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  • Weaving a future from ashes of their past

    Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
    May 27, 2008 Tuesday
    Final Edition; All Editions



    Weaving a future from ashes of their past

    by Janet H. Cho, Plain Dealer Reporter



    The Arslanian Brothers could only watch as a fire consumed their
    carpet and rug cleaning company last May, snuffing out 48 years of
    pride and loyalty. They didn't let the devastation defeat them.

    They had customers to appease and a business to rebuild

    When the Arslanian Brothers Carpet & Rug Cleaning Co. was consumed in
    an inferno last May, the owners had every reason to walk away.

    What started as an electrical fire quickly engulfed the 90-year-old
    building on Miles Road in Cleveland and continued burning until
    dawn. More than 1,200 customers' rugs, including priceless heirlooms,
    were incinerated.

    Ted, Hank and Armen Arslanian, all in their 60s, stood across the
    street and watched incredulously as the 48-year-old family business
    burned down.

    But none of them considered abandoning the laborious rug-cleaning
    business that had helped them put their 10 children through college
    and support their own immigrant Armenian parents. They had invested
    too much in the company, and too many people were counting on them to
    come back.

    "I didn't know how it was going to get done, but I just thought,
    'God's been so good to us, somehow we're going to get through this,' "
    Hank Arslanian said.

    A year later, Arslanian Brothers has reopened its doors. But the
    company is still struggling to knit together the network of customers
    it had built up before the fire. The family hasn't been able to reach
    all of its customers because all records, invoices and client contacts
    were destroyed. Some customers still take rugs to the old address, now
    an empty lot.

    The company now operates out of a hulking, 22,000-square-foot
    warehouse at 19499 Miles Ave. in Warrensville Heights, four miles from
    its former site. The firm cleans and repairs rugs at its plant and
    dispatches cleaning crews to homes and businesses. The company employs
    26 people, down from a high of 29, including 11 members of the
    Arslanian family.

    Ted Arslanian estimates that 98 percent of the 1,200 rugs lost in the
    fire have been replaced.

    Allen and Jean Joyce, who lost a rug that cost more than $4,000, can't
    say enough about the family. The Arslanians invited the couple to a
    warehouse full of rugs that the company had purchased as replacements
    for customers and told them they could take anything they wanted,
    Allen Joyce said. "And if we weren't satisfied with what they had
    there, we could've gone to an importer and picked one from him. They
    made it right. Nowadays, you don't find many people like that."

    Mia Jackson, who lost five Persian rugs valued between $5,000 and
    $8,000, said: "They went above and beyond what they needed to do to
    replace my rugs. . . . They kept my loss as important as their loss. I
    even sent them thank you flowers for how well I was treated."

    Armen Arslanian said the disaster not only enabled the company to
    rebuild its headquarters, it also sparked an outpouring of generosity
    from longtime friends and business associates. Local rug stores and
    importers gave the Arslanians deep discounts to help them reimburse
    their customers. Other businesses, such as Kurtz Brothers Landscape
    Centers, lent them space and refused to take rent for it.

    The Arslanians declined to say how much of the losses was covered by
    insurance.

    Family built business from ground up

    Ted Arslanian, the eldest son of Armenian immigrants George and
    Virginia, started the business in 1959 in an old movie theater behind
    his father's and uncle's Arslanian Brothers Barbershop. Middle brother
    Hank joined him two years later.

    Ted turned his back on a football scholarship from Michigan State
    University after spending a summer working at another uncle's
    rug-cleaning plant in Cherry Hill, N.J. "My parents were crushed," he
    said.

    Baby brother Armen was still in grade school, but his brothers paid
    him pennies to hang advertisements on people's doorknobs.

    "That first winter, business was so slow I got a job in the steel
    mills, and whatever money I made, I put into the business," Hank
    Arslanian said.

    In 1961, the brothers bought their first automatic rug washer, and the
    orders took off. They were among the first companies in the Midwest to
    offer truck-mounted rug-cleaning machines, which let them go on-site
    to shampoo wall-to-wall carpeting.

    At its peak, the company was cleaning 140 rugs a day.

    The brothers had just started talking about passing the business along
    to their children, many of whom already worked there, when the fire
    struck.

    "Maybe if they weren't going to be so involved, we would've said, 'To
    heck with it,' " Armen said.

    They spent the months after the fire trying to keep the mobile
    carpet-cleaning side of the business going while they dealt with angry
    and distraught customers.

    "The first week was just awful because we didn't have a working
    phone," Ted said.

    "We were working Sundays and evenings trying to get things going
    again," Armen said.

    "It was a nightmare," Hank added.

    Within months, they were working out of three warehouses, washing and
    drying rugs at one site and storing them in another.

    It cost them $100,000 to fix the enormous rug-washing machine they
    pulled from the fire, one of only 70 of its kind still operating.

    Ron Moore, the owner of Moore's Time-Saving Equipment, the company
    that used to make the machines, called workers out of retirement to
    rebuild the Arslanians' washer.

    They spent $250,000 to rebuild their computer-controlled rug-drying
    room, which can dry 100 9-foot-by-12-foot rugs at once. Renovating the
    warehouse cost another $200,000.

    Hank Arslanian, who oversees rug restorations, managed to salvage his
    favorite pair of shears from the rubble. But he mourns the loss of
    thousands of rug remnants and hundreds of bolts of yarn he used to
    repair and weave damaged rugs.

    The Arslanian family is well-regarded in an industry full of larger
    chains, said Tom Sherman, president of the Ohio Chapter of the Society
    of Cleaning and Restoration Technicians and owner of Professional
    Carpet Systems of Northeast Ohio.

    "It's rare to find companies like Arslanian Brothers," he said. "If I
    get a problem I've never seen, they're the first people I call."

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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