The Certified Flooring Installers (CFI) association and the Floor Covering Installation Contractors Association (FCICA) hosted their second annual convention in October 2024. The education sessions were packed, the energy level was high and attendance, both attendees and vendors, was higher than last year. 

“It always amazes me when you bring folks together and you get the relationships that they built over the years going,” said Steve Abernathy, COO for the World Floor Covering Association (WFCA)—the parent organization for CFI. “It creates an excitement level that just energizes everybody.”

Pat Kelly, board chair for the FCICA, echoes Abernathy, “I'll say that we carried the energy from last year throughout all of this past year of working together—FCICA and CFI. We heard from our key suppliers how grateful they were, and in fact, we've had a significant increase of additional suppliers—associate members—join FCICA and I think it's a direct result of what we're doing here.”

According to both Abernathy and Kelly, they observed the increase in supplier team support. For instance, Shaw returned this year with a much larger crew to promote its TotalWorx accessories line as well as its new Spanish-language TotalWorx catalog.

“Some of our key suppliers may have only brought one or two people last year,” said Kelly. “This year [they are] bringing three, five, six or more.”

“We've got some bringing more than ten people,” said Abernathy.

While the numbers were certainly significant, both point out that as a result the financial support also increased. So, the bottom line is that the CFI FCICA Convention is growing and gaining traction with flooring installers and contractors as well as manufacturers.

Floor Trends & Installation sat down with Abernathy and Kelly to discuss the growth each association has experienced in terms of education and membership as well as what business looks like for the commercial and residential segments over the course of the next year or so. 

The following are excerpts of our conversation, which you can listen to in its entirety below.

Floor Trends & Installation:  What did you guys learn last year that you brought back this year? It could be anything from the sessions, the demos, the trade show.

Pat Kelly: One thing on our education side, because that's really what we're all about is education and training, is that our membership wanted more options and more training opportunities and more diversity of training. Everything from how they put the flooring products on the floor to technology. [There’s] a lot of new technologies that are out there in our industry. There was this general groundswell of using this convention as an opportunity to be exposed to more things than we ever have so that companies can bring multiple people and go on different education tracks while they're here.

Steve Abernathy: I would just add to that...education is the core reason that we have this. Networking is certainly a big part of it, but I think a lot of folks come here for the training because we do offer some really top-notch, unparalleled, unmatched training in the industry.

One of the things we learned last year was the format of the expo, and that will change this year. As you'll see, the expo is much larger. Number one, we've got more exhibitors, but number two is the time for the expo has been expanded because everybody felt like we needed more time in the expo. So, we've done that this year. We've expanded that expo open hours, and we've included dinner in the expo. That's going to give folks a lot more time to experience all the partners and vendors that are here showcasing their products and services.

Floor Trends & Installation: Let's switch gears to training specifically, Steve, what is CFI working on regarding expanding installation, training and education?

Abernathy: We set out in 2024 to grow yet again in an exponential way. We made several shifts this year, one of which, as I mentioned last year, that we purposefully set a goal to resurrect the chapters program within CFI. It had been dormant for many years. We had one surviving chapter that had held on for the last ten years or so, and we have come back with a roar. Literally from the time we were here last year till today, we now have ten active chapters up and running across the country since last year.  

What that's doing for us, that's giving us a local presence. And by the way, we've got five more that'll be coming online here in the next few months. That gives us a local base to drive more training in local markets because those chapters become the hubs.

Secondly, we just purchased NFIC, which is another organization that was focused on wovens and Axminsters and those types of products, that is a niche in the marketplace. They have now merged with CFI, so we're now offering that training in addition to our training, and that's going to be expanded all across the country as well.

We didn't do any training regarding that over the years. Having that now as a part of CFI is going to be a nice additional offering for a very niche but a very exclusive skill set that I think a lot of folks could take advantage of and ramp up their revenue potential. There's so few people [installing] those products these days. That's going to give them a big opportunity as we train more people there to get ahold of those jobs that pay very well.

Floor Trends & Installation: Pat, can you give us an update on your CIM program?

Kelly: The CIM, which is a certified installation management program, continues to be our cornerstone certification for our members, primarily targeted towards project managers. It's the only certification like it in our industry. We've continued to focus on that and looked at ways to bring that to our membership into the market more readily across the country.  

One thing we did is we took what we had, the in-person 3 Days to CIM training, and we actually made some modifications to that and condensed it to a 2 Days to CIM, which makes it easier for contractors to send their project managers to be away for two days as opposed to three days. That's been very successful. We have taken those regionally around the country and partnered with one of our key distributors who will host a 2 Days to CIM certification training program at their facility. FCICA will send people there to facilitate that training.

We've also had great partnership from some of our manufacturing suppliers. I'll specifically call out Shaw. Shaw has done a great job and been very generous and letting us use some of their facilities in Cartersville, Calhoun and Dalton to host some training for our contractors. That's gone well.

I think one thing that's really unique is one of our associate members held a kind of an introductory CIM training for their customers out in one of their regional meetings in Montana. We facilitated that.

We're continuing to find and look for new ways to make it easier to bring the CIM program to our members. We also have our online CIM program. We are actively working on upgrading the program, making some updates to it.

