Joe Hadeed 3 Million a year and growing fast

Joe Hadeed can differentiate the 800 regions of Hamadan rugs

Posted on Oct 26,2011

Photo by John Arundel Joe Hadeed runs the carpet cleaning business that his father founded Joe, Sr. founded.

By John Arundel

ALEXANDRIA, VA. - After feeling that his walks and outside playtime were not appropriately long enough for an English Labrador of his stature, my dog had expressed himself one too many times on the living room rug.

So there I sat recently in the lobby of Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning at 3206 Duke Street, with this cheap area rug we bought years ago at Lowe's.

I felt appropriately embarassed when a well-dressed chap in a German-made sports car came in toting this gorgeous Iranian rug, seemingly turning his nose up at me and my machine-made "Oriental rug," which was in fact probably mass-produced in some plant in Dalton, GA. I grabbed some old magazines, hoping to cover up the tags containing its origins

"This is an Imperial Farahan dating to the 1920s which I got years ago on a trip to Lebanon," the man pronounced regally, acting as if he were some Lepidopterist who had stumbled upon some rare and wondrous butterfly. "It's worth, like, $20,000 and I need it cleaned properly."

Joe Hadeed looked at the rug and politely identified the rug as something else. "What you have there, sir, is a Hamadan region rug from Iran," he said politely, as the man quickly deflated. "There are 800 different regions of Hamadan, and that looks like it's from the Malair city of Iran."

Photo by Connie Dale Mike Hadeed, Joe Hadeed and Chamber of Commerce President Tina Leone at the Chamber Awards. The Hadeeds won Alexandria business of the year.

Hadeed, 42, acknowledged that the rug was worth about $3,200 and that he would take care of it appropriately. Hearing this, I felt less deflated about having a rug from Lowe's.

Hey, it does the job.

The Hadeeds have been in the carpet business for nearly a century and know their stuff.

This led to the decision by members of the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce paid tribute to the success and community service of Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning with Alexandria's Best Business of the Year Award.

The Hadeeds have come a long way. Michael Hadeed Jr. set up shop here after a stint in the U.S. Army and a job learning the rug cleaning business at the old Hinkel Rug Cleaning Co. Their father, Michael Hadeed, Sr. arrived at Ellis Island in 1905 and fought for the United States Army in World War I. He had also been involved in the rug business, having immigrated from the Middle East.

"I learned the business from the bottom up, starting in the rug drying room," said Michael Hadeed, who turned 81 recently and lives in the Rose Hill area.

Another son, Michael M. Hadeed, was a criminal defense attorney in Springfield and now works at the business, and a sister, Mary, lives in Sterling. "I am proud of my son for carrying on the family tradition," Michael Hadeed said.

The senior Hadeed and his brother Teddy, who died in 1981, started the business on Mount Vernon Avenue in Del Ray on April 13, 1955 with his brother Teddy, at the location which is now Al's Steak House.

"It was a little mom and pop business until I bought it in 1990," said the younger Hadeed, who borrowed $300,000 from Burke & Herbert Bank and grew it into a bustling $3 million a year business with 32 employees. "I started here when I was 19 years old. My uncle Teddy taught me the business."

After college at Radford and a short stint selling cars at Sheehy Ford, Joe Hadeed bought the business from his dad and embarked on a massive expansion. "I was living at the Alexandria House and I noticed one day that the dry cleaners were picking up from the front desk clerk," he recalled. "That seemed to me a great way to expand the business."

Joe Hadeed moved the business to Duke Street and embarked on a massive expansion, adding trucks and advertising the service they provide. With a fleet of nine trucks doing pickups and deliveries, Hadeed cleans, repairs or restores the gamut, from Chinese rugs to hand hooked or hand woven rugs to fine Persian and Oriental rugs. Even my Lowe's special.

A trip to the back rooms of the facility revealed a hardy crew of workers proudly rebuilding tassels, patching, deodorizing, stitching, repairing and meticulously cleaning rugs to their former glory.

Recently they worked feverishly during a three-day period to clean a massive, $4 million Oriental rug from the George Washington Masonic Temple. Hadeed supervised the work himself, flanked by a crew of armed security guards. The average employee works about seven years for the Hadeeds, while several have been with them for 20 years or longer.

"Advertising in the local newspapers and selling Oriental rugs in a showroom next to the cleaning facility grew our business about ten-fold," he recalled. "Then we graduated to radio and now TV."

