As a cooperative, CCA Global Partners’ Frank Chiera, senior vice president of marketing and advertising, believes giving back is in the organization’s DNA. “We always say we’re retailers helping retailers, but at the end of day, we’re a company with heart and a mission to better the lives of our customers and our employees, and the right thing to do is to be more civic minded and get involved with the community wherever possible,” he shared.
As members find new ways to give back on local and national levels, Chiera said those efforts, while being good for business, are not always about the bottom line. “When you factor in what makes up the company’s profitability, it’s a combination of things. It’s employee happiness, that customers feel that you’re giving back to the community, the owner feeling good about what the company does and how he or she differentiates from other retailers or big box stores,” he shared.
Design for a Difference
A big focus for CCA is the International Design Guild’s Design for a Difference initiative, Chiera said. “It has been a labor of love,” he said. What started as a contest has grown into a national movement where interior designers and showroom owners collaborate to work on makeovers for charities throughout the U.S. and Canada. “We feel through the power of design, we can change lives globally,” Chiera said. “Ultimately, our goal would be to have every store participate in the movement.” Roughly half of their membership has participated in a Design for a Difference event in some way, shape or form, he added.
The most recent Design for a Difference Reveal was for Centro Hispano in Madison, Wis. The center is the largest social services provider for Latinos in Dane County, Wis., but its space was in need of a makeover. Bob Tobe, CEO, Floor360, chose the center as 2017’s Design for a Difference recipient, and the 12,000-square-foot, $600,000 makeover involved 50 people working construction and 38 design team members who worked over the course of six months to bring the project to life.
Installing Happiness
The Installing Happiness Project is the official Flooring America/Flooring Canada charitable program. The effort serves as an overarching umbrella to support the collective efforts of all local members’ charitable works.
Last year, many members did great things in their communities, including Dave Griggs of Dave Griggs’ Flooring America in Columbia, Mo. Griggs and his team helped the local nonprofit Welcome Home, a veteran-centric transitional housing facility, in completing a new shelter for homeless veterans. The center was in need of an expansion to help accommodate the many veterans who they had to turn away due to lack of funding.
Griggs helped out with the project by donating flooring. Griggs said the project "solves a tremendous need in our community."
"I served in the Army during the Vietnam War, so I have a personal connection to the needs that are here, but also have a personal connection to this organizations long-term history in Columbia," Griggs said.
Jenny Mrozinski of Ann Arbor Flooring America took a different approach. The store participated in four build days and sponsored the WomenBuild 2017 event to support a local mother’s journey to homeownership with Habitat for Humanity Huron Valley. Mrozinski and a team from Ann Arbor Flooring also worked with Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala, joining Habitat groups from Ann Arbor, Mich., and Denver to build two homes and provide smokeless stoves to families in Guatemala.
Centro Hispano in Madison, Wis., was selected by Floor360 as the recipient for 2017’s Design for a Difference makeover.