At its spring conference, members of the National Floorcovering Alliance celebrated the upcoming retirement of Roger Voge, Oklahoma flooring divisional president, Star Lumber, after a 43-year career with the last 33 being with Star and the last 21 being in the flooring division. Voge leads the company’s Oklahoma commercial and builder business and was formerly responsible for all aspects of the flooring division in both Kansas and Oklahoma for more than 17 years. Floor Trends recently had the honor of hearing about some of his experiences and outlook for the business.
Voge: I have been attending as a member of the NFA meetings for 21 years. I wasn’t part of the founding members; I was in the second wave. When we came in, there were 12 to 14 members. Nebraska Furniture Mart gave us the invite, and it was a chance to team together with other big dealers. They were putting together rebates differently than the other buying groups that take all the revenue in and take their overhead out and then distribute to the members. It was attractive to be in a group where you received 100 percent of the money earned based on your purchases. Initially we had no overhead and all work was done by the members. Now we have costs for a very small staff and pay for these and meeting costs out of other sources so we still receive 100% of individual rebates earned.