Hadeed hopes to expand the business so that he's cleaning rugs up and down the Mid-Atlantic, from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. He plans to expand his current facility from 8,500 square feet to a larger facility of 60,000 square feet, adding about 90 new employees if all goes right.

"This will be a $25 million business by the time we're done," he predicted. "I just love this business. I'm here six days a week."

Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning
3206 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA. 22314
(703) 241-1111

Oreck Offers two Speed Vac for Oriental Rugs

In a move to cater to the Oriental Rug owner Oreck is offering a two speeed Oreck Upright Vacuum. The vacuum has two speeds, one is a slower gentle speed for delicate Oriental and Persian rugs. Most rug washers see no harm in regular upright vacuumes but this is an interesting move to cater to a niche market.

"The Oreck XL Pilot vacuum is great for picking up dirt, dust, dander and pet hair. Its 360° Glide tilts and pivots for incredible maneuverability. It features a powerful, pile-lifting roller brush that easily moves through carpet, a HEPA inner bag and two speed settings (high speed for carpet, with a low speed that is gentle enough to clean delicate Oriental and Persian rugs). It weighs about 10 pounds without the cord."

Original Press release:

Oreck Corporation and hhgregg See Bright Future Ahead Together, Leading Regional Retailer to Offer Oreck Upright Vacuum, Canister Model and Steam Cleaner

Press Release

Posted on 10/28/11 at 3:22am by Webmaster

Oreck Corporation, a leading manufacturer of quality products in the homecare industry, announces the introduction of Oreck's select upright vacuums and its ultra versatile steam wand in more than 190 hhgregg stores.

Nashville, Tenn. (PRWEB) October 28, 2011

Oreck Corporation, a leading manufacturer of quality products in the homecare industry, announces the introduction of Oreck's select upright vacuums and its ultra versatile steam wand in more than 190 hhgregg stores.

Hhgregg is one of the nation's fastest growing retailers of home appliances and consumer electronics. All hhgregg retail stores will now offer the Oreck XL® Pilot™ upright vacuum, Oreck Quest® Pro canister vacuum and Steam-It® all-purpose steamwand. Oreck is well known for offering products that are easy to use, lightweight, powerful and durable.

“Oreck is excited to offer its product in hhgregg retail stores. We welcome the opportunity to bring three of Oreck's most popular products to the consumer through this respected retailer,” says Jeff Collins, Vice President, Sales, Oreck.

The Oreck XL Pilot vacuum is great for picking up dirt, dust, dander and pet hair. Its 360° Glide tilts and pivots for incredible maneuverability. It features a powerful, pile-lifting roller brush that easily moves through carpet, a HEPA inner bag and two speed settings (high speed for carpet, with a low speed that is gentle enough to clean delicate Oriental and Persian rugs). It weighs about 10 pounds without the cord.

The Oreck Quest Pro canister vacuum is designed with performance, ease-of-use and maximum cleanability in mind. It provides 1500 watts of cleaning power, yet is remarkably quiet.
It comes with a complete set of onboard tools, including a six-foot hose, dusting brush and a crevice tool. The power nozzle adjusts for different carpet pile heights. HEPA filtration and disposable filter bags come standard.

The Oreck Steam-It all-purpose steamwand uses steam to remove dirt and grime and is an easy way to get a deep down clean without the use of chemicals or detergents. It has a unique vapor chamber making it easy to clean above the floor without spilling. The Steam-It heats up in less than a minute, creating a high-temperature, low-moisture dry steam that quickly removes dirt and deep cleans hard floor surfaces, windows, kitchen and bath fixtures, tile and grout.

About Oreck
Headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., Oreck Corporation is a leading manufacturer in the homecare industry, offering a variety of vacuum, air purification and other cleaning products. Oreck sells its products in hundreds of Oreck Clean Home Centers, as well as through phone and online direct sales. The company distributes products in the U.S., Canada and parts of Europe. For more information, please visit http://www.oreck.com.

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/11/10/p2021119/oreck-corporation-and-hhgregg-see-bright-future-ahead-together-leading-#ixzz1c53F5Vyr"

Rug Care Simplified by Kevin Pearson

Tips for keeping your rugs looking great for years

While your favorite carpet cleaner might do a wonderful job cleaning your carpet, they simply can not clean a rug properly with the same chemicals and equipment used to clean your carpet. Chemicals made for cleaning synthetic wall-to-wall carpeting could damage a natural fiber rug. A professional rug cleaner will use chemicals that are safe for wool or other natural fibers. It would be impractical to bring the rug dusting and washing equipment that is necessary to properly clean a rug into a home environment. Also, many times it is necessary to test the colors in a rug for 24 hours to make sure they are stable. When cleaning a rug it is nearly impossible to remove pet odors from any rug without a full immersion cleaning. This can only be done in a rug cleaning plant. A wet wool rug could then take up to 24 hours to dry in a controlled environment. After the rug is cleaned and dried then the fringe will need to be cleaned and a final grooming done on the rug before it can go back to the customer.

