In the early 1920’s a young Canadian immigrant, of Scottish decent, moved to mid-town Detroit, Michigan. He found employment working on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company for 12 hours a day. However, to fulfill his heart’s desire, he took additional employment at a small floor-covering store for yet another 6 to 8 hours a day. Working 18 to 20 hours a day for several years he saved enough money to start his dream; a business of his own. In 1924 C.G. Foster realized his vision, and opened the Foster For Floors company on Hamilton Avenue in Detroit. His Mission was simple “To provide people with quality flooring and services at a fair price.” And the motto he lived his entire life by was “Perseverance, is the Essence of Life.”

In 1947 Morley E. Foster joined his father in the flooring business, and under his leadership the family began to concentrate on the Sports Flooring Industry. They were the first company in America to install, in a single year, $1,000,000.00 worth of 3M “Tartan” synthetic floors in the late 1960s. Through America’s love affairs with Tennis, Racquetball, Roller Skating, and Basketball the Foster family continued to persevere to amass a wealth of knowledge concerning sports surfaces, lifetime fitness, and the complexity of human bio-mechanics.

Respectively, in 1974 and 1978 Michael S. Foster and Douglas A. Foster joined the family sports flooring businesses. By this time Americans were becoming more concerned about their ability to participate in programs of lifetime fitness. Consequently, we learned much about the dynamics of a floor’s shock absorption and friction coefficient in relationship to the human bio-structure. This information however, was not readily quantitative until 1988.

In 1988 we began to research the studies done by the Otto Graf Institute of Stuttgart, Germany; a not for profit testing laboratory. We then discovered there was finally a measurable standard for sports flooring performance. This International standard is called the D.I.N. Standard. It quantitatively measures the relationships between any sports surface and the interaction of the athlete. Areas relative to these two dynamic systems are: shock absorption, distance of surface deflection, speed of deflection, area of deflection, ball bounce, friction coefficient, and rolling load capacities. Sports surfaces are now able to be fine-tuned to meet the specific needs of an individual athlete or a sport specific training center.

Perseverance in athletic surfaces has lead to safer and higher performing floors, while perseverance towards excellence in supplying these surfaces has made Foster Specialty Floors one of the Nation’s leaders in the sports flooring arena.

In 2004 Michael Foster celebrated his family’s 80th anniversary in the hardwood flooring industry. And like the founder, his Grandfather, he believes perseverance is the essence of life, in family, in business, and in the pursuit of Lifetime fitness.