About Us

Lauren Roberts is the fourth president of cfm Distributors, Inc. as of January 1, 2018. cfm Distributors, Inc. was founded in 1969 by Roberts' grandfather, Amos, and his business partner, Bruce Huffman. Roberts and Huffman were manufacturers' sales reps, and they were approached with the idea to open a wholesale distribution business in Kansas City, MO. “They thought it was a good idea,” Roberts recalls, and it certainly was. In their first year in business with one supplier, revenues were $486,000. The business grew from there.

Lauren Roberts' father, Tom Roberts, joined the business in 1981 after three years of working for York's engineered machinery division selling large commercial HVACR equipment. By then, cfm Distributors had become a York distributor. “It all kind of fit together,” says Tom Roberts, so he moved from Atlanta back to Kansas City to join his father and Huffman. With the country in a recession, 1981 was not a very good year for business — or for consumers, for that matter. But economic difficulties also proved to be something of a revelation for the company. “In those tough economic times, we, in turn, were struggling and had to do something,” Tom Roberts recalls. Amos Roberts and Huffman called their employees together and said they would vote on whether to take a 10 percent cut in pay or reduce the work force by 10 percent. The employees voted to cut their pay. By the end of the year, business had improved, and the company repaid them.

That vote still says most of what there is to say about this company: the people here look after each other, and that is what makes them worth buying from. More than fifty years on, cfm serves contractors from 6 stores across MO, KS, IA and NE — still family-run, still judged on whether the part is on the shelf when you need it.