If a rug is going to be stored for any length of time, it should be cleaned first. Never roll up and store a dirty rug. Rugs should be stored in a climate controlled environment and be wrapped in plain brown paper or in Tyvek. Never wrap a rug in plastic. Since wool can hold 30% of its weight in water and still feel dry to the touch, wrapping a rug in plastic would not allow the rug to breath. So condensation could form in the plastic and cause the rug to mold or dry rot.

It is also not a good idea to ever set a potted plant on top of a wool rug. This can cause permanent damage to a rug by over watering the plant or just by the humidity that is absorbed into the rug from the potted plant. This can result in color loss, mold, or dry rot.

About Kevin: Kevin Pearson is a Master Cleaning Technician with The Clean Trust and has been in the cleaning and restoration industry since 1992. Kevin was elected to the Board of Directors of The Clean Trust in 2011 and presently working on a committee to rewrite the carpet inspector standards in our industry and has previously served on the carpet cleaning standards revision committee. He also serves on two other committees at The Clean Trust and is on the Board of Directors of the Professional Cleaning and Restoration Alliance. He has also been featured on Fox News in Houston. For more information Call Pearson Carpet Care at 281-548-7200 or visit our website http://www.pearsoncarpetcare.com.

Oriental Rug Washing: Does Rug ID Matter

Oriental Rug Washing: Does Rug ID Matter
Recently on a message board one rug washer commented “Unless it is a cheap olefin rug”. It made me realize that when you say “Rug” I picture a hand-woven wool rug and base my answers on that. So unless you say tufted or machine made or silk or something I base my assumptions on that.
The problem is that I may recommend cleaning a rug very differently depending on what it is and how it is made. Olefin you can clean pretty much like wall to wall carpet. Tufted, gun tufted, machine tufted whatever you call it is fairly simple as long as the latex backing is good. You need to check that. With hand-woven rugs, is it going to bleed, is the foundation cotton, wool or silk. Is the pile wool, silk, silk highlights, viscose, or cotton? I was with Paul Iskyan at Rug Renovating last Sunday and he showed me a sample rug made with all the different fibers that one manufacturer (could have been Stark) uses in their rugs. I am not kidding they are making rugs from bananas, jute, hemp, silk, soy silk, aloe and many other fibers. I never even knew you could make rugs from bananas or aloe and I had to ask what soy silk was.
My point is that the more you know the easier it gets. Time spent on Rug ID can steer you away from costly mistakes and it can also help you get more business. If you want to cash in on the rug boom you at least want to know the basics. If you took your car to the garage for a tune-up and the mechanic didn’t know if your car was gas or diesel would you trust him. Heck, would you even leave your car there?
I will be teaching a course on Rug ID for the Great DC Rug Tour next February. We will be using the Herat Oriental Rug warehouse in Alexandria Va for the rug ID session. It will include all the main types of new older and Antique Oriental rugs plus examples of everything else we see on the market. We may not see banana rugs but will have over 10,000 examples to learn from. This course was held February of 2012

Urine Contamination: Send Vinegar back to the kitchen

The old fashioned treatment for urine contamination is to wash the rug in a vinegar bath and deodorize giving rug washers anywhere from limited to very good success. One refrain often heard on the discussion boards is who needs “expensive pretreatments” while vinegar is so cheap. That lead me to ask what does vinegar do and how good a treatment for urine contamination is it.

Common white vinegar is a great cheap and common source of Acetic acid. Vinegar is a 4 to 8% acetic acid solution with a pH of 2.4 to 3.5. It does have antimicrobial properties but in the concentrations common in rug washing it has very limited affect as a disinfectant. It also dissipates fairly rapidly in the wash bath which leads to problems but let us look at what vinegar does and doesn’t do.

