2024 Business Women Awards
ACHIEVEMENT HONOREE: Rosalind Rustigian
V. George Rustigian Rugs Inc. owner
WHEN ROSALIND RUSTIGIAN was a teenager, her dad, Rusty, offered her some fatherly advice.
“He wrote me a note. It said I should keep my mouth closed and play Vicky the dunce more. His message was don’t show your cards, keep your eyes open, guard your flank and don’t let down your guard,” she said.
Business axiom or life lesson, she’s kept that message tucked in the back of her mind since she took over V. George Rustigian Rugs Inc., doing business as Rustigian Rugs, in the decades after her father died. Today, the Providence-based company carries rugs from all over the world, as well as custom rugs and carpeting, with many repeat clients.
By all accounts, Rustigian had a colorful upbringing as an only child. The garage of her Benefit Street home became a showroom. The separate building that had housed Gertie, the family horse, was transformed into a dry room for cleaning rugs, and it wasn’t uncommon to see carpets draped on fences outside the house or hanging from special railings.
Rustigian majored in urban studies at Connecticut College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1973. As a field, it appealed to her. It grouped together economics, sociology, contemporary history and literature, as well as micro, macro and urban planning.
Following graduation, she tended bar at local spots such as The Black Pearl in Newport. After a couple of years, Rustigian opted for Cornell University for graduate school and a master’s in hotel administration. From there, she spent two years in New York in a hotel division of the real estate department at Prudential Insurance.
In 1980, when her dad died, Rustigian came back to Rhode Island.
“I had no intention of running the company, but I started answering the phone. Then I was asked, ‘Can you do this?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and that’s how it went,” Rustigian said.
When a former bank building in Providence’s Fox Point neighborhood came on the market a year later, she decided to buy it and move the business there. She was 28 and didn’t have enough money to purchase it outright. After moving into the building, Rustigian modernized the company’s operations, added a computerized system, inventory and customer service. It allows her staff of 10 to keep track of purchases, cleanings and repairs over several decades, with sales records and photos.
“I would never in a million years think my background in sociology and urban studies would suit me in the rug business,” she said.