We've had over 500 that have gone through the CIM program. We had at least 60 new CIMs in the past six months.

Floor Trends & Installation: In terms of education and training, this is the right time, right? The industry's hungry.

Abernathy: We're in just a little bit of softness. Let's just agree. I think the business has been soft overall for the flooring industry. It's a good time to go back and invest in yourself with training. And folks get busy.  What a great opportunity right now to invest in yourself and get your certifications, whether it be CIM or your CFI certification or get additional training that you need. We've seen some of that.

Over the last twelve months, we've held around 50 training events across the country. Fifty events in twelve months' time. That's a of activity. We've trained close to 500 people in that timeframe. So, it's a significant opportunity with timing and plus the fact that we're bringing more training to the marketplace. It's a great opportunity to do that right now.

Floor Trends & Installation: You talked about the industry being a little soft right now. What do you both see as the industry outlook for 2025 and specifically commercially? What do you guys see?

Kelly: I think we see it overall as steady. It has certainly softened this past year a little bit, but there's still good, significant, steady business out there. I think the opportunity for good quality contractors to take advantage of the business that's there because a lot of times when business is just gangbusters and anybody can get to work, then you have many times some of your quality contractors are not getting as much work as they could. Because you just got a lot of “hurry up, hurry up, hurry up” type thing. But now that things are much more focused and more steady growth—what growth there is—I think it allows great opportunity for quality contractors to come in. That's why we're looking to reinvest in our people, train our people and bring new people into training, use the CFI training, use the CIM training, to make ourselves better and position our certifications that we have to our end use customers. They're making the decision to go with the contract because they have CIM project managers, because they have CFI trained installers, so they can be more selective.

Floor Trends & Installation: It sounds like there really is a huge benefit, not just here educationally, but also outside of these walls. There is a real benefit for both of your organizations to feed off of each other. Is that accurate?

Abernathy: Well, certainly.

Kelly: Oh, yeah.

Abernathy: The residential commercial market is unique. We also train in commercial market. We're not solely residential [on the] CFI side, but we got a little bit more visibility into the residential than we do on the commercial side. Residentially speaking, Pat mentioned how the best contractors are going to get the business when things soften. It works the same way with installers. If the business softens and you have a leg up on the competition in terms of your credentials and your certifications and those types of things, then you can win the business as an installer. Someone else may not have those certifications. That's why training is so important in that regard.

I would also say from a residential standpoint we've had a dynamic here the last twelve months or so. The feds really went aggressive on interest rates and raised interest rates time after time after time. Well, we got a slowdown in residential because of that. Certainly, it directly affects the residential market particularly. Those high interest rates lingering there for a while have significantly affected the resale market because you've got folks that don't want to let go of their homes. They got 2%, 2.5% interest rates and now they're going to go to five or seven percent rates. They're not likely to sell a house and buy another one. Therefore, you don't get that business of replacement when you have somebody come in and occupy the house. But what's happened is the Fed has dropped to half a point not long ago. And I think if we can get down that path to another half a point, at some point it's going to help the residential side and it'll bounce back. There is pent-up demand for housing. Interest rates put squelch on it. Purposefully so by the Fed. So what I think from an outlook standpoint is, I agree with Pat. I see some steadiness. I actually see maybe some pent-up demand that's going to come back in on the residential side if we get a little bit lower interest rate. They're still a little bit higher than what the norm has been over the last ten years or so.

Floor Trends & Installation: Does either organization have any initiatives on the horizon that you'd like to mention?

Kelly: Our initiative is to continue to listen to our contractor members, to understand what needs do they have, and [encourage them] to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them. For example, in the commercial market, there are some segments that are growing rich from real opportunities. Healthcare is one. Senior living is another. We've seen a good bit of sports facilities. Those type [of projects] take a higher level of expertise of installation to do, especially [when it comes to the] products being used. What we're doing is constantly understanding those opportunities and then making sure that we're providing the education to our contractors to meet those opportunities and how do we help them with a lot of the new technologies that are out there from estimating to AI integration to ERP systems and all that to make us more productive and more profitable. There is a shortage of good people, not just installers, but just good people that really want to work. How do we provide them the tools, and these tools can be technology tools or other types of tools, to make them more productive? We're looking at how do we help them increase their productivity efficiencies?

Abernathy: I think for CFI, we've been known through the years for our work and training installers themselves on installation, but we have seen a real marked increase in interest in training non-installers on installation. We have a fantastic educational program for non-installers, and we're seeing a ton of folks show interest in that and start to schedule that for their teams that may work in the flooring business but may not be installers. They can benefit greatly from having that installation knowledge, whether they're salespeople, product teams with manufacturers, or whatever they may be.

Kelly: That's interesting because we're seeing the same thing on the CIM side. A lot of our contractors are having their salespeople, back office support staff, warehouse people, all go through the CIM training, and that serves as a common language for them. So, they all understand because we're in the project business. Even though they're not going to be the project manager, they understand the whole process. Then, they better understand where they fit in that process so they can add value to the process and make them successful. We're seeing a lot of our manufacturing partners looking to have their salespeople go through it.

Transcribed using Edisource International Newsdesk with AI Smart Assist.