Meet the 2024 Starnet Dream Team Winners

The Starnet Dream Team Celebration program is an annual initiative that showcases the power of collaboration and leadership in the flooring industry. This program honors the exceptional partnerships between Starnet Members and Preferred Vendor Partners, highlighting commercial flooring teams that exemplify excellence in strategic selling and customer service. 

At its core, the Dream Team concept emphasizes the strength of united efforts in achieving business success. These partnerships demonstrate how collaborative leadership can drive innovation, create value, and deliver superior results. The program recognizes teams that excel in developing targeted market strategies, providing solutions beyond mere price considerations, and ensuring outstanding customer experiences. By fostering a commitment to lifetime clients and continuous business growth, these partnerships set a standard for industry excellence. Meet this year’s winners. 

Bonitz/Milliken Team 

Brian Steadman, Sales Representative, Bonitz
Heidi Burmeister, Senior Territory Sales Manager, Milliken & Company  

Dream Team winners Brian Steadman, sales director at Bonitz and Heidi Burmeister, senior territory sales manager at Milliken & Company was recently announced as a winner of the Starnet Dream Team award in recognition of her teamwork, collaboration, and dynamic sales performance as part of a Starnet Preferred Vendor partnership. This is the seventh consecutive year that a representative from Milliken’s floor covering business has received this recognition.

Burmeister and Steadman from Bonitz worked together with the library team to redesign the interior of the Anderson Main Library in Anderson, South Carolina. The library houses over 300,000 items including books, DVDs, audiobooks and music CDs. At almost 100,000 square feet, the Anderson Main Library building is a display of neoclassical architecture and design. The original interior flooring reflected the exterior architecture with classic damask and filagree patterns in traditional burgundies and greens. The library’s director wanted to shift from the traditional patterning of jewel tones to a more youthful and transitional pattern selection in a brighter palette accented in softer colors.

Burmeister and the Milliken design team worked directly with the library’s leadership to design the space, hosting a visit to the Milliken customer showroom and working with the company’s VisionLab team to create proofs and finalize layouts. She then partnered with Brian to complete the installation.

“It’s an honor to be recognized for this amazing project,” said Heidi. “The work of our design team was outstanding. However, realizing the project vision was not just about product design and layout, it was incumbent on a quality installation; the renovation was meticulously phased and executed by our dealer partner. The Bonitz team was able to minimize down time allowing the library to remain open and serve patrons during the renovation while totally transforming the space to create a fresh new look and feel.”

What makes your partnership work? 

Burmeister: Trust. Mike Patrick, my first manager at Milliken and my mentor, taught me when there is trust between two people, you get the very best version of one another. When both partners have trust and bring their ‘A game’ to a project, the chances for success are high.

Steadman: The level of trust in each other. I know when she is working on projects from a different angle than myself, I can trust her intentions and abilities. 

 
What advice do you give to other teams about collaboration?

Burmeister: Creating a project plan that includes communication and transparency is paramount   and helps build trust within the team. When you work a project with this mantra not only do you achieve success for yourself and your partner, more importantly, it allows you to create value, not merely communicate value, to your customer. This is a recipe for a successful project that brings happy customers back for more!

Steadman: Be open and honest with each other regarding your motivations. Open dialog helps each other understand the goals that you are trying to achieve and each member can be strategic when making their own decisions to help collaborate for a team win.

What’s your outlook for the second half of the year? 

Burmeister: I am fortunate to live and work in the Southeast region. The year started strong and shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. The remainder of the year looks equally healthy and based on the economist, Taylor St. Germain, who spoke at the Starnet conference, we will continue to experience growth not only in 2025 but the remainder of the decade. Milliken has seen a lot of leadership changes at the senior level as both our Divisional President and General Manager recently retired. We have a fresh team of talented and energetic people in place, and I am excited to see the change and new perspective these leaders bring to our floorcovering division.

Steadman: We are fortunate to be in a thriving market with continual growth. I am excited for our opportunities to continue to grow together with new faces joining the team. Heidi has recently been promoted and has passed the torch. Our new rep has been a great fit for our team, sharing similar ideals and characteristics that makes Heidi such a valued ally. 

