Real Tools, Real Growth: NWFA Business Workshop Returns To St. Charles This October
Growing a business takes more than a strong reputation and a full schedule. It takes sharper strategy, smarter financial decisions, and a network of peers who push you forward. That’s exactly what the National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA) is delivering with the 2026 NWFA Business Workshop, set for October 28-29 at the St. Charles Convention Center in St. Charles, MO.
Built for contractors, retailers, and manufacturers, the workshop pairs industry-led presentations, expert panels, hands-on sessions, and live demos with one clear goal: send every attendee home with a real, usable plan, not just a folder of notes.
Two Days, One Focus: Running A Better Business
The event opens Wednesday, October 28, with an evening Open House at NWFA headquarters from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. It’s an informal chance to connect with industry leaders and swap ideas with peers before the working sessions even begin.
The main event follows Thursday, October 29, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with six sessions built around the day-to-day challenges of running a flooring business:
Profit Is A Skill — Lynette Watson, Chris Zizza, and Ashley Do Carmo use real-world examples to show how small business owners can protect profitability through change orders, unexpected jobsite conditions, and material price swings.
Grow Your Business, Not Just Your Workload — Doug Howard leads an interactive panel of flooring business owners who have used his strategies to boost profits and improve operations without adding more hours to the day.
Lessons Learned (Lunch Session) — Seasoned business owners share candid reflections on the risks that paid off, the mistakes that taught the most, and what they wish they’d known starting out.
Building A Business People Want To Work For — HR expert Katie Magoon guides a panel of flooring business owners through real hiring, retention, and leadership scenarios, offering strategies attendees can apply immediately.
Technology And AI Rapid Fire Session — A hands-on look at how AI can draft job descriptions, simplify financial tasks, turn meeting notes into action plans, and generate marketing content.
Drafting A 90-Day Action Plan — The closing session turns the day’s insights into a personalized, measurable 90-day plan for each attendee’s business.
Manufacturers have their own dedicated track that same morning: the Wood Flooring Manufacturers Assembly, an interactive forum exclusively for NOFMA members running from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. It’s built around candid peer discussion, expert insight, and networking with manufacturers facing the same market pressures.
Why This Matters For Your Business
Craftsmanship gets a flooring business started. It rarely gets a flooring business to the next level. The owners who scale, protect their margins, and build teams that stick around are the ones who treat the business itself as a skill worth developing, and that’s precisely what this workshop is designed to teach.
For contractors and retailers, that means walking away with concrete tools for protecting profit on every job, hiring and keeping good people, and using AI to save hours on tasks that currently eat up a week. For manufacturers, it means direct access to peers navigating the same supply, pricing, and market shifts, in a room built specifically for that conversation.
Perhaps the most practical part of the workshop is also the simplest: attendees leave with an actual 90-day plan, not just inspiration. In an industry where the day-to-day too easily crowds out strategic thinking, two days set aside to build that plan, alongside other owners doing the same thing, is a rare and valuable reset.
Event Details
Dates: October 28-29, 2026
Open House: Wednesday, October 28, 6:00-8:00 p.m., NWFA Headquarters
Workshop Sessions: Thursday, October 29, 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Manufacturers Assembly: Thursday, October 29, 8:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. (NOFMA members)
Location: St. Charles Convention Center, 1 Convention Center Plaza, St. Charles, MO 63303
Registration and details: nwfa.org/nwfa-business-workshop
