Martinous Oriental Rug Co., Inc.

By Bobbi Nesbitt

World War I was behind us, rural America was moving to the city, and "The Babe" was chalking up home runs for the Yankees. It was during this time that the Martinous family first began selling fine oriental rugs in Arkansas. Carl Martinous and his uncle Malek (MAY-lek) were traveling across Arkansas and Oklahoma in 1923 in a station wagon loaded with rugs.

The late Carl Martinous, the father of David Martinous, owner of Martinous Oriental Rug Co., Inc., of Little Rock, and his uncle joined thousands of young Americans taking to the roads in "horseless carriages" to make their fortunes.

It wasn't easy to travel the roads then. As late as 1920, another young man named Harry Truman had to ballast the rear of his Dodge with concrete blocks to avoid being capsized in potholes as he made his rounds as an official of Jackson County, Missouri.

The Martinous family started in Springfield and opened places of business there and in Fort Smith in 1939. The old Goldman Hotel in Fort Smith had been one of the places Carl and Malek would set up to sell their rugs, Carl's wife, Dorothy Martinous, said. Later, when they opened their business, it was located in Fort Smith's first shopping center.

During the 1920s and '30s, Carl and his three brothers lived in Springfield, which was home base when Carl traveled with his uncle learning the rug business.

"He was a nut about oranges," David Martinous said. The Lebanese-born Malek would eat oranges all along the route and throw peels in the back of the station wagon. "One of Dad's jobs was to clean the station wagon of orange peelings."

One of their best customers during those years was the late Sen. J. William Fulbright's mother. "Bill was teaching law at the university (in Fayetteville)," Dorothy said. They (Carl and Malek) would always stay for dinner at the Fulbrights'. Bill liked to hear Malek tell about the old country."

When Carl took over the business, he convinced his three brothers to go in with him. Carl, Ben, Shamel, and Phillip Eli helped set up the businesses in Springfield and Fort Smith.

"Dad went to Chicago and learned professional rug cleaning," David said. "He introduced professional equipment (to Arkansas). He had a shampooer and a wet vac and rinse."

"This was right before the war, and Dad made contact with the military to use the professional equipment to clean mattresses for the government."

Dorothy said that once when Carl, Ben and Phillip were in Chicago working on the government contract, some of the officers at the military base there convinced them to go and see a young comedian from Lebanon who was doing stand-up at a Chicago club.

"All three of them went," and got to go backstage and meet the performer. "When Carl came home he told me that he met a guy who said he was going to be famous one of these days," Dorothy said of the young Danny Thomas.

It turned out that that meeting was the beginning of a life-long friendship with Thomas and the Martinous family. Dorothy was a volunteer for the St. Jude Children's Hospital for 27 years, and Thomas came to Fort Smith to honor her when she retired as a volunteer.

"We raised over $1 million here in Fort Smith for St. Jude," she said.

"We have so many children in Arkansas who are patients of that hospital. I don't know what it is, but we've had 30 to 35 children from Van Buren and Fort Smith."

Dorothy said her son, David, helped tremendously with the fund raising for the hospital. "He is a very, very community minded young man. He was raised that way."

David and his wife, Cynthia, share spots on the boards of AETN and Wildwood and volunteer at the Carver YMCA, in addition to David's vice presidency of the Pleasant Valley Property Owners Association and involvement with a local Middle Eastern dance company, as well as the restoration of an historic carousal.

David's childhood was not an easy one. His father, Carl, was diagnosed with cancer in 1956 and died in 1958 when David was 12 years old.

"Mother carried on the business," David said.

"I operated both businesses about five years," Dorothy said of the stores in Fort Smith and Little Rock.

Between 1939 and 1940, Shemel traveled to California, fell in love with the sunny state, and opened a rug business in San Jose. David's other uncles, Ben and Phillip, moved back to Springfield to operate that store. During that time, Carl had opened the Little Rock store. After his death, Dorothy not only ran the Little Rock and Fort Smith stores, she did hands-on work as well.

"Carl taught me how to overcast." That is the hand repair that's done to the edges of oriental rugs. "And he taught me how to re-fringe."

David completed two years of school at Fort Smith Junior College. He had started at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville as a junior when his mother became ill and the manager of the Little Rock store
decided to return home to Mississippi to live, so David quit school to help his mother with the Little Rock store. He was 21 when he moved into the store his father had built during World War II at 503 East 21st Street. He lived over the store and attended classes at Little Rock University at night. He graduated in 1970 at age 25 in the first class of the newly named University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

David was friends with Leon Fields and Bain Corder, who were building the Cantrell Heights Shopping Center. He became their first tenant. "They designed the building to help me. I was there from 1976 to 1985. When I moved there, it was a big space," David said, adding that he did not have the inventory to fill it. "I went to New York and did the best selling job I ever did to let me have rugs on consignment." He was so successful that the 1,000 square feet, which had looked so large to him when he first moved into the shopping center, began to close in on him.

"I was outgrowing that space and couldn't get any more. The people next door were doing a good business, and I couldn't expand that way."

That's when he decided to build his own building. The only problem was finding the perfect location. When David saw the spot where his business is now located, he thought the real estate agent had to be kidding. 1521 Macon Drive was a bare field in a swampy area near Rodney Parham.

"I said, 'I'll tell you one thing, I'll never put a business out here.' You should never say never. That's what I learned."

One of the final selling points was that nearby construction included a large post office to serve the new subdivisions and commercial buildings springing up in the rapidly expanding western part of Little Rock.

"The day I put the earnest money up for this property, there were two other people behind me" (ready to buy if he didn't). "The day I closed, I had someone offer me more money than I paid for it."

The location has turned out to be perfect. "It's convenient to the interstate. I have my own parking. No one can build in front of me."

David sells quality handmade oriental rugs from around the world.

And Martinous Oriental Rug Co. cleans more than 6,000 rugs a year in its state-of-the-art 5,000-square-foot cleaning facility.

This story ran in the May 1996 edition of Shoppe Talk in a slightly different form.