QFloors employees recently gathered to celebrate the flooring software company’s 25th anniversary. The event and conversations sparked nostalgia and sentimentality for co-founders Chad and Trent Ogden.
Trent Ogden reflected at the event, “In an era where not many employees stay with a company for 25 years, we are grateful for all of our team members that have been with us for nearly that long. And there are also a lot who have joined us in the past 7-8 years of explosive growth. Because quite a few of our employees are remote, it was really gratifying to have everyone come together to pause to celebrate. And as I looked around the room and looked at all of the people who were depending on QFloors for their livelihood, I was a little emotional about the thought of being part of providing that well being. We’ve come a long way. It was a touching experience to have everyone gather and celebrate together today.”
The QFloors team shared the following while reminiscing about the company’s beginning:
In late January 1999, Chad Ogden’s mind was buzzing with ideas. He had spent a long day at the Surfaces tradeshow in Vegas with his dad and brother, trying to find the right software fit for his father’s chain of flooring stores. Although he’d stepped away from the family business and embarked on a computer engineering career more than a decade earlier, Chad was there for his technical expertise.
The three of them had spent hours talking about what was needed in a flooring software program. His father, Steve Ogden, a non-tech-savvy but successful owner of a flooring store chain in the intermountain west, stressed the need for the software to be user-friendly. He wanted a system where he could quickly and easily see key information telling him exactly how his stores were performing, in real time, rather than waiting for the CPA to inform him whether he was losing or earning money six months after the fact.
Trent Ogden, who had an accounting degree and years of experience as controller in the family flooring chain, emphasized the importance of creating a system that every employee could use, rather than just one person. Back then, almost everyone simply hand-wrote proposals and sales orders, installation instructions, customer contact info, purchase orders, etc., and then tossed them into an “in box” for someone to record and process later.
Chad, as the computer programmer in the group, was adamant that rather than the DOS-systems dominating the flooring market at the time, this program needed to be created in a Windows platform. With those mandates in mind, Chad diagrammed the design that was in his head. And that was the beginning of QFloors.
Looking to the Future
Today the company has more than 1,300 flooring businesses using its core business management software, and even more when you add in the various other products it sells and supports. The company currently employs 45 people. And according to Chad and Trent Ogden, things are just getting started.
“It’s an exciting time for us,” said Chad Ogden. “We now have a strong, solid foundation to build upon. We have great partnerships with our customers and with others in the industry. And that allows us to really focus on breaking new ground from a technology standpoint.”
The company is in various stages of development with multiple software products for flooring dealers specializing in retail/residential, commercial, multi-family housing, builder, mobile showroom, and more. The ERP software currently integrates with third party products like visualizers, estimators, CRM (lead management), scheduling, credit card processing, websites and digital marketing, showroom tagging, review generation, installer communication, and other tools, with more integrations in the works.
QFloors plans to celebrate the landmark anniversary over the next several months with a variety of events, discounts, and promotions. Aerin Packard, marketing director, explained, “First, we had a party celebrating our employees. Their loyalty, their brains, and their shared passion for helping our customers has been integral to us reaching this milestone. We will also be doing a special 25th anniversary Users Conference cruise to Alaska next summer with our customers. Kind of a combination of training, networking, collaborating, and celebrating together. And then we have lined up special anniversary discount pricing for new and existing customers to take advantage of over the next few months.”
Chad Ogden adds, “Back in our early days, I don’t think we could have imagined that 25 years later we would be where we are today, doing what we’re doing, and making a difference in the industry. But here we are. It’s been a great ride. We appreciate our industry partners and our customers for coming along on that ride with us.”
Steve Ogden passed away in 2023, but his sons think he’d be happy with the company created from the impetus of his need for better technology.
Click here to watch a video about the company’s 25th anniversary.