Customers dropping off rugs for cleaning or repair will find a curated selection of affordable area rugs for purchase at new Hagopian concept stores.
In fact, Hagopian, a nearly 80-year-old family run business, was founded as a carpet cleaning service and today that business segment, Hagopian Cleaning Services, accounts for the lion's share, about two-thirds, of the company's revenues.
Still Edmond Hagopian, whose grandfather founded the business in 1938, considers the company's retail division, Hagopian World of Rugs, instrumental in the business' success and he is committed to growing the new pop-up store format that offers Hagopian customers a convenient location to drop-off area rugs for cleaning and exposes those clients to a different side of the Hagopian retail brand with a curated assortment from the company's most popular area rug sources.
A customer drops off a rug for cleaning at Hagopian's new permanent pop-up style hybrid retail showroom/cleaning store in Plymouth, Michigan.
"In-house we call the small format a drop-off depot because that's what those locations are intended to do," Hagopian said during an exclusive RugNews.com tour of Hagopian retail stores, including its 30,000 square foot flagship Novi showroom, opened in 1998, its new 2,000 square foot mini-showroom format and its recently upgraded, fully automated rug cleaning facility in Oak Park.
"We know that people will clean their rugs more often if it's convenient to have us pick them up or for them to drop them off. We want to be closer to where our customers are -- it's the idea of making it convenient for people to take care of their rugs.
"It's a service store, but we want it to look like a store that you could come into and maybe buy a rug or replace the one that you're cleaning."
Consumers are exposed to area rugs upon entering Hagopian's new permanent pop-up style format which, combines a retail showroom and cleaning store.
The new format features mostly machine-made area rugs, none of which are larger than 5x8, with an average price between $399 and $499. While not positioned to rival larger area rug retailers, these spaces are designed to compete more with area rug departments found at national chains and big box stores.
"It's a spontaneous purchase. If you're really going to go shop for a rug, you're probably not going to go to one of our depot stores," Hagopian admits. "But it is going to have more selection than a department you might find if you're shopping somewhere else like Costco, Home Goods or Tuesday Morning. Our depots certainly rival any of those stores' assortments. We feature the most current looks and styles, and the best manufacturers. We feel confident that it's a good strategy, but the main focus is getting the cleaning department closer to the consumer. The rugs are there to help it along."
Hagopian's automated rug cleaning facility processes about 35,000 rugs a year and has capacity for more.
One of the state's oldest and largest area rug retailers, according to Hagopian, the company currently has two full-size retail stores in Novi and Birmingham, and three pop-ups, including a new just-opened depot in Clarkston.
Fitting in a 2,000 square foot space, the concept service stores carry an assortment of about 200 mostly machine-made area rugs from popular national brands. The mix in these locations stands in contrast to the company's full-size showrooms, which offer a large selection of classic higher-end, hand-made area rugs, which account for about 60 percent of rug sales. In addition, those larger showrooms also present a large selection of broadloom and hard-surfaces flooring. And the cut-and-sew business has been an increasing component of area rug sales and stands at about 20 percent of rug sales.
SHIFTING THE PARADIGM
At the Novi, Michigan Hagopian World of Rugs, customers find a cleaning service desk adjacent to the entry.
Hagopian flipped the classic rug store layout in the Novi store, which has a cleaning service desk adjacent to the entry. While many customers walking into the main Hagopian showroom for the first time might be under the impression that the designs are staid and pricey, the up-front assortment quickly flips that idea on its head.
He intentionally placed a selection of affordably priced contemporary and transitional machine-mades toward the front of the store, with the area rug selection increasing in quality -- and price -- and becoming more traditional as shoppers head to the rear.
Looking ahead to the next few years, Hagopian, who runs the business alongside his two sisters, Angela and Susan, said that there are no plans to open large showrooms or retail stores, but more small format service stores are in the works.
"In traditional, our price points are going to be at least double what they'd be in contemporary. A 9x12 is going to be about $5,000 and an 8x10 is going to be about a thousand dollars less. We're selling an awful lot of machine-mades under $1,000 for a 5x8. They turn fast.
Hagopian's full-size showroom in Novi presents a range of affordably priced contemporary and transitional styles near the entry.