11152015 Haig Pedian Adds Carpet Galleries at Oscar Isberian Stores

Haig Pedian, Sr., 91-year-old industry icon, sold Pedian Rug Company in 2003 and retired--unsuccessfully. "I missed the interaction with people. I couldn't stay home," says Pedian Sr. "I have to be doing something." Fortuitously, his nephews, Sarkis and Oscar Tatosian, owners of Isberian Rugs, had been planning to add carpeting to their rug business, and tapped Haig's expertise. 

Today, he and his son Haig Jr. (aka "JR") run broadloom carpet galleries within the three Oscar Isberian Rugs stores, one in Chicago and two in affluent north shore suburbs.

The Pedian carpet and rug businesses date back nearly 110 years. Haig's father (Vartan) came to America at age 18, to escape the Armenian Genocide, and he went to work for a rug dealer in Chicago. Vartan saved his pennies by sleeping in the back of the store, relates Haig, and eventually bought the dealer out. Vartan Pedian opened his first store in the city, at Broadway and Montrose.

Haig Pedian joined the family business after serving in the U.S. Air Force during World War II (in the African and the European campaigns).

"I came home in 1945, and my father said, 'Why don’t you go back and finish your education?' because I had wanted to be a lawyer. I said, 'Dad, I just spent almost five years of my life in the service. I'm not about to go back to school, and if you don't mind, I'd like to come into this business.' 

"That's how it all started. I didn't even take my uniform off and I was working," Pedian laughs.  His brothers Vahan and Ara, who'd been serving in the Navy near Pearl Harbor, also joined the business. 

Their father, Vartan, subsequently gave his sons a huge entrepreneurial opportunity:  "My father said, 'Boys, all these Oriental rugs that I have? They're obsolete now. Oriental rugs are out of the picture. People are giving them away.'  He said, 'Take these rugs and sell them for whatever you can get, and go into carpet. He saw carpet coming—he was a visionary,'" says Haig.

So the Pedian brothers sold the rugs, and bought carpet (in those days you had to buy rolls, relates Haig). They started with one store, and grew the business to four suburban stores--Lincolnwood, Oak Brook, Arlington Heights and Morton Grove--plus a Chicago Merchandise Mart entity called Oriental Rugs International, which catered to designers with Oriental imports and carpet. 

In the four retail stores, they sold everything--carpet, rugs, hard surface, marble, wood, ceramic--and had 115 employees on staff

After his three-year retirement, Haig is back on the sales floor, heading up new carpet galleries in the Oscar Isberian Rugs stores. And a fair amount of carpet sales are actually area rugs created out of carpeting for customers who cannot afford the area rugs in stock, or who haven't found a rug they like. So Isberian will create a custom rug. 

"My nephews hadn't carried carpeting, and they decided it would be great to get into the carpet business, so I said, 'OK, I'll help you guys,' and we went in. We've expanded now, and it's in all three locations," says Pedian. 

How has the business changed?

Haig, like Sarkis and Oscar Tatosian, has seen the biggest change over the years in people and in product.

"The sales personnel that call on us are not the same," says Pedian. "In those days, they were very knowledgeable--it was an industry where you had to know what you were doing. They were not just order takers."

The products are different, too: "It's all patterns now," says Haig, talking from a high-end perspective. ("I wouldn't know how to sell low end.")  If you go to the Big Boxes or stores like Olson Rugs next door, it's a totally different picture, he says, noting that Olson actually sends customers over to Pedian when they're looking for higher-end carpet. 

Almost 80 percent of what's sold through Pedian Carpeting is wool, mostly machine-made in European countries including Spain, Belgium and England, while most of the nylon carpeting is made in the U.S. Suppliers include Couristan, Nourison, Stanton, Masland, Unique and Fabrica.  (Haig used to go to Frankfurt every year, right after the Chicago market, to develop proprietary patterns and styles, but that has changed.)  

Prices, too, have changed, partly due to inflation. Today, the average retail price range is around $50 a yard and up. 

Haig's base is the Highland Park store, where carpet sales are primarily to retail customers, but interior designer business--especially at the Kinzie Street store near the Merchandise Mart--accounts for significant percentage of overall volume.

What does Haig Pedian, a former president of the Retail Floorcovering Institute, do for hobbies?

"Work is my hobby," he says, without cracking a smile.