Footprints Floors Franchisee Kris Bohman Relocated from Anchorage to Austin to Start His First Franchise

Not many people would pick up and move all the way from Anchorage, Alaska, to Austin, Texas for a new business venture, but Footprints Floors franchisee Kris Bohman did.

Bohman got his start in the professional world doing commercial drywall and finishing in Anchorage. For seven years, from the age of 19 to 26, Bohman worked in commercial drywall before transitioning into the world of real estate sales. He got his first glimpse into the world of real estate after purchasing a foreclosed home, which became a renovation project he took on himself. “I got my real estate license while flipping that house and worked for a few different brokerages in Anchorage,” said Bohman.

With a change in the market looming in the future, Bohman started to look outside of real estate for investment opportunities.

“I have a feeling that the role of a traditional real estate salesman is going to change drastically in the coming years, so I decided to look into franchising,” said Bohman. “A franchise broker put Footprints Floors in front of me, and everything just made sense.”

With Footprints Floors, Bohman could apply his already finely honed skills in negotiating with both contractors and clients. He agreed to sign on with Footprints Floors, and on December 30 of 2019, Bohman traded in the cold Anchorage winter for sunny Austin, with his wife Katya and their 4-year-old daughter Isabel in tow.

Bohman and his wife—who is originally from Khabarovsk, Russia—met through an exchange program with the University of Alaska, Anchorage which landed her stateside. Now, Bohman and his family have picked up and moved about 4,000 miles southeast from Anchorage to start the next chapter of their lives in Texas.

While they are both from colder climates, Bohman’s wife had been asking to move to Texas for years, in spite of the fact that neither of them had ever visited. “I almost bought the franchise in Anchorage. I was ready to pull the trigger but I was digging deeper into my due diligence and Alaska has really high labor costs,” said Bohman. “The Anchorage market itself also isn’t very densely populated, and it would have only accounted for about 65% of a typical territory, and I started to look into other cities”

When a Footprints Floors territory was open in the booming market of the Greater Austin area, it seemed like an option worth exploring. They took a trip directly from Anchorage to Cedar Park, Texas and decided it was going to be the perfect fit for their family.

“We moved here December 30th. I got my first estimate the next day. I was working for a week, left for training, and now I’m back ready to hit the ground running,” said Bohman. He put down a deposit on a second territory northeast of Austin that includes Round Rock, Temple and Waco, Texas, but that’s just the beginning for this ambitious entrepreneur. In the long run, Bohman has hopes to open three to four territories in the market.

*Gross Sales of the Company-Owned Locations in the Reporting Group During the Reporting Period under Footprints Floors 2019 FDD Item 19, Table 2 was $1,310,389.

*Some outlets have sold this amount. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance that you'll sell as much