Bonnie Modling Fenwick was a dental hygienist when her father asked her to think about joining his flooring business.
Changing professions was not on her radar. She studied hard to earn her license and she enjoyed the work.
The timing was right when Calvin Modling asked, “When are you going to come learn this business?”
That was back in 2002 or 2003, Fenwick said, and the dentist she worked for had started talking about retirement.
She told her father fairly quickly that she was ready.
Fenwick, 58, worked her way up to become president of Best Buy Floors Inc. 10 years ago.
Modling, 81, is the CEO.
Other family members work for the company as well.
Best Buy Floors is the parent company of three Carpet One Floor & Home stores, two Flooring America stores, and a builder division, Designers & Builders Source Inc., all in Northeast Florida.
It has 52 employees and more than 150 subcontractors. Its eight warehouses in Orange Park and St. Augustine total about 40,000 square feet of space.
Best Buy Floors is a member of CCA Global Partners, originally called Carpet Co-op of America, a shared services membership purchasing cooperative company founded in 1984 as a carpet cooperative business in Manchester, New Hampshire, according to ccaglobalpartners.com. It has since expanded into 14 co-ops covering several industries.
It is not a franchise. The model allows Best Buy Floors to own their businesses while benefiting from pricing negotiations and product lines and labels.
“You’re locally owned, but you’re with like-minded people and you get national buying power,” Fenwick said.
“All those 2,000 (Carpet One and Flooring America) stores (across the U.S.) are locally owned by the people in their areas, and just go through the system of CCA with samples and buying and procedures and all that, but they let you run your own business,” Modling said.
He said joining a cooperative was the best business decision he ever made.
Launching the business
Modling opened his first flooring shop, Consumer Fashions, in 1977.
He was working in sales at a store called Economy Decorators in North Jacksonville. One of his accounts was with homebuilder Ron Coppenbarger, who encouraged Modling to start his own business and became his business partner.
Modling bought out Coppenbarger in 2021.
“It was a blessing to have him come and talk me into doing this, because it got me out of a dead-end job. I was happy, but there was nowhere to go,” he said.
Consumer Fashions started in a small office with no storage space off Edison Avenue in West Jacksonville. Modling moved several times as the business grew, typically operating in 50-by-80-square-foot storefronts.
By 1985, he was operating in a building at 8771 Philips Highway.
Modling was driving by a home a few blocks south as the owner put up a “For sale” sign.
Modling stopped, made an offer and put down a deposit on the property the same day. He agreed to wait a year until the owner finished renovations on his newly purchased home.
The house on Philips was moved and work began on a new building. The 15,500-square-foot structure opened at 8956 Philips Highway in 1986. It was Modling’s first owned location.
The company became a CCA Global Partners member in 1991 with its first Carpet One store.
In addition to the Philips Highway store, Best Buy Floors has Carpet One locations at 351 Blanding Blvd. in Orange Park (opened in 1991), and at 3670 U.S. 1. S. in St. Augustine (opened in 2009).
In 2010, the company bought five Flooring America stores in the region, and closed the ones that weren’t profitable, Modling said. Its two stores are at 12041 San Jose Blvd. and 7319 U.S. 17 in Fleming Island. The Designers & Builders Source store is at 365 Blanding Blvd. in Orange Park.
Fenwick joins the company
Fenwick was involved with her father’s business by the time she was a teenager.
She helped Modling unload 125-foot rolls of carpet and put them in the store.
“I would walk new construction jobs with him. He would go out to measure them on weekends or during the week,” she said. “In the summer, I would file and answer phones and things like that. He put a tape measure in my hand when I was about 12 and I walked those jobs with him.
“Then I worked with him a little bit right out of high school, and then I went on to become a dental hygienist.”
She received her license at Florida State College at Jacksonville.
Her father’s invitation to join the company was “just our normal bantering,” Fenwick said, yet the question had more of an impact than she anticipated.
“We had conversations over the years about the business, and it made sense, but that was the first time it actually hit me.”
“I started in sales and then moved from sales into management, and then, here I am today,” Fenwick said.
“As he began to trust me and the decisions I was making, he was giving me more,” Fenwick said.
“And as I took on more, and he could see that I was making wise decisions, he would allow me to make more. We would just progress that way. It was that simple.”
A real family business
Best Buy Floors has grown as a family business.
Modling’s son and Fenwick’s brother, Jason Modling, is a field manager and inspector. Fenwick’s daughter, Erika McCord, is an accounting and HR manager for the company.
Her son, Cameron Harris, is a sales associate for Flooring America. Nephew Larkin Modling is a warehouse manager who is transitioning to field management.
Calvin Modling says he has backed off a bit from his day-to-day responsibilities, but has no plans to retire.
“When you just quit, I mean, who wants to sit home and watch television every day? As long as you’re healthy, get out and do something,” he said.
“He is still very involved and as involved as he would like to be,” Fenwick said.
“He’s my go-to for buildings and anything that needs repair, and thought about processes and finances. We bounce things off each other, as far as ideas and anything – he thinks outside of the box, and I think outside of the box. Our thought processes are so similar, and that’s why it works, because we are a lot alike.”
“I wake up in the morning with ideas,” Modling said.
“And then he proceeds to either text me or call me with them,” Fenwick said.
They both see rewards in a family-owned and operated business.
“I don’t see a downside to it at all,” Modling said.
“It gives me the opportunity to see my family on a daily basis,” Fenwick said. “It’s nice being able to have your family be a part of your daily life.”
Their advice for anyone considering going into business with family: Trust the dynamics.
“It just depends on the family member that you’re talking about,” Modling said.
“It depends on their character, their thinking, how do they think? Do they think like you think, or are they just way off in a whole other world?”
“I learned a lot from this man when I came back,” Fenwick said. “He’s my mentor, but he’s also my father and my friend,” she said.
“The things I’ve learned from him, they are things like the business is not always about the dollar. ... It’s about the people you meet, it’s about the people you employ, and it’s about making sure their needs are met and your employees feel secure, and never once do you think that you can do this as an absentee owner.
“And those are very candid conversations that you have. And you can have those with family. I don’t know that those conversations are as easily talked about as with people that are not family.”
Bill Sorenson, CEO of Heritage Capital Group and managing director of Business Valuation Inc., has advice for managing “a robust and flexible succession plan” that would serve any family owned- and operated-business well. Click here: http://jaxdailyrecord.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2024/aug/23/map-an-enduring-legacy/