Our clients tell the GHP Horwath story best. In this section, we highlight stories that showcase our industry depth, and our services breadth.
- Client:
Starnet Worldwide
- Challenge:
Managing the complexities of an international cooperative.
- Solution:
Provide audit and tax services, and tax and business advisory services for doing business abroad.
Starnet Worldwide is comprised of more than 165 locally owned full-service flooring contractors throughout North America. With $2 billion in annual sales, Starnet has become an influential force in the contract flooring industry. Founded in 1992, this commercial flooring cooperative has relationships with more than 40 leading manufacturers who provide quality carpet, hard surfaces, and other products to its member contractors, and has relationships with service providers for everything from waterproofing to logistics and distribution.
Starnet members are the core of the organization, says President and CEO Jeanne Matson, “We limit membership to the most knowledgeable, professional contractors in a given market to ensure that Starnet remains on the cutting edge of flooring.”
Starnet first turned to GHP Horwath’s services more than 16 years ago because of their location in the Denver market, where the company was originally based. Since then, the firm’s headquarters have moved to Connecticut and Starnet has stayed with GHP Horwath, according to Jeanne, “because they have gained a lot of knowledge and understanding of our business and our unique business structure.”
GHP Horwath helps Starnet in two primary areas: audit and taxes.
Says Jeanne, “GHP Horwath does an annual audit of our books, making sure that we manage our members’ monies responsibly, and that we’re properly deploying resources back and accounting for the volume of business. GHP Horwath has always treated us with importance and a sense that we matter. They really understand the organization and the unique structure of a cooperative — and that’s important to us.”
With member companies in Canada, Starnet is looking to expand to Europe as well, and has leaned on the GHP Horwath team for its business advisory services. Says Jeanne, “GHP has helped us structure our program for non-U.S. companies. When we moved into Canada, we faced different tax laws and different ways of accounting for our members’ businesses — GHP really wrestled those issues to the ground for us and were very helpful. We couldn’t have figured it all out without them. Now they are helping us enter the European market as well.”
Jeanne says that Starnet is in the process of upgrading their accounting system and in building better controls in their financial management. With Sarbanes-Oxley, this task became more pressing than ever. Once again, Jeanne says, “GHP Horwath stepped up and supported us as much as they could while, at the same time, coached us on making the move to electronic systems, which we have since done.”
A final note, says Jeanne, “What I like about them is that they draw a clear line between their audit and their tax side, although they do a great job of communicating between the two. They always go above and beyond what is required, and really take ownership of our business.“
