Greetings,
As recently elected president of ARCS, I am honored and humbled by the trust and faith the membership and board of directors have placed in me. I want to take a moment of your time to introduce our new board of directors and brief you on the direction we are heading.
First, I thank Bill Foulds of Deep Eddy Rug Cleaners of Austin, our founding president, and congratulate him on his promotion to past president. Bill worked tirelessly on behalf of the association for the past two and a half years and took us from a small group of a dozen or so cleaners to a thriving association of over 70 firms from around the world. I would also like to thank Bill Thornton of Oriental Rug Care in Ft. Lauderdale, Linda Plunkett of AWPOV in (Tampa) and Ken Adams of ABC Rug Cleaning of Ithaca, NY for serving on the Board of Directors.
Our fifth ARCS sponsored event just concluded and like the previous four, was a great success. Over fifty of our members were able to tour and take pictures of Karastan's Eden, N.C. facility, hear engaging speakers talk on, among others, how to improve your dry room, social media marketing and utilize e-mail to gain customers. We toured Pettyjohn's Rug Cleaning and the Persian Carpet's showroom and wash facility, in addition to eating some great barbeque and fried catfish. In addition to the "formal" program, the lessons learned socializing in the bar afterwards were equally valuable. Many members commented to me that this event was a home run. There was something for everyone. Bill Foulds, Ken Adams, Robert Pettyjohn and Doug Lay put a great program together. These programs take a great deal of effort to get off the ground. The logistics are hard, but even harder is putting together a program that is engaging and in large part thanks to these gentlemen we succeeded.
Now I ask something of you. This association exists for you and your fellow members. As a group, we have greater capabilities and resources than any one of us alone. The Karastan tour is an excellent example. Karastan normally confiscates phones and cameras before the start of every tour. When we asked if they'd make an exception they looked over the names of the companies taking the tour and saw some of their major retailers and made an exception for the whole group. So the question to ask yourself is "What do I want from the association?" AND "What can I give to the association?." We need your good ideas, and willingness to utilize the association's resources to see those ideas bear fruit for the membership as a whole. If you have a great idea for a speaker, an article, a class, the association is the vehicle for seeing that idea become a reality. If you are sitting waiting for someone to call on you, consider this the teacher calling you to the blackboard. The I and the ARCS board look forward to hearing from you.
The following are the priorities the board and I set for the association for the next 12 months :
-Have a longer vision: We need to plan our events further ahead, so it isn't a question of whether you can attend, but that you can plan on it awkward
-Launch the ARCS education track: Our first course in final development. Attendees in Durham saw a presentation on our first virtual class and the concept was very well received. The next couple months will see some final tweaking and we look forward to enrolling the first class by the end of summer.
-Member benefits: Members will be able to interact more with the association than in the past. A full featured members- only section on our website will launch later this year comprised of our newsletters (archived for members to reference), a forum and features to help you in your day to day operations.
These are our goals for the coming year. It is an ambitious agenda, but with your help and support, we can make it happen. I along with your fellow board members look forward to your help and encouragement and thank in advance this year's board who generously committed their energy and, more preciously, time to give back to our industry.
Armen Dohanian III, President Armen@DallasRugCleaner.com
Oriental Rug Cleaning Co. of Dallas, TX
Steven DeMarco, Vice-President S.DeMarco@TripleSClean.com
Triple S Cleaners of Norwalk, CT
Jessica Kasparian, Treasurer Jessica@TurcoPersian.com
Turco-Persian Rug Co. of Toronto, ON
Justin Woodard, secretary JWoodard@Woodard247.com
Woodard Cleaning & Restoration of St. Louis, MO
Tevi Cory Tevi@MannRugs.com
Robert Mann Oriental Rugs of Denver, CO
Bob Carr Bob@CarrsRugCleaning.com
Carr's Rug Cleaning of Knoxville, TN
Bill Foulds, past-president BFoulds@DeepEddyRugCleaners.com
Deep Eddy Rug Cleaners of Austin, TX
Tony Legenstein Tony@CertifiedCarpet.com
Certified Carpet of Lancaster, PA
Robert Pettyjohn Robert@RugWasher.com
Pettyjohn's Cleaning & Restoration of Wake Forest, NC
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Armen Dohanian, president
Association of Rug Care Specialists |
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. Armen has been an outstanding board member and will help us achieve quite a bit in the coming years.
