by ROSIE WOLF WILLIAMS

Like the rugs they sell, Gertmenian and Sons has a rich tradition. Gostantine “G.A.” Gertmenian emigrated from Turkey to New York in 1896, and opened a modest dry goods store that sold used rugs as part of the inventory. After a move in 1915 to Pasadena, California, the focus turned to importing handmade rugs. By 1925, G.A.’s brother, Constantin, and son, Harold, had joined the business.

When the company first started out, the Gertmenians were purchasing rugs from local estate sales and reselling them to the European market, but then moved toward purchasing newly manufactured rugs. “My grandfather [Harold] and great-uncle [Constantin] took a ship from New York to Bombay, bought rugs, then stopped in Turkey and bought rugs there,” says Peter Gertmenian, great-grandson of G.A. and current president of Gertmenian. “That was the beginning of making contacts [and] creating relationships with manufacturers in those countries, and bringing rugs into the United States.”

In the ’80s, Gertmenian Rugs sold a pallet of handmade rugs to Costco. The rugs sold out in one weekend. That connection to Costco was an important stepping stone, says Gertmenian. “That helped us get a more national presence. We began to sell products to an array of national retailers.” By 1992, the company was focusing exclusively on high-quality rugs that were more affordable.

Until 2010, all of the products they imported were handmade. “Handmade rugs had qualities about them that were superior in terms of durability, color and performance to what was happening in machine-made rugs,” says Gertmenian. But the evolution of loom and yarn technology in the early 2000s improved the quality and designs of machine-made rugs, prompting another look.

“With weaving and yarn technology, machine-made rugs started to look more appealing,” Gertmenian continues. “Turkey had become a weaving center for machine-made rugs, so I traveled there to meet with the mills. They were growing quickly, and we found several collections that we thought were viable. That was the next step for our company in going from handmade rugs with limited distribution to machine-made rugs with significant national distribution.”