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Bijan Bonakchi was only 17 years old when he opened his first Bijan's Exclusive Oriental Rugs store in San Antonio. He was a high school senior at the Texas Military Institute at the time. But even back then, he proved he had the makings of a successful entrepreneur.
As the son of a wholesale rug distributor, Bonakchi spent his entire life around the business of importing intricately woven rugs - not rugs mass-produced by machines in a factory. His company offers rugs that have been handwoven by some of the best artisans in the world - from faraway places such as India, Pakistan and Iran.
For generations, his family, originally from Karmanshe, Iran, earned a living in the rug business. In fact, the name Bonakchi in the Farsi language means "marketplace" or "bazaar," he explains. It is not surprising, then, that the family has built a lifetime's worth of contacts with suppliers from far-away lands where, in some cases, between 17,000 and 18,000 people spend months dyeing and hand-weaving individual rug patterns.
Bonakchi has been able to translate a life's worth of training in the family business into his own thriving venture with Bijan's Rugs. But what made him different is the fact that he wanted to venture off into retail, unlike his relatives whose specialty is wholesale.
"They all told me I was crazy," he says with a laugh.
But a visit to Bonakchi's store in 1989 by Karla Wentworth, the wife of state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, made it all worthwhile, Bonakchi says. She was one of the first people in San Antonio to visit the first Bijan's location in the Colonnade Shopping Center. Wentworth decided to buy a 10-foot-by-14-foot rug from him, Bonakchi recalls. It was his very first sale and he was ecstatic.
"I didn't know if I should run to the bank or drive," he says.
The fruits of Bonakchi's first sale also paid dividends years later when Sen. Wentworth presented the young entrepreneur with a Texas flag that was flown in his company's honor at a State Capitol ceremony on Sept. 21, 1998. Bonakchi was honored for his accomplishments as a successful Texas business owner. He displays the flag in his store.
Today, Bonakchi has...