Leaders Under 40 With Cory Stoken | InTents Publication

 August 1, 2022 | By: IFAI

Name: Cory Stoken

Age: 31

Company: FloorEXP Inc. and Mod-Fence Systems LLC, Santa Fe Springs, Calif.

Title: Co-owner and COO

Number of years in the industry: 10

How did you get involved with this industry and at what age?

Around 2012, shortly after graduating from college I was introduced to Gauro Coen, who has over 20-plus years working and operating within the tent, event, custom and portable flooring industry. Gauro hired me at age 21 as his administrative assistant at American Turf and Carpet, and after a few weeks I fell in love with the industry and company. The company was involved in producing premium custom-designed projects for all types of clients, including tent and event companies.

Within the first six months of working there, I saw an opportunity to advance and streamline the manufacturing of our custom carpeting and logo-branded rugs, which would allow us to produce triple the amount of product for clients in half the time. With my own graphic design knowledge, I started designing the custom flooring in Illustrator® for clients. Using a wide format printer, I could print the templates out to any scale. Within one year, we tripled our custom flooring business and continued to grow from there.

In 2016, I left American Turf and Carpet and started FloorEXP to continue growing custom and branded flooring projects. I stayed close with Gauro, and in 2020 we began a partnership with the custom event flooring business and introduced Mod-Fence as a complementary event fencing division. We saw an opportunity for event planners, event coordinators and rental companies to choose from our selections of flooring and fencing when designing and building out their events.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I love what I do. My goals are to continue to add different products to service the events industry, to innovate with new products that will make our clients’ business grow and continue advancing to modernize the old flooring and fencing industry. We want to change the way that people shop for these products and services. We have huge plans for bringing these new products and advancements to the marketplace and are excited for the future. I see myself staying in the industry and I just want to keep innovating for it.

Any words of wisdom that you were given and found helpful?

The best piece of advice I’ve received came from Gauro: “It’s about progress, not perfection.” I personally am a bit of a perfectionist and when it comes to growing a company, that’s not always the best approach. What I’ve learned is to keep trying to build on progress and get 1% better every day. Just keep building incrementally on a personal and professional level, and all goals can be attained.