Las Vegas—During a special ceremony here at TISE 2024, the World Floor Covering Association (WFCA) presented the 2024 Tom Jennings Champion Awards to Chad Ogden, CEO of QFloors, and, posthumously, to Mike Faust, the former owner and founder of Carpeting by Mike in Somerset, Wis. Faust passed away in 2018.
“Mike was an amazing man who understood the power of his ‘dash,’ that space between your birth date and your life end date,” said Scott Humphrey, WFCA CEO, in his opening remarks at the awards presentation. “It’s the ‘dash’ that makes you who you are, and what you are is the legacy that will outlive you. The Michael Faust legacy outlives him every day. Though he passed in 2018, he left behind a living legacy for his daughter, Typhannie (Harker).”
Faust was not only highly regarded in the community where he started his retail flooring business more than 20 years ago, but he had experience supporting the flooring industry on an international level. “Mike traveled the world, advancing his trade in different countries to let people know what it was like to be a part of the flooring industry and to share his love for humankind,” Humphrey added.
Harker, Faust’s daughter who tagged alongside her father at the store since she was 6 years old, now runs the business full time. She expressed gratitude to all who attended the ceremony to honor her father. “This means the world to me,” she said. “When my dad was sick and knew his time was limited, he gave me a choice: ‘Do we close the business, or are you ready to run it?’ I said: ‘Dad, I really think I can do this.’ He was such a kind and humble human being, and I try to carry on his legacy. There’s so much ugliness in this world today, and we need to be more kind to one another.”
Honoring Ogden
The second recipient of the Tom Jennings Champion Award, Chad Ogden, shared similarities to Faust, according to Humphrey. “They both understood the power of their dash,” he stated. “Chad grew up in the flooring business. His dad had a flooring store where he started working when he was 12 years old. But Chad decided to go a different route; he had an interest in computers, earned a degree and went to work for a tech company for 10 year before deciding to use that knowledge to come back and make an impact on the industry that he loved. So he created a software system that retailers could use within their own stores. And once he found out how much it worked he decided to share that with the rest of the industry. He and his brother, Trent, have run this company and impacted the lives of businesses and many throughout the flooring industry. More than anything, Chad doesn’t care as much about your business as he cares about you. And that’s what makes Chad and QFloors so unique.”
Ogden was gracious in accepting the honor. “I have a team of people behind me who are the people who really make everything happen,” he told attendees. “When my brother and I got into this business many years ago, we felt like the industry was underserved; the technology was lagging behind and we wanted to help the industry. I think we’ve been able to do that to some extent over the past 25 years. So I’m very honored to receive this award and especially what it stands for. Thank you for this.”