"I don't intend to make it easy for anyone lo get any of my good people." Rozin says.

Sometimes Kallick and Rozin send employees on trips for hitting or surpassing sales goals. The next group of 40 leaves in March for the Caribbean.

"We're reinvesting in the people who have gotten us where we are," Kallick says.

Buddy's Carpet won't expand throughout the nation. The idea is to keep the expansion within driving distance of the headquarters. The 35th store will open next month in Indianapolis.

Buddy's Carpet may head to Pittsburgh next year, but it will shy away from larger cities, such as Chicago. "It's a rat race. There are too many up there. They can have it," Rozin says.

The growth strategy is not uncommon in the industry. Many store owners stick close to their home bases, whether they're operating in one city or a region.

Kallick, described by friends and family as personable, compassionate and loving, speaks modestly of his company's success.

"We've been lucky, knock on' wood. We work hard at doing things right the first time, which I have to give Leif the credit for, if not all of the credit."

The son of a junk dealer and a homemaker, Kallick grew up in meager surroundings as he moved from one apartment complex to the next. He once aspired to be a childhood singing star. As a youth, he performed in amateur theaters, sometimes donning white gloves to impersonate Al Jolson.

Throughout his school days, he often skipped classes to catch movies or play pinball machines. School officials complained so much that "you'd have thought my dad was a student there," says brother Ken, who's a sales rep for a record distributor.

Buddy Kallick goofed off so much in high school that it took him an extra year to graduate. "It wasn't that I didn't have the brains. I could have gotten straight A's, I guess."

Kallick landed his first carpet sales job in 1947 when the late Harry Goldstein hired him at Harry's Corner. While there, he coined the famous (and admittedly untrue) expression: "I don't care about making money. I just love to sell carpet." Kallick, who got a patent for the saying, doesn't use it in Cincinnati because it reminds consumers of Harry's Corner.

"I don't want to incite any controversy. There's no upside to that," he says.

Eddy Goldstein, owner of Harry's Corner and Harry Goldstein's son, declined to comment.

Kallick left Harry's Corner in 1968 and moved to Montgomery, Ala., to be near his children, who lived with his first wife, After his children hit the college years about a decade later, he returned to Cincinnati and sold carpeting for Dalton Georgia Carpet Outlet.

Twice divorced, he finds a silver lining in the broken relationships: "I'm still friends with both of these girls. Who wants to fight?"

The front man at Buddy's Carpet, Kallick knows his limits. He doesn't pretend to be a wizard with numbers. That's Rozin's job. In fact, Kallick says he's lost untold dollars in Las Vegas and on the stock market.

"He hates to lose and he loves to gamble," says Bill Falhaber, a longtime friend and owner of Falhaber Automotive in Cincinnati.

If he has any regrets, it may be that he didn't work for himself sooner. "That was probably a major error. You also feel your talents are being exploited."

Kallick's personality elevated him to celebrity status. Strangers seek his autograph wherever he goes. One day, while asking directions in Switzerland, an American tourist within earshot peeped up: "My God, are you the carpet man?"