Lenexa, Kan.—The International Certified Floorcovering Installers Association, Inc. (CFI) announced a partnership with Legacy Flooring of Raleigh, N.C., to help transitioning veterans find a career in the floor covering installation trade.
Under their non-profit entity, Leave A Legacy Foundation, Legacy Flooring’s mission is to assist the CFI with the Next Generation initiative to recruit new installers for the floorcovering installation industry. Their personnel will work with the various military transition offices in an attempt to attract veterans and their families to the training classes.
“Legacy Flooring has always prioritized hiring veterans. I became aware of CFI’s Next Generation initiative earlier this year,” said Ian Durant, owner and CEO, Legacy Flooring. “The CFI has been the gold standard for flooring installation training for over 23 years so it made perfect sense to align with them.”
According to CFI sources, the organization is in the process of submitting an application to the state of Texas to become a Veteran’s Administration authorized trade school. This would allow post-9/11 veterans and their families to have their tuitions subsidized by the G.I. Bill, and pre-9/11 veterans by the Montgomery Bill and others.
“We are glad to have the assistance of Legacy Flooring for the Next Generation initiative,” said Robert Varden, vice president, CFI. “We have a brick and mortar training center in Forney, Texas, which has conducted a handful of successful training classes to date. One of our ongoing challenges continues to be the amount of travel required by our enrolled students. By establishing a network of donated service providers and military spaces, our partner, Legacy Flooring, will help CFI bring students much closer to a classroom. This will help to drive enrollment by identifying new training spaces with a focus on underutilized military property.”
Legacy Flooring will also partner with other installation service providers, like Installation Services of Troy, in Michigan, to share ideas and recruit other like-minded service providers to establish schools across the country. “Our industry is in competition with dozens of other construction trades. Individuals can make a really good living in our business as a hard working apprentice and then make the jump to a journeyman business owner with multiple crews in a relatively short amount of time compared to those in other trades,” said Dave Garden, installation services operations manager and CFI master II certified installer.