TORONTO - Rug stores are always closing in Toronto’s west end.
For years, large yellow signs have dotted sidewalks and hydro poles along the city’s major streets advertising last-minute deals on household rugs.
“Rugs Sale. Store Closing. Up to 85% Off” read one sign spotted at the corner of Dundas and Brock streets earlier this month.
This rug store, located at 876 Dundas St. W. near Manning Avenue, will purportedly close at the end of March.
The hitch? The same yellow signs also advertised a different rug store would close in Parkdale last fall.
“Last Week. Closing Sale. Up to 80% Off” read a yellow sign outside that Queen Street West shop in October.
Over the past four years, similar yellow signs have lured customers looking for a discount rug to locations on Roncesvalles Avenue, College Street and Dundas Street West in the Junction.
The “closing sale” advertising technique is nothing new. But could this be the same rug business, always on the move? Or, perhaps, there was a last-minute deal on yellow signage and all the city’s rug mongers bought a batch.
TorontoToday set out to figure out who was behind the neverending rug deals.
Another rug bites the dust
Last October, TorontoToday visited the Parkdale shop A Rugs, nestled at the far western end of Queen Street, to find out whether it was the same yellow sign-advertised rug store as the other yellow sign-advertised rug stores.
The store’s owner, who goes only by Mamad, denied that was the case.
Those other rug stores were run by someone else, he said. He was really closing up shop at the end of the month and would be moving to a location in Richmond Hill.
He explained some of the travails of the carpet business and the challenges that came with operating in Parkdale. The conversation ended after he quoted an ancient Afghan proverb.
That, it seemed, was that.
However, a few months later, TorontoToday once again spotted the telltale yellow signs — this time pointing to a soon-to-close location on Dundas West in Little Portugal.
In late March, this reporter swung by the city’s latest 80 per cent off closing sale and was instantly recognized by Mamad.
“When you’re a pop-up, you’re always closing,” he shrugged.
Mamad said he actually did briefly move his rugs to a warehouse in Richmond Hill but opened another west end location when he found an appropriately sized storefront lease on Dundas.
He admitted A Rugs has opened and closed four pop-ups around the city in recent years, as well as holding down a more long-term lease in the Junction for a time.
This iteration of A Rugs is closing at the end of the month because the unit’s main tenant, Ride Away Bikes, is reopening soon for spring. Its bikes are being stored in the basement, Mamad said.
The city has never given him trouble about the large yellow signs, he claimed, because he takes them down whenever he closes. Each one costs around $200.
The signs’ obtrusiveness is nothing compared to the advertising done by large retailers, like Loblaws, Mamad said, who pay to have every mailbox stuffed with flyers.
The real story isn’t the signs or the closing sales, according to Mamad, it’s the rug business.
Not a business, but a curse
Mamad, who asked not to be photographed, is in his 70s and hails from Iran. He said he has been living in Canada for 12 years.
According to him, selling rugs is more of a curse than a business.
“No business is as difficult as this,” he said. “You get stuck.”
Mamad said many new Canadians who come to the country from Iran borrow money to start rug businesses and then can’t get out of debt.
Gesturing to a friend of his who had just exited the store, Mamad said that man was also a rug-seller and had just lost his house. His friend was getting very thin from the stress of his debts, he said.
Mamad would not say much about his own financial situation, but described his own large stock of rugs as a burden.
It takes 10 days to move his heavy product out of a store and into a warehouse every time he closes up shop, he said. A Rugs has around 800 Persian rugs in its storefront.
The business would make sense if you sold one rug per day, Mamad told TorontoToday. “Then maybe you’d get rich!”
But that is not how it actually goes, he said.
In reality, according to him, newcomers from Iran get trapped selling rugs.
“Carpet, carpet, carpet” is all this business is, he said, bemoaning that rug-sellers don’t end up with the transferable skills they need to get other jobs in Canada.
How to not get rugburned
Hojjat Morady, the owner of SilkCo Rugs at Bloor and Jane streets, had a different opinion.
He told TorontoToday the way to succeed in the rug business is to earn the trust of your customers, something that is hard to do when you’re moving around all the time.
There is a huge variance in the quality and value of Persian rugs, Morady said, noting that he carries carpets that cost as little as $100 and as much as $250,000.
Just because a rug is on sale, it doesn’t mean it’s a good deal, he said. “Quality is important, seller is important, dealer is important.”
SilkCo has been in the same location for 24 years, he said.
For now, Mamad said he will close his current location next week.
While it is difficult to find an affordable lease for a space as large as he needs, Mamad said he is still hoping to find a permanent location for A Rugs.
The yellow signs will let the westenders know.