Pavilion Floors/Tarkett Team

Zach Miliano, account executive, Pavilion Floors, a Diverzify Company
Daniel Smith, account executive, Tarkett 

For the Starnet Dream Team of Zach Miliano, account executive at Pavilion Floors, and Daniel Smith, account executive at Tarkett, have only worked together for a year and a half in Boston, Massachusetts, but in that short time, the partnership blossomed into a friendship. 

Smith immigrated to the United States from England in 2021. “He came into our office one day and we hit it off,” Miliano said. “We’re roughly the same age, we like the same things and we decided that let’s try to partner together, let’s try to get some business. We knew that there were some opportunities within the healthcare system in Boston, so we solved some problems for the hospitals, and they just kept coming back to us. We work really well together, and we get the job done.”

When the duo isn’t winning business, they play golf and go to sporting events in Boston. 

What makes your partnership work? 

Smith: The best thing is it goes both ways. I introduce Zach to people, but also Zach brings me in on projects as well. I have the product knowledge and Zach has the knowledge of the installation. My floor’s only as good as the install. I rely on Zach and his team to do a perfect installation, so that it performs as it should.  

Miliano: I would just say a lot of it’s our personality. We’re the same age, we like the same things. We just hit it off since day one. And you have clients, you have customers, you have colleagues. But me and Dan, we’re friends and I think that’s huge.

What advice do you give to others about collaboration? 

Smith: Working together is huge. We speak at least once a day. I speak to him more than my wife. It’s a good look for the manufacturer to be there with the client on-site and vice versa. We always walk our jobs together. After completion, we will arrange on-site to go in together to walk the space to make sure everything looks fine. And if there are any issues, we make a note and then we come up with a solution. 

Miliano: Make your customer’s life as easy as possible. Because Dan and I work so well together, our customers can call us and say, “Hey, we have this conference room here that we want to get done on these two dates.” And we’ll say, “Okay, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it.”

What’s your outlook for the second half of the year? 

Smith: It is going really well. We had a really good year last year. We did a great job, so we retained that specific client that we did the initial project with. But we’ve got another two health systems on board that are following the exact same model that we did with the first, and it’s the Dan and Zach team. 

Floor Solutions/Mannington Commercial Team

Jason Beam, account manager, Floor Solutions LLC, a Lynx Company
Eric Munson, district manager Oregon, Mannington Commercial 

Jason Beam, account manager, Floor Solutions LLC, a Lynx Company; and Eric Munson, district manager Oregon, Mannington Commercial. Photo: Floor Trends & Installation.

The Starnet Dream Team of Jason Beam, account manager at Floor Solutions, and Eric Munson district manager for Mannington Commercial, collaborated to grow their business with several local school districts, property management, and government organizations in their Oregon market. A major win was driving business from a school district away from using a long-time vendor and partner when an opportunity. 

“Our connections within the facilities and architect/design organizations made us the first go-to resource that created the opportunity for this business,” Beam said. 

When one of the largest school districts in the metro area passed a bond, it presented the opportunity to work on six new prototype elementary schools and remodels of several other schools. Beam and Munson worked together to solidify a district standard for all projects. Munson worked with A&D to create and establish flooring options while Beam worked with the school district driving the vendor home as the performance spec standard. With collaboration from both sides, several millions of dollars of work were secured in the course of several years, and a long-term relationship established with the school district. 

What makes your partnership work? 

Munson: A lot of things. I think we have a similar business mindset, a similar approach to customer service and taking care of people’s needs.

Beam: Think we actually like each other. Yeah, talking almost daily or getting together socially or something like that, outside of the

What advice do you give to others about collaboration? 

Beam: I think one thing after being in the business for a long time, we’re very customer-focused, meaning you can’t just sit back and hope that it comes to you. You’ve got to be out there and create relationships and think long-term. It doesn’t always, the results don’t always show up that day or that year even. You have to be patient. It’s a bit of a marathon.

Muson: Consistent and smart work, that means something different for probably everybody in every market. Very vague but true. 

What’s your outlook for the second half of the year? 

Muson: Even though there might be markets that di, we as a society still support education and healthcare. You need these places, so even when they don’t have a huge amount of dollars to spend, you’re still maintaining those relationships because relationships always ebb and flows. As long as those relationships are always there, you’re still going to get benefits and hopefully, they benefit from us.