymer polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), Gore has created numerous products for electronic signal transmission; fabric laminates; medical implants; as well as membrane, filtration, sealant, and fibers technologies for diverse industries.
Gore established a venture partnership in Japan in 1969 with Junkosha Co., Ltd. In 1974 we co-founded Japan Gore-Tex, Inc.
Among Our Distinctions
For the eleventh consecutive year, Gore earned a position on FORTUNE's annual list of the U.S. "100 Best Companies to Work For," which was published in the magazine's January 28, 2008 issue. Gore ranked fifteenth overall. Gore is now one of only three companies to appear on all of the U.S. "100 Best Companies to Work For" lists since Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz initiated the ranking in 1984. This includes appearing on all eleven FORTUNE magazine lists (1998-2008) and in all three 100 Best Companies to Work For in America books (1984, 1985 and 1993). The other companies to appear on all lists are Goldman Sachs and Nordstrom.
Gore has also been named one of the best workplaces in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy for several years in a row.
In 2008, for the first time, Gore was named one of the best workplaces in Sweden and Spain.
Gore was the recipient of the United Kingdom's 1989 Pollution Abatement Technology Award and the 1985 Prince Philip Award for Polymers in the Service of Mankind.
DuPont's prestigious Plunkett Awards recognized GORE-TEX® Soft Tissue Patch (1988), GORE-TEX® Radome Laminate (1989), ONE-UP® Pump Diaphragms (1995), GLIDE® Floss (1995), STA-PURE® Pump Tubing (2000), GORE-TEX Antistatic Workwear (2002), ELIXIR® Strings (2004), GORE™ Universal Pipe Gasket (2004) and GORE™ OMNIBEND™ fiber (2006). Venture partner Junkosha Co., Ltd. was honored with a Plunkett Award for the gigahertz dielectric waveguide in 1993 and the JUNFLON hyper PFA tube in 2004. Venture partner Japan Gore-Tex Inc. received a 2006 Plunkett Award for the FLEXIBOND® product (2006).
Bob Gore, former president and CEO, was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1995. In 2003, for his contributions to the chemical industry, he received the Chemists' Club Winthrop-Sears Medal from the Chemical Heritage Foundation. In 2005 the Society of Chemical Industry presented him with the Perkin Medal, the highest honor given in the U.S. for outstanding work in applied chemistry. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.
Bill and Vieve Gore were inducted into Junior Achievement's Delaware Business Leaders Hall of Fame in 1991 and into the National Business Hall of Fame in 2003.