Dalton—The Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) recently welcomed HMTX Industries as a new supporter to its growing list of flooring industry companies willing to step up and support the recruitment, scholarship and placement initiatives developed by the FCEF. HMTX offers a wide range of resilient flooring products for residential and commercial applications with its Metroflor, Teknoflor and Aspecta brands.
“Metroflor, along with HMTX and its Teknoflor and Aspecta brands, is excited to be a part of the progress FCEF is making,” said Russel Rogg, president of Metroflor. “We are eager to support FCEF in its mission to bring new, young talent into our industry, ensuring our products are installed with quality craftsmanship. HMTX and its brands take pride in putting people before profits and their support of FCEF shows they’re eager to step up to make the industry better for everyone.”
According to Jim Aaron, executive director of FCEF, the shortage of installers isn’t going to go away on its own. “We need everyone in the industry to make recruitment of a new generation of flooring craftsmen a priority now before it’s too late,” Aaron said.
In 2022, the FCEF celebrated the launch of its first technical college flooring installation program and has since rolled out the program at several other colleges. It has made great strides in connecting with advisors and school administrators to spread awareness of the flooring craftsman career path.
“We’ve made some substantial progress in 2022, but we still have a long way to go,” Aaron shared. “In order to keep up our momentum, we need more partners like HMTX to step up.”
According to the organization, financial support is essential to keeping FCEF operations and core programs running, but tool and product donations are also helpful. The FCEF said these donated materials are used to support technical college programs, making it easier to get them launched along with start-up funding needed for each program.