Frank Rotert · Vice President and Co-Owner, Ace Furniture & TV Inc. dba Ace Rent-To-Own · U.S. Navy · 1988-1990
In the spring of 1989, after the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef and spilled nearly eleven million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound, the Navy sent the USS Cleveland north to Alaska. The San Diego–based amphibious transport ship became a floating home for the cleanup, housing more than 400 Exxon workers for nearly two months and giving them food, berthing, medical care, and logistical support.
Frank Rotert was one of the sailors who got those workers to the job. He served on one of twenty-four troop boat crews, and every day, seven days a week, his boat carried as many as 100 workers out to the oiled beaches of the Sound and brought them back again.
It was unglamorous service, and Rotert describes it without decoration, but it holds most of what he would later bring to rent-to-own. The boat had to run whatever the weather and however tired the crew, because people were counting on it. The work was repetitive and physical, done as part of a team, and its success was measured by whether everyone who went out came back with the day’s work finished. “My military experience taught me discipline, leadership, responsibility, teamwork, and the importance of accomplishing the mission regardless of the obstacles,” he says.
Service and Responsibility in the U.S. Navy
A Nebraskan, Rotert joined the Navy straight out of high school and moved fast. In sixteen months, he advanced from seaman recruit, E-1, to petty officer third class, E-4, and in 1990 he deployed across the Pacific, with stops in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Hawaii.
The Navy also gave him a responsibility few sailors his age carry. He was one of only six crew members aboard the Cleveland trained to handle nuclear weapons when they were brought on board, a duty that required a Top Secret security clearance. Being trusted that completely, that early, left a mark.
“Handling highly sensitive responsibilities and maintaining a Top Secret security clearance reinforced the importance of integrity,” he says. “In business, trust is everything.”
Building a Career with Ace Rent-To-Own
After the Navy and a stretch in the insurance business, Rotert joined Ace Rent-To-Own in 1994 as an account manager, when the company had just three stores. He learned the business from the ground up, eventually opening the company’s fourth location, the Belmont store in Lincoln. He spent five years as a general manager before being promoted to Ace’s first Regional Manager.
That role made him responsible for several stores and, more importantly, for developing the managers who ran them. In 2007, he was named Vice President of Operations, and in 2016 he became a partner.
Today, he is Vice President and co-owner of a company with twenty-four stores across Nebraska and Iowa, and over three decades he has held nearly every operational leadership position it has.
Military Lessons That Shaped His Leadership
Growth on that scale is a teamwork problem before it is anything else, and Rotert approaches it the way a crew approaches a boat that has to run every day. Going from three stores to twenty-four, he says, required building strong teams, developing future leaders, and creating a place where employees could succeed.
The Navy taught him that every person is responsible for the mission and accountable for their own actions, and he has found the same principle holds on a showroom floor, in a hard conversation with a customer who has fallen behind, and in deciding where to open the next store.
Rent-to-own runs on relationships renewed week after week with customers who need to know the store will be there and will do what it said. Rotert learned that kind of reliability ferrying cleanup crews across Prince William Sound.
The people who have worked with him longest describe the result simply. When APRO presented Rotert with the Steve Kruse Award in 2021, honoring extraordinary lifelong service and commitment to the industry, the tribute noted that he does not believe in the word “can’t” and does not accept it from others. It is a sailor’s attitude and a businessman’s. For Rotert, they were never two different things.
About Ace Furniture & TV Inc. dba Ace Rent-To-Own
Ace Furniture & TV Inc. dba Ace Rent-To-Own is a rent-to-own company serving communities throughout Nebraska and Iowa. Founded in 1982, the company offers furniture, appliances, electronics, computers, mattresses, tires, jewelry, and other home essentials through flexible rental-purchase options. Ace Rent-To-Own has been an APRO member since 1982.
