They’ll Floor You
Written by: Robert Kurtz
Photography by: Rob Wetzler / Wetzler Studios
Boardman’s Home Carpet Flooring and Design leads the way in serving both their clients and a challenged segment of the community
STEP INTO THE SHOWROOM of Boardman’s Home Carpet, and you see… a lot. In every direction. “Yes, we carry a wide array of flooring,” states Home Carpet president George Rohan Jr. That’s putting it mildly. Whether your taste leans toward carpet, hardwood, LVT, tile, laminate or natural stone, you’ll find it here. Their expertise doesn’t start and end on the floor — they also design and sell accent walls, shower/tub installs and backsplashes. And they’ve been doing it for forty-six years.
Making a Name for Themselves
Apart from their spacious, stunning showroom, how do they differentiate themselves from such widespread competition? “Our full name is Home Carpet Flooring and Design,” Vice President George Rohan III emphasizing the latter. “The big thing that separates us is our service and our deep design knowledge of the products. Giving someone the best experience possible, is something we strive to do every day,” he states.
Their reach is far and wide. On the residential side, they work with clients on new builds, remodeling, and apartment units. Commercially, their new floors grace schools, medical offices, churches, and retail outlets. With our design team’s decades of experience, each client can expect exceptional attention to detail. As George, Jr. states, for his clients, “If it's practical and it's the right thing for that area, we show them every option that they have within their budget.”
“At Home Carpet, our most crucial asset is our employees,” George Rohan III states. “For anyone who comes in to our store, there's a lot of different places they could buy flooring, whether it's online or the box stores or other places. Our expertise is deep and our service top-notch.”
Farmers has Them Covered
That’s the good times. But what about when setbacks come unannounced?
“In 2008, when the economy crashed in the Great Recession, we got hit hard, like nothing ever before,” George Rohan, Jr. states. “A lot of contractors, whom we’d dealt with for years, went out of business. We lost close to $200,000 in bankruptcies, forcing us to seek refinancing.”
Unlike a number of other banks back then, Farmers never stopped lending. “A lot of companies struggled at that time,” Noll recalls. “Farmers got a comfort level with Home Carpet based on their pre-Great Recession financials, their workable recovery plan, and their total honesty on what had happened,” he states. That level of concern and action by Farmers had its effect. As George, Jr. says, “We battled through it and now we're almost to the end of that long haul. Pete saw us through—he’s been our man since day one.”
Raising their Voice
The Rohan family’s life changed significantly when, on August 10, 2020, Ashlee and George III’s daughter, Vail Marie, was born. She was diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome and Congenital Heart Disease, requiring hospitalizations and heart surgery. “George and Ashlee spent six months living with her at the Rainbow Children’s ICU, seeing other families go through similar hardship,” George, Jr. states. They knew they wanted to do something to help these hurting families, and thus inaugurated the nonprofit Vail’s Voice, in honor of their voiceless daughter, “to tell the stories of her fellow warriors and to share in their fight,” as their website states.
Vail’s Voice serves its community wonderfully in various ways, in projects large and small. Perhaps no more poignant time exists than the holidays for parents to have their hurting children in a hospital ward. So in late November, 2023, Vail’s Voice teamed up with Rachel’s restaurant and dispatched beautiful boxed Thanksgiving dinners throughout the Boardman Akron Children’s Hospital campus. They’ve donated over 1,000 Care Packages to families in extended-care hospital situations, containing blankets, cups, caps, many of the little things that will be needed during their stay, based on George & Ashlee’s own extended hospital stay experience.
They help families on an individual basis. “We're helping a family whose child needs a wheelchair, and, whether it's groceries, electric bills, little stuff, it’s all needed and appreciated,” George III states.
Their years with Vail have changed their lives and thanks to their beneficence, assisted families of pediatric patients diagnosed with serious or prolonged illnesses. As Vail’s dad George III puts it, “It's one of those things that until you go through it, you don't know how many other people are struggling through that same scenario. So you start talking and someone will say ‘I have a family member going through this,’ and the community starts to grow and you reach out to a lot more people.”
Nothing Better
Decades of multi-generational experience is a decided Home Carpet advantage. As Vice President George Rohan III states, “We love what my dad was says about having an old client come back in and hearing them say, ‘I bought my carpet here 20 years ago and everything's been good,’ or, ‘We're ready to get another room done or replace that room.’ That just shows you that you're doing something right. There’s nothing better.”