About
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March 5, 2008 at 12:13 am
March 5, 2008 at 12:28 am
I went into business on October 4th 1972. I was 27 years old. I rented the balcony of the H.L. Latt and Co. furniture store that was located at 14 S. Wells St. in the Chicago downtown area called the Loop. I had worked there previously and was a friend of the owner Henry Latt . My rent was only $200.00 per month. I helped with sales in the store when my carpet and rug business was slow and my friend Henry gave me free rent.
This was deal you could only get from a friend. I admired Henry for his business acumen.
I purchased $100.00 worth of Trend Mills wall to wall carpet samples. I was given a key to a rug showroom located in the Merchandise Mart. I took my customers to the showroom and special ordered the rugs for my customers. Soon I realized that the rugs were not in stock and that there was too long a wait for them, so I started to buy rugs for inventory. This was the beginning of my area rug business.
A store became available at 8 S. Wells, right next door to 14 S Wells. It had been a fabric store and was vacant for many years. My friends helped to clean it out and put in a bathroom. I bought a load of crateing lumber and covered the walls, then I sprayed the walls with a clear finish. I put up a 4’x6’ rug rack and other displays for my carpet samples . We also stocked and sold carpet remnants. The rent went up every year and I was told that the building was going to be torn down. Time to move.
I moved to 801 Main St in Evanston in June of 1979, the suburb that is just north of Chicago. Shortly after the move I decided to concentrate on the area rug business. I stopped selling wall to wall carpet and carpet remnants. Business kept on growing until the street became blocked for sewer construction in 1992. The street was torn up for almost 2 years. A huge access hole 35 feet across and 70 feet deep was dug right next to my building. The building started to sink. This was all part of a flood control project. Unfortunately my customers could not get to my store. I realized that no matter how hard you worked to build a business, you could lose it. The street was torn up for about 18 months.
I decided that I had had enough of the Chicago area and I wanted to get as far away as possible. My wife and I had vacationed in the Seattle area and we decided that we would move. We sold our home in Wilmette Illinois in 2 days. We bought a new home with a great view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, where the sunsets are the very best. Then I had a big sale and sold a lot inventory from my store and warehouse. We moved all our belongings and the rugs that were left to our new home in Washington.
I opened my current store on September, 10th 1994 at 116 Avenue D in Snohomish.
The web site followed and we were one of the first rug catalogs on the internet.
Thank you,
Marvin