COSE Update - September 2008 - (Page 12)

“at that time, i didn’t know if we would recover.” —teD arslanian, arslanian brothers carpet & ruG cleaninG Then there were all of the customers waiting for Arslanian Brothers’ in-home carpet-cleaning service the day after the tragedy. Since many of the technicians kept their company trucks with wall-to-wall carpet cleaning equipment at home, they could service customers if they had records. But they didn’t have a single phone number, not an address or any idea about the next day’s schedule—or the weeks following for that matter. So Arslanian Brothers waited for customers to call them. The fire was big news, and the phones would have been ringing off the hook had there been service. Transferring phone lines took a good day and a half. All calls were forwarded to one cell phone. “We had a three-person operation set up out of my house with one phone, and the minute a call came in from a customer, we would transfer the call and set up appointments as fast as we could and begin making claims for lost rugs,” Arslanian says. “We had a really huge problem.” Because Arslanian Brothers was only responsible for the actual cash value (ACV) of the rugs, many customers would be disappointed to find out their once valued $20,000 rug was worth just $800. The 12 • cose update • september 2008 value of Oriental rugs has declined steeply in recent years, Arslanian reports. Foreign relations and design trends are responsible for the swift depreciation. Honoring the ACV for Persian rugs would only compound the customer service issues. Arslanian admits the company simply was not prepared for such a trauma. There was no fire emergency plan in place—no backup plan. Even data they thought was safe didn’t survive the fire. Despite all this, Arslanian Brothers recovered their in-house carpet cleaning service within a week, and moved operations across the street to an available warehouse to begin picking up where business left off. “We didn’t have the cash flow during this [transition] period because we weren’t able to do nearly the volume that we were doing prior to the fire,” Arslanian says. The cash flow issue was of particular concern considering the insurance claims that would materialize once customers learned about the fire. Every day, more calls flooded in. “We decided to get involved with the settling of the claims,” Arslanian says. Purchasing new rugs would be more cost effective and satisfying to customers. The company asked customers to produce photos of their rugs—family snapshots, anything containing a glimpse of the design. The Arslanians sent photos to wholesalers in New York City and other companies with whom they had built relationships with over the years. They bought 100 to 200 rugs at a time. “We would get very deep discounts,” Arslanian says. “We were able to replace customers’ rugs and stay under our insurance policy limits only because we did a lot of the work ourselves.” The Arslanian family worked nights and weekends for months to get business back up and running. Shutting down never crossed their minds. After all, the business represented a livelihood to nearly a dozen relatives plus long-timers who have been with the company for 40-plus years. “You can’t imagine the mental anguish we went through,” Arslanian says, reflecting on this past year. “I didn’t sleep for three months after the fire. All you think about is all you have to do. ‘I’ve got to call this customer back.’ ‘I’m waiting on rugs to come from New York.’ It was just endless.” The first of this year, Arslanian Brothers moved into a 22,000 square-foot facility

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of COSE Update - September 2008

COSE Update - September 2008 Contents Memo Upfront Vision Tech Business Interrupted The “Bigness” of Small Business What’s the Plan? People Telecom Advocacy Communications Health Pipeline Connect Arts My Cause Plugged In

COSE Update - September 2008

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