QFloors: The Power of Partnerships

QFloors Co-founders Chad and Trent Ogden.

This was the difficult message Trent Ogden (now CFO of QFloors) shared with his father, Steve, more than 25 years ago. His father owned a string of flooring stores in the intermountain west.

Sales were robust, showrooms were busy, and Steve had assumed this meant he had plenty to spend on advertising and purchasing additional stock. He knew how to sell carpet, having grownup in the business. He knew how to promote, how to install, and how to keep customers happy.

He just didn’t know accounting. So he managed his business and made decisions by assessing his bank account balance, not by analyzing his financial statements, let alone following a long-term business plan.

But now Trent, as a 3rd generation Ogden in the flooring industry, had started helping with the finances, newly armed with a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and an MBA. Trent understood the importance of being able to generate (and understand)monthly financial statements.

He understood how essential it was to make sure margins were high enough to cover costs. He understood that while flooring store owners had a lot of genius in them, most were not accounting and finance specialists. And he understood that flooring dealers needed a way to instantly (and accurately) see just what their business was doing, day-to-day.

This was part of the impetus for Trent to put his head together with his computer engineer brother Chad to create QFloors, a user-friendly business management software for the flooring industry. That was 22 years ago.

But it has always been about more than simply selling software. The brothers both feel passionate that their role is to partner with each customer, helping them operate their business to the greatest advantage, both from an efficiency and a profitability standpoint. The software is the tool to help them do that.

QFloors tries to assist dealers as they run their businesses, providing the tool (the software), training, and support needed to organize and streamline operations. In turn, their dealer customers not only support the software company financially, but they help give valuable feedback and suggestions for continued development, making the product even better.

Tanya Kupferschmid of Ethical Flooring agrees on the importance of the partnership relationship:

Despite our lack of business experience initially, QFloors has helped us along the way. One big way is by making the financial part easy to understand. It helped us understand and identify our margins and profits. It’s allowed us to keep a constant watch on our company’s health, all from the computer.

I do the bookkeeping and came into it without any kind of accounting background. I just had to learn as I went. QFloors made that process so simple. Materials, payments, and all of the other information, from start to finish, it’s all just right there on the screen. So it’s fluid and integrated, and even without an accounting background, it’s not confusing. All the info you need is just right

Michael Quinn of Kimi's Carpets also values his partnership with QFloors:

In turn, customers’ insights and feedback from their boots-on-the-ground use of QFloors have brought about valuable improvements and enhancements over the years. For the past 22 years, development roundtable meetings have been held at the biannual QFloors Users Conference.

During these conferences, attendees would chime in with their Wish List for the software. They’d discuss each suggestion as a group, Chad weighing in on the time estimated to make those particular changes, and the group would vote on what they found to be most important. And that would direct the development for the following two years.

When a relationship of reciprocity exists, everyone benefits. ■