DYNAMIC RUGS CELEBRATES 25TH ANNIVERSARY, PAYS IT FORWARD WITH YEAR OF ST. JUDE DONATIONS
Dynamic Rugs' father and daughter dynamic duo Matthew and Anoosha Rouhanian celebrate the company's 25th anniversary with a special collaboration with St. Jude Children's Hospital. |
FREDERICK, Md. -- Dynamic Rugs celebrates 25 years in business and marks the occasion with a year-long pledge to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
The Frederick, Maryland-based rug importer thought long and hard about how to mark the occasion and decided that giving back to a cause that changes people's lives fits the bill. In addition, Dynamic Rugs is rolling out a historic number of new collections for Las Vegas Market shoppers offering something for every buyer (read full story).
Dynamic Rug founder Matthew Rouhanian's business achievements were lauded with an Icon Honors in 2017.
"As we grow as a company, we want to concurrently grow our brand," said Anoosha Rouhanian, who joined Dynamic Rugs -- the company founded by her father, Matthew, in 1994 -- just more than two years ago. "We've employed various strategies in the past to achieve this goal such as partnering with a big presence on social media, various marketing campaigns, etc.
"So our next step was to find a celebrity or well-known brand to partner with, but as we were researching, we began wondering if there was something we could do that was more than just a traditional business partnership; something more impactful and humanitarian.
 | "It's an honor to be able to donate to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to commemorate this occasion and to help support their wonderful cause." -- Anoosha Rouhanian, Dynamic Rugs |
"We pride ourselves on being leaders in trends, not followers, and we want to apply the same mindset to all areas of our business. So, we said let's do something different. Instead of a traditional celebrity partnership, let's do something different ... let's do something that doesn't just give us a license to use someone famous' name on a collection but rather, let's do something that actually has a tangible affect on people's lives. That's when we came up with supporting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital."
Several months ago Dynamic Rugs reached out to the Tennessee-based hospital and research facility, which provides treatment to children with life-threatening illnesses. After discussing various options with St. Jude, Dynamic Rugs committed to a "substantial donation" that will be paid in increments throughout the year. "St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has managed to help push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since they opened more than 50 years ago, all without charging their patients for their invaluable treatment and research. And since their services are free of cost, they rely on donations like ours to continue their lifesaving mission. We can't think of a better cause to support," Rouhanian continued.
Dynamic Rugs' support of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital will be showcased on select rugs that will feature the label above.
"In Persian culture, it's said that when something good happens to you, you should do something that humbles you like making a donation. Reaching our 25th year is definitely something good -- it's a tremendous milestone that I am so proud of my dad for working so hard to achieve. It's an honor for him to be able to donate to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to commemorate this occasion and to help support their wonderful cause."
To avoid placing that responsibility on their customers, Dynamic Rugs has chosen to not make the donation dependent directly on sales. However, some rugs will carry the St. Jude logo to illustrate that Dynamic Rugs is a St. Jude supporter.
"We'll show our support of SJCRH by putting their logo on some of our running lines to convey to our customers that their purchase has allowed us to in turn support SJCRH; we wouldn't have been able to do this without them," Rouhanian said. "And we know our customers wouldn't be able to support us if it wasn't for their consumers. So it's this beautiful cycle of consumers supporting our customers, our customers supporting us, and us supporting SJCRH. The SJCRH logo on our products will allow the consumer, the end-user, to see that their purchase helped support saving children's lives."
Las Vegas Market shoppers can stop by Dynamic Rugs' Building A showroom, A-432, and pick up a commemorative St. Jude - Dynamic Rugs bracelet.
THE MAKING OF DYNAMIC RUGS
Dynamic Rugs' successful Quartz collection, shown award-winning Quartz 26190, illustrates the marriage of fashion and value that drive the company.
To get to this point in the company's history, Matthew Rouhanian evolved his business model from strictly importing machine-made area rugs from Belgium on a container-by-container basis for big volume stores. By 1997, the Maryland-based company became a full service rug importing company, bringing in product from India, China and Turkey, in addition to Belgium, and targeting a broad range of independent area rug and home furnishings retailers.
It's steady growth, always between 15 percent to 25 percent year-over-year in the ensuing years, allowed Dynamic Rugs to continue to expand its presence. In 1999, for instance, it move from a temporary showroom in Atlanta to a small permanent space. And around the same time, Dynamic Rugs debuted at the annual Surfaces Floor Covering Expo in Las Vegas [now known as TISE]. By 2004 the company had enough business to support the opening of two more showrooms, one in New York at 295 Fifth Ave. and another at High Point Market in North Carolina (read more).
While Dynamic Rugs experimented with adding new qualities and constructions to its roster, including broadloom and hand-knotteds over the past two decades-plus, it has continued to refine its three core goals. "Our company is committed to bringing the three principals of service, value and fashion to our customers," Matthew Rouhanian said.
In 2005, Dynamic Rugs outgrew its Rockville, Maryland, facility, moving to its current Frederick headquarters.
That strategy paid off and the company's expansion over the course of a decade led to relocating its headquarters from Rockville to Frederick, where it quadrupled its facility from 20,000 square feet to nearly 100,000 square feet. In addition, the company focus prompted the company to shift its production outside of Belgium around that time so it could offer more variety to its customers.
"I remember when I first started in the business the primary concept was that it was a floor covering industry," he explained. "But now, it's very much a fashion industry. And since fashion is constantly changing, and a large demographic of our consumer is Millennials, who are used to fast-changes and immediate responses, the 'newness' of products has to keep up."
Dynamic Rugs' Juno collection, crafted of polypropylene, in on point color combinations rework traditional patterns and became a company hit.
Rouhanian's determination to be at the forefront of design and fashion trends remains a key focus and has allowed the company to grow from a fledgling startup to an important area rug player. In fact, Rouhanian's track record and business practices also earned him an Icon Honors award in 2017.
"I'm definitely looking forward to what the future holds," Matthew Rouhanian said. "Each time I see satisfaction and growth from my customers, I feel more and more reenergized and motivated to keep my business growing. I'm excited to be incorporating more technology into my business practices to keep things even more efficient, organized, and simplified for my customers. I'm excited to grow my inventory capacity, to grow my staff, and expand into other home fashion categories. And I'm also excited to see that everything I've ever heard about hard work and dedication is true: it really does pay off. I feel so fortunate to be working in an industry I'm passionate about with people I genuinely enjoy working with who, at this point, have become friends."