The key is that the acid in vinegar increases substantivity in the wash bath for the wool fibers and their dyes. Substantivity is the attraction between the dye in the bath and the wool fibers. Dye has a negative charge and an acid increase the positive charge of the wool causing the dye to stay on the fiber. Remember playing with magnets as a child, the like ends; north to north repel each other but opposites north to south stick together. By making the wool a stronger positive it keeps the negatively charged dyes stuck to the wool. This is where the problem of vinegar comes in. Vinegar is referred to as a “soft acid” meaning that it is a plant acid and it dissipated in water. So while vinegar does a great job at the beginning of the wash bath it quickly releases and stops working. So at the end of the wash bath there is nothing to help holding the dye to the wool and this drastically increases the chance of dye instability. Maybe not in this wash cycle but perhaps in the next. So for that and a few other reasons chemists began to create the “expensive pretreatment” formulations.

So vinegar is acetic acid in primarily a water solution and water is less than an ideal solution to get the acid to the surface of the wool fiber. So most manufacturers use acetic acid primarily in alcohol which does a much better job of getting acid to fiber. They also increase the amount of acid in the solution. They cannot go too high since at about 25% the acid would destroy the cotton foundation. But if it were straight acetic acid in the solution we would still have the problem of the dissipation of the soft acid in the wash bath. So what they do is add a hard or mineral acid which does not dissipate. Then they add a surfactant to increase the effectiveness of the pretreatment. That is why you probably noticed that pretreatment is sudsy. This is the way that just about everyone makes their urine pretreatment. The exception is Chem Max which does all of this but adds a special deodorizer. Paul Lucas told me that for 22 years he made chemicals but never made urine pretreatment because he would just be copying everyone else. Then one day he came up with the idea of adding one more ingredient that has made a fantastic difference. The downside to Paul’s Urine Pretreatment is that his requires gloves, goggles, and vigorous flushing. The vigorous flushing is not a big deal since all the treatments involved a hard acid which has to be removed from the rug.

Keep in mind that vinegar has a limited antimicrobial capability the way we use it but the pretreatments have an effective antimicrobial affect because of the higher concentrations and the two acids. Urine is sanitary in a healthy animal when it is first sprayed and it is also acid. But it is rich in food for living organisms and can quickly foster a breeding ground for fungus, viruses, and other harmful microorganisms. It takes about 5 days for urine in a rug to shift from acid to alkaline and then over time the alkalinity can go as high as a pH of12.5. By that point the damage to the fibers and the health risk can be severe.

Today’s rug washer is faced with choices. They can continue to use vinegar which is not consistently substantive through the wash cycle, has limited penetration, and is not an effective antimicrobial agent. Or they can switch to urine pretreatment with consistent substantivity, better penetration to get the acid where it is needed and a safe sanitizing treatment of a rug. Today’s rug washer has to decide whether to save a few cents and take the risk of long term damage to the clients rug as well as long term risk to the health and well being of the client. For the sake of a dollar or two. Effective modern urine pretreatment can

Then there is the question of speed and effectiveness, on a badly urine contaminated rug it is not unusual to see Rug Washers I know wash a rug more than once to deal with urine odor. Does it make sense to wash a rug once and spend an extra $25 in chemicals or wash it two or 3 times for the same money and save $25. It really comes down to how busy you are, how much your time is worth and how important the end result is to you. What does it say about your reputation if the urine odor returns on humid days? Personally I would rather decrease total man hours and turn out a better profit. If you are at $3 per square foot and you have to wash it twice you are at $1.50 a square and at three times. Additionally many Rug Wasters are charging an additional dollar a square foot for urine treatment. At that point instead of a decrease to the profit margin it becomes a profit center.

There are many great prod ducts on the market today. Personally I would choose ChemMax Urine Pretreatment if I don’t mind the goggles and gloves otherwise I would use Bridgepoint’s TCU Neutralizer. For faster more effective cleaning with greater profit I think it is time to send vinegar back to the kitchen.

A major point that I forgot to mention about Bridgepoint’s TCU Neutralizer. I chose it because it includes solvents that can break down the Lipids in urine. Fats, Oils, Waxes, and even excess Vitamins can be a major problem in sever urine contamination. TCU has the power to break them up and make the job much easier. No matter how well TCU works I don’t expect to use it again. Watch for a special wool balanced replacement very soon.

Special news on the NYC Rug Tour Oct 15th

Jason Nazmiyal New York City's leading Antique Carpet dealer will be putting on a special presentation of Antique Oriental Rugs. The presentation will include the best of Antique Tabriz Rugs - Antique Oushak Rugs - Antique Sultanabad Rugs and Antique Khotan Rugs.