To all our CFI members, let me introduce myself: my name is Graham Bedwell, and I am your new president for the Carpet & Fabricare Institute.

I have been associated with the industry for approximately 22 years; I started cleaning residential carpet using a small blue box extractor, and then soon realized that I needed to have something a little stronger. I then used a slide out propane heated truck mount, which was great, that was until one day I was cleaning in an office building and parked the machine under a smoke detector; well you can guess the rest.

I then was employed as an operations manager for a large west coast commercial carpet cleaning company and within 14 years I was a VP of operations. Then unfortunately due to the economy I was made redundant; but that did not deter me. For a couple of years I performed some consulting for various companies and then joined my present company (Rouse Company) as director of the flooring maintenance division.

As well as your president I also represent the CFI on the IICRC board, I am also on the IICRC CCMT exam task force.

In the next 2 years I am looking to have a full calendar for education which will be classes for all IICRC exams as well as hands on chapter meetings, I am also looking to increase our membership and hold on to the members we have.

In closing I would like to ask you the members what you would like to see the CFI do for you, it is your association, you can email me at grahambedwell@yahoo.com.

  Yours sincerely,

Graham Bedwell
CFI President