He and his brother were included among Floor Covering News’ 20 most significant people in the flooring industry over the last 20 years. It can be argued that the two men, along with Floyd Sherman and Don Finkell, did more to further the hardwood flooring industry in this country than anyone. He and his brother took over a $25 million family business and built it into a $500 million powerhouse. It was a company so impressive that in 2005 it attracted a mega-million-dollar bid from a major private equity firm from Chicago.

It was the classic American Dream. The company, however, fell like a house of cards under the new regime, taking some manufacturers and retailers down with it.

Joel Lefkowitz doesn’t like to talk about what transpired from the day he and his brother sold Hoboken Floors to Code Hennessey & Simmons to the day in 2007 when the equity firm shut the doors. Let sleeping dogs lie. But despite reinventing himself as the president of a new startup, the phone still rings, and he is drawn back into his past life.

Maybe it makes for great water cooler fodder. Guys cash out, company goes under. But no one wants to talk about what was reinvested and lost. That’s about as sexy as Rosie O’Donnell strolling through Victoria’s Secret.

It’s a new life for Lefkowitz. For starters, he is in business without his brother for the first time in his life. He admits it’s strange, but he also looks forward to having family conversations where the subject matter doesn’t involve flooring. Second, for the first time in his life he is not an owner. His new company, Allstate Flooring Distributors, is completely owned by Mullican, at least for the time being. Third, he is no longer the king of distribution. In fact, his goal is simply to become one of the top four distributors in the New York metro market.

Finally, his approach to business has changed. Lefkowitz learned a lot from his years at Hoboken. He refuses to have his business driven by volume. He refuses to get involved with the Internet. He will not stray from what he knows best: wood. He is not instituting a private-label program. Rather, as he puts it, he is going back to his roots, many years ago, when Hoboken was a $25 million distributor.

He is not without his challenges. He admits there are retailers that do not want to do business with Allstate because of the state in which they were left when Hoboken went under. It doesn’t matter that he had packed his bags months before, or he had limited control in the year prior to his departure. He’d like people to keep an open mind, give him a chance.

Isn’t that what